A sort of mini-blog in between bigger ones, it's Monday afternoon and I have (when I started writing) just stepped off the train from Nottingham after a day of glorious sunshine and great music at Dot To Dot. In less than 24 hours' time I'll be in Barcelona, where later this week Primavera provides three whole days of glorious sunshine (well, I hope so anyway) and great music. I can't believe Great Escape was just a week ago; May 2009 has been the best month of live music I've experienced in a good couple of years or maybe ever - that Exit Calm Barnsley gig on the 1st seems like years ago. I'm writing this start to finish in one shot when I should really be packing a bag or something - which will at least keep me out of Manchester's gig venues for one night. I should almost certainly have had a night in last Monday, but a chance to see one of the bands I'd earmarked for Great Escape but couldn't fit into my schedule, and home in time for an early night? Ah go on then...

Everyone knows Monday night's early doors night at the Roadhouse, don't they? Well, nope. A long-standing arrangement to accommodate the Revolver club night, there is something faintly weird about going to a gig and stepping out into a summer's 9pm daylight, although not as weird as getting yourself to a gig venue for twenty past six. Which the local opening band haven't, being stuck in traffic. You mean I didn't have to wolf my tea down after all?

The thing about Canadians is they do all seem to be in each others' bands. Tonight's headline act are Wintersleep, containing at least one sometime or ex member of Holy Fuck; support comes from Snailhouse which is basically the solo name for one Mike Feuerstack of Wooden Stars, whose album was produced by Arcade Fire drummer Jeremy Gara. And half way through his set most of Wintersleep will join him as a backing band.

For the first half of the set though it's just Mike and his guitar playing low-key Americana folk, and a cheerful warm-up this very much isn't. "Mahogany" appears to be about his own funeral, and as he tells us you can in fact purchase a Snailhouse handkerchief from the merch stand if it all gets too much. Startlingly, this is actually true - I feel that in these days of swine flu "catch it bin it" punlic health campaigns they should probably come with a label "not for use". The stuff he does with the band is a little livelier if not a great deal more cheerful.

Wintersleep themselves get off to a slightly more upbeat start - a bit post-rock with obtuse drumming and spindly guitars it is the closest they will come to 888 all night; by the second track there are vocals with that unmistakeable Canadian reediness, but the music itself has taken a retreat into an area best described as a very stoned Interpol, and there it pretty much remains all night. Those at the front seem pretty happy with this, there's singing and even clapping along. Wintersleep are the sort of band you have to work at; much like The National they're one of those bands whose own fans defend them by insisting that you make the effort and let it grow on you, which is fine if you've got a CD in your hand but over the course of an hour-long set here there's little to rouse the interested visitor until they finally reach the recent single "Oblivion", a powerful stab of urgent indie anthemics that you could imagine would go down a storm at a festival. Spare a thought for the punters who turned up at twenty to nine - a pretty reasonable time to be going out to a gig under normal circumstances - but if they were casual observers as opposed to avowed fans then they can be assured they still got to see the best bit.

OK, picture this: you're a young band on your first tour of a foreign country; you've played a handful of gigs in the capital - and then you head north, find yourselves arriving a little early for soundcheck, and it gradually dawns on you that the suburban social club where you'll be playing a gig tonight is busy seeing off the tail end of a wake. Such is the fate that befalls Sad Day For Puppets on Wednesday - the venue is of course Chorlton Irish Club, and by the time I arrive with support Air Cav for their soundcheck the remarkably unperturbed Swedes have experienced some rather unexpected tour catering - as in, the bar staff have invited them to help themselves to the leftovers from the funeral buffet. This, my friends, is the sort of story you have to try and remember when you finally come to write the book. Air Cav opt for the slightly more glamorous option of Turkish Delight, Chorlton's finest purveyor of grilled halloumi and spicy meat products, and take them back to the venue which means that there are at least some people there to watch opening band Serpentine Pad. Hard promotion by myself, Blowout and even Sonic Cathedral (who release the headliners' debut album on Monday 1st June) seems to have come up against the fact that it's pissing down, the city's students are all up to their eyeballs in exams, and for anyone who doesn't live in Chorlton the Irish Club is a bit of a pain in the arse to get to. I'll be the first to admit I'd only make the effort for a band I really like.

The low level of early arrivals doesn't deter Serpentine Pad. Still hovering just below the general Manchester radar, the band's energised and slightly psychedelic take on ATP-friendly alt-rock really deserves to be heard more widely.

After the debacle of Night & Day it's good to hear Air Cav sounding as they should, but then Blowout promoter and soundman Graham has done their sound probably more than anyone else, he's got a genuine feel for how the band should sound. And as a fan - which I still very much am, at least when they are on stage and my work is done for half an hour, I'm very excited by the newest tracks in the set "Blind Summit" and "Keychain"; the former boasting the best drum fills since The Chameleons and the latter psychedelic summer indie pop at its finest.

Sad Day For Puppets specialise in the sort of indie-pop-meets shoegaze that's reminiscent of Lush before their unspeakable mid-90s sharp turn into commercial Britpop, with the sugar of Anna Eklund's adorable vocals balanced by lots of lovely guitar fuzz. Blending the perfect pop of the mid-80s Sarah Records roster with the Velvet Underground cool of similar era Creation it's not a massive surprise that a higher then usual proportion of the crowd (which has now reached a reasonable level) is old enough to remember these things. Single "Marble Gods" is a good pointer towards the rest of what's on offer - they're not massively dynamic to watch, but they do have a way with a crowd. Spotting the large empty dancefloor in front of the stage they invite audience members to come and have a dancing competition, and whilst the sort of people who go to watch shoegazey indie bands on a drizzly Wednesday night are not generally likely to be big on exhibitionism one girl's moves win her a copy of the album. It has to be said that they are absolutely lovely people, too, and if they think playing in a frighteningly wallpapered social club that's just seen off one of its regulars is a bit weird, god help them when they get to Crewe on Saturday. Having spent two years at college there sometime in the distant past I can safely say it's one of the most miserable places in existence and a pretty bizarre town in which to end your first national tour! 

Between now and then, though, this brilliant band who've had Single Of The Week pretty much everywhere that does one, and who are about to release their first album, have the privilege of playing at the bottom of a bill beneath such luminaries as Night Parade (erm, nope...) Mission Babies (me neither) and The Aeroplanes (little-known Scousers whom I've only heard of because they were supposed to support Air Cav in Barrow-In-Furness earlier this year, but cried off with man-flu an hour before doors opened). How the fuck did this happen? Well, it's very slightly better than the situation they were in a week ago whereby the day before they were due to fly to the UK they still didn't even know the venue for their own Liverpool gig. Welcome to Liverpool Sound City, possibly the least well organised city centre music festival I have ever encountered - and I've been to more than most people. In the end I don't make it to their show on Thursday largely because their ridiculous 7.30 stage time would mean too much of a rush after work. And believe me, by the time I have experienced two nights of the event on Friday and Saturday I'm quite glad I didn't bother.

So, if someone asked you what was the biggest multi-venue music festival and conference in the UK, you'd probably say In The City, right? Maybe if you're Southern based you might say Great Escape, which as last week's blogs illustrate is catching up fast. Unless you are the PR for Liverpool Sound City. I'm really not sure on what exactly they're basing this claim, but with some exciting stuff on the bill, the usual bran-tub of unknowns with intriguing names, Maps and Kyte on one bill on Friday, a Saturday slot secured for Air Cav, and my head still full of Great Escape, I'm off to find out.

If you ignore the fact that all the official artwork and design for the festival always looked like it had been done by whoever did Kwik Save's in the 80s, it was actually towards the end of last week that it started to become apparent there might be a few holes in the organisation. We'd been highly amused by the name of one of the venues: The Leggate Autopsy Theatre. Rather appropriately, surgical-masked psychedelic nutters Clinic were supposed to be kicking off proceedings there on Wednesday whilst me and a few of Manchester's shoegaze crew were looking forward to a rare performance by Cocteau Twins legend Robin Guthrie on Thursday. We were the first to be disappointed when late last week a post on Guthrie's Myspace apologised that the show had been cancelled, with no explanation apart from strong implications that this wasn't his doing. A few days later, Clinic fans received notification that their Autopsy session was also off - they'd fared slightly better, with a rescheduling to Friday at a different venue, but this was little consolation to one mate of mine who had tickets for Morrissey's 50th birthday gigs at the Apollo this weekend. And judging by the general audience demographic whenever I've seen Clinic I'm guessing he was far from alone in this. Then there was the aforementioned Sad Day For Puppets debacle.

Air Cav, meanwhile, are booked for one of the early evening showcase sessions at a bar I have never heard of called Mello Mello - but when it gets to Thursday and we've still not been told fairly crucial details such as loading and stage times, alarm bells do start ringing. Eventually the promoter gets in touch and tells me that unfortunately Mello Mello has lost its license, but it's OK, we're now playing the Barfly instead. Doesn't leave me long to knock up the flyers necessary for any up-and-coming band playing at this sort of thing, but one frenzied dinnertime on a "borrowed" printer later I'm there. Phew. And Friday's Maps gig at the equally mysterious Static Gallery provides a useful opportunity to distribute some of said flyers as well as do a bit of a recce on the whole set-up, with main support Kyte not due on til half nine...

We're sat having tea in a pub, picking a few potential warm-ups from the early doors freebie gigs (and with both Air Cav and Sad Day For Puppets in opening slots we figure there may be other gems in there), when I get a message from Maps saying they're now on at 9.30 with Kyte at 8.30, as both opening bands have pulled out (having requested that slot for Air Cav and been told it was already booked up, this does displease me a little) and that furthermore the sound is "shockingly shit". Great. So we head for the address of the Static Gallery and find ourselves on a cobbled and rather dilapidated back street. Half way up is what looks like a shed complete with large skip outside, a couple of bouncers sat at a plastic patio table, and a small hand painted sign that says "Static". Must be the place then. Inside we're somewhat pleased to see Maps' James Chapman sitting in the bar area, and rather less pleased to note that at this point precisely nobody else is, given that Kyte are on in about five minutes. Looks like Air Cav had a lucky escape...

My long time gigging and away trip companion Liam is known for many things, including a tendency towards extreme bluntness and the fact that once he's got an opinion on something even a large fleet of JCBs would struggle to shift it. He was also present the first time I saw Kyte - supporting The Whip at Leeds Faversham in June 2007 - when I wrote here "decent enough Big Indie Pop with some hints of post-rock / new-shoegaze soundscaping. Then Liam says 'Snow Patrol with a xylophone' (actually a glockenspiel, pedants) and I realise he's not that wide of the mark. They're very young though, and have plenty of time on their side to explore the more interesting stuff that is definitely lurking just under the surface."  This they very much did, and by the next time I saw them, supporting Maps in Nottingham and Northampton just four months later, they were a different beast entirely. But despite my insistence over the intervening year, another support tour with I Like Trains and eventually going to see them in their own right (including a trip to see them on home turf in Leicester) that they had very much found themselves and then some, Liam refused to be convinced. Tonight he walks in towards the end of their first song (increasing the audience by about 10 per cent if we discount the three members of Maps) and by the end of the second he's forced to agree.

They do sound outstanding tonight, it has to be said. And the song that stops everyone in their tracks is one familiar even to those (it is filling up a little now) who've never heard Kyte before. Bands do covers for two reasons - either that they're rather lacking in imagination (thus reliant on that of others) or overstuffed with it. Kyte are the latter, and their beautiful, stargazing take on Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" with electronics twinkling over post-rock guitar effects wash with Nick Moon's breathy voice like something half heard on the wind, is truly inspired. Somewhere at the intersection between prog, shoegaze and electronica Kyte have found a rather lovely little space that's all their own.

Outside our attention is drawn upwards towards, well, this:

As posters inside explain, it is a celebration of Liverpool culture and their love of trainers. Members of the public are invited to donate their old trainers by tying the laces together and throwing them over the "telephone wires" provided, in classic council-estate manner. I am really, honestly not making this up. I have witnesses. Good to know Scousers can laugh at themselves as much as the rest of us do, anyway... (Note to Liverpool - if you don't want people from Manchester to take the piss out of you, please do not have roadsigns indicating "Cultural Car Parks" on the road into town. Also, please try and get over The Beatles: it was a really long time ago and it's one thing to be proud of your heritage, but don't make a theme park out of it. The Hacienda was demolished; the Cavern Club restored brick by brick - you see where I'm coming from? Meanwhile the festival / conference HQ is at the - you guessed it - Hard Days Night Hotel. Enough, now.)

Maps look so much more on it tonight, Brighton's nerves nowhere to be seen. And if this is "shockingly shit" sound I can't wait to see them when it's "good" - in truth it's brilliant, shooting from speaker to speaker and bouncing off the brickwork to create that almost unique surround-sound thing Maps v1 did so well. I'm not going to write too much more about it as in retrospect I can see it largely as a stepping-stone between Brighton and what is still to come; it is worth noting, however, as the Liverpool Echo reviewer did, that the set is played effectively as one continuous piece almost like a live DJ mix.

One punter I speak to afterwards is a little disappointed in the lack of songs he knows, but when I point out to him that two tracks in the six track set ("It Will Find You" and "Back And Forth") did appear on the debut album and 2007 live sets he says "yeah, but not any of my favourites"... meanwhile, James Chapman is more than aware that this evolution could shed fans, but would rather this than make records to order. I couldn't agree more, and they'll probably mostly be the same Mercury shortlist buying drones who are currently confused by British Sea Power's outstanding follow-up ("Man Of Aran", out this week) to their own Mercury nominated pop album, and wondering why there's no singing (well, apart from one track) or 4/4 indie rock tunes on it. Never mind folks, I'm sure the new Arctic Monkeys album will be reassuringly familiar. Me I'm just buzzing because it has suddenly occurred to me that Maps 2009 is the closest thing Britain has produced to LCD Soundsystem, AKA the best live electro band of recent years, and if this is anything to go by not for very much longer. Stick them on a continental European festival stage at half one in the morning and see if I'm not wrong.

I am buzzing somewhat less when on the way home the signs for the M62 vanish and we find ourselves on something of an epic journey through hitherto uncharted parts of the Cheshire-Merseyside borderlands, and the dawning realisation I have to go back there tomorrow.

So Saturday afternoon we arrive, me and Chris in my car with the gear and the rest of them off the train, at the Barfly about 5pm. And find it under siege from colourfully-haired and worryingly-pierced teenagers. It seems Enter Shikari have just performed a matinee gig there; what the kids don't know, but we do, is that Enter Shikari made a quick break for their tour bus and are currently sitting behind darkened windows probably trying to work out if it's safe to pop out for fresh air without being mobbed. Eventually we get the gear upstairs and, as none of the other bands have turned up yet, have a rather fuller soundcheck than you usually get at these things. More worryingly, the promoter hasn't shown up yet either. Nor any of the venue staff. The soundman is as in the dark as we are. And by now it's about quarter past six and they're due on in 45 minutes according to the venue listings sheet, although the festival programme says 8pm. Thanks for that.

We head off for a milkshake, as Seel Street and the surrounding side roads where most of the venues are situated fill up with so many Transit vans it's going to be like a strategy puzzle getting them all out. Back at the venue the promoter has appeared and tells us they're opening the doors at half seven and Air Cav are going on immediately, to which we politely respond that no we're fucking not because we'd like there to actually be some people there. Mark meanwhile heads off down the street to make sure there are some people there, and my hastily dashed off flyers thrust into the hands of a party of Spanish teenagers seem to do the trick...

It's actually a decent crowd now, with most of the other bands arrived, the Spanish lot, various local friends and family, a few interested walk-ups and a bloke who tells me he picked up a flyer at at Maps last night. And they get the most energetic Air Cav set since Groningen, the sound is fantastic, there are people dancing and lots of applause. In retrospect, probably better than a half seven slot in an empty art gallery. The next band on do pretty average guitar pop. Right, can I go home now?

A footnote: after going for food, we head back to pick up the gear and hear something that is very much not an average guitar pop band...

This is Barbieshop, and if you're thinking "does the world need another Pipettes" then think again because no, it doesn't, but it may well need another remarkable close-harmony trio. In effect what they're doing is not dissimilar to The Puppini Sisters, whom I later note are in top spot on their Myspace friends: Andrews Sisters style swinging a capella jazz, covering songs from the original era right up to the more comtemporary. It is a widely known fact amongst my friends that I consider "Close To Me" by the Cure one of the most horrible things ever committed to record, but in the hands of these ladies something remarkable happens - it sounds brilliant! Sadly they mostly seem to play private parties and the like, so if you're an open minded promoter why wants to add a touch of class and a breath of fresh air to a bill, you could do a lot worse.

In case anyone was wondering how the hell you stuff an entire band's equipment into a Ford Ka:

Tonight the M62 is, thankfully, where I expect it to be. And it's worth noting that mine and my friends' and acquaintances' experiences of Liverpool Sound City organisation may for all I know not be typical; Maps and Air Cav did get to play to decent crowds in the end, and no I wouldn't like to have to organise something of that scale myself. I think the event has simply rather overstretched itself, and given time the North West could indeed have a second annual weekend of music and music industry events to rival In The City, but it's a very long way from being there yet.

If it's Sunday it must be... Nottingham! Having only managed one date of 65daysofstatic's recent tour, and actually having bank holidays off this year, I was always considering Dot To Dot - then the addition of Maps to the bill sold it to me. In fact 65daysofstatic aside, there are large parts of today's bill that are indistinguishable from Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City and Stag & Dagger (running Thu-Fri-Sat in London, Leeds and Glasgow) as bands and labels scramble for slots which, although shorter and less well paid than standard gigs, can be valuable fan-base builders.

Nottingham is, unbelievably, baked in blazing sunshine. The wristband queue isn't too bad, although I do seem to be about ten years older than the next oldest people in it.
 
Like Great Escape, it was a British Sea Power headline slot at the inaugural event in 2006 that first brought us here, but unlike the Brighton event it hasn't expanded really, there are just eight venues involved and no fringe, international or unsigned showcases. Rumour has it it's not sold as well as usual - perhaps the wristband all-dayer market is starting to saturate much as the traditional field festival market did a couple of years back, although strangely its sister event yesterday in Bristol with the same line-up sold out in advance. And conveniently my afternoon will be spent between the two venues at Trent University. Last week in Brighton an early-doors set from The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart hit capacity as soon as the doors opened; here I stroll in five minutes before stage time (admittedly stage time is 3.30pm on the hottest day of the year so far, and moreover the last day of a Premiership season in which four teams are battling to stay out of two still undecided relegation slots) and whilst it's far from empty, nor is it heaving.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart sit roughly alongside Sad Day For Puppets and Asobi Seksu on the indie-pop fringe of the new shoegaze / dreampop / Sonic Cathedral set, with the dirty-pretty hummable tunefulness of Ride's early EPs or the pre-Britpop-horror Boo Radleys. Lovely tunes for a sunny day, anyway. Given that I also missed them in Manchester (they were here Friday having the aformentioned unique Chorlton Irish Club experience) I'm really pleased I've managed to see them at last.

My heart goes out to Hjaltalin. Scheduled upstairs at 4, I'm surprised to see Maps' equipment being loaded on. Maps are due on at 5, and I really hope they're not putting them on early. A bloke appears and tells us the band he can't pronounce isn't playing today. But a Maps sort of set-up takes a while, so I wander back outside where a hairy blond chap with a Scandinavian accent is explaining he had travel problems... The security woman radios inside, and I hear the voice on the other end say well they're already 15 minutes past stage time so no, they're not playing. She turns to Mr. Hjaltalin and says someone'll be down to have a word. Don't fancy their chances, but you never know. They don't put Maps on early though, to their credit. I've had quite enough of that for one weekend. I try and imagine the conversation now probably taking place involving some hapless tour manager, with the sobering thought that this could, at some point in the future, be me...

This is the sixth gig for Maps 2009, the third for me, and it absolutely blows Brighton and Liverpool out of the water. It's loud, loud as it should be, with the processed beats reverberating the floor and the soul. On the third time of hearing I am in love with the new darker take on "It Will Find You" - and as one of my favourite singles of the decade in its original form, proves that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" should never be applied to musical visionaries. August is finding his feet now as right-hand man, filling the spaces between tracks with glorious bursts of pure machine sound, and James now looks like he is having the time of his life, punching the air and clapping to vibe up the crowd and it's working; like Liverpool's crowd there was a lot of standing about at first, but now there are people dancing. A percussion-heavy rendering of "Back And Forth" reminiscent in parts of Paul Oakenfold's electro-heavy pillaging of Happy Mondays' "WFL" back in the day (the finest thing they ever did) segues gradually into "Let Go Of The Fear" in a wash of pure musical serotonin before the jewel in this rich crown that is "Love Will Come", all three of them roboticaly intoning the title like some mantra as the sonic sparks fly. It's been nothing short of a privilege to watch the development of Maps 2009 at this early stage, and I can only begin to imagine just how incredible they will be when fully up to speed.

Outside, August asks me for a light, and I resist the temptation to scare the shit out of him by trying to convey how excited I am about the new Maps live line-up and his particular contributions to it. Half an hour later in the beer garden I do anyway. I drift back in briefly and catch a bit of the Swedish Dag för Dag but they don't really register. It's not their fault. Playing immediately after one of my favourite bands is rarely going to do much for me; playing between two of them and you don't really have a hope - well, not usually, but life's full of surprises. Decide I'd better go back downstairs and secure myself entry for 65daysofstatic; there's still no queue, and I find myself watching the recently reformed My Vitriol - who sound brilliant; visceral high voltage post-punk indie at its best with echoes of both The Chameleons and My Bloody Valentine, amongst others. Why did this band pretty much pass me by when they were originally about? I guess I wasn't paying much attention to new emerging guitar bands in 1999/2000.

Amazingly, the room all but clears afterwards, and it's still only half full when the imposing tones of "In The Year 2525", ripped up and looped into 65daysofstatic's intro music, filters through the speakers. Tonight's set seems to have even more new material than the recent Manchester gig, and it's all pretty exciting stuff; there's a lot more heavy electronics going on now, thrusting drum'n'bass rhythms flickering in the melee.

There's room for some old favourites as well: early on, "Retreat! Retreat!" is effectively their signature tune and whilst I have nothing against the more lively teenage contingent of their usual crowd it is quite nice to be able to feel its full force straight from the speakers without being moshed to death by people who could conceivably have parents my age, and later the beautifully bleak "Radio Protector" is like the cool breeze of evening, before splintering off into a wild techno-prog coda. Afterwards I write just one sentence on the notepad I'm still carrying from last week: "Maps is the rave in my head, 65 is the jumbo jet in your face".

I have missed the last train home by about ten minutes. I didn't expect to be on it, I've got somewhere to stay sorted, but I really wish the train had been later or 65daysofstatic earlier. As it is, I suppose I should go and check out some more bands. Down in the city centre, the little stretch of pedestrianised road between Stealth and the Rescue Rooms has a security fence at the main road (but still no queue); once inside there's a little festival within a festival going on, with the various rooms of the two venues hosting different gigs, the "DJ stage", a barbecue and plenty of outdoor drinking and chilling space, and I end up spending the rest of the evening here. The legendarily oppressive Rescue Rooms heat takes a few seconds to hit you as you walk inside. I remember that time after a British Sea Power gig in 2003 being forced to buy a T-shirt I didn't really want, just to have something to drive home in that wasn't sopping wet. A truly horrible venue, it's full of pillars and random bits of railing which serve to make its already rather poor visibility even worse, there was another BSP gig in late 2004 where part of the metal barrier appeared to be accidentally electrified. But amazingly the heat isn't so bad down by the stage. I look up, and - good grief! - they've only gone and installed air conditioning!

I catch the second half of Titus Andronicus, who are from New Jersey and boast one massive beard and one song that sounds like "White Riot". I realise I haven't eaten all day, but it seems I'm in the right place: PieMinister having a veggie option and a shop inside Rescue Rooms is good, trying to eat said pie with a plastic fork is not so good. The Joy Formidable are on next and loads of my friends (well, three or four maybe) have been raving about them of late. They're decent enough, although singer Ritzy is a bit squeaky and the sound muddier than a fisherman's boots. Maybe this was not the day to really appreciate a guitar-bass-drums trio anyway; but I'll give them another go when they come to Ruby Lounge next week (Friday 5th June) where I might actually be able to hear them properly.

Fight Like Apes are well known for their incendiary live shows, but they seem a little muted tonight. By their standards, that is. There's still the regulation garden furniture flight between wild-haired singer Maykay and beardy weirdo keyboard player Pockets, and they still have about six times more energy than your average indie band. Best-known single "Jake Summers" starts a crowd moshpit, only it's a very indie moshpit, all bouncy insread of slammy. Unfortunately most of Maykay's famously cutting lyrics are lost in the sound-soup, and most of the synths fare little better; towards the end of the set she notes, with an exhausted sweep of her rapidly wilting hair, the "extreme heat" - mate, you should have been in here before they got that aircon!

This is Fight Like Apes' bassist, included here largely because I was quite surprised to find such an impressive picture amongst the usual blurry nonsense...

Given the sound quality I've heard so far I'm certainly not stopping for Little Boots. Last time I saw her live she was Victoria from Dead Disco and whilst I have a vague interest in seeing her uber-hyped solo incarnation this is not the time and place - and if I can wriggle out quickly and there's no queue next door at Stealth, Crystal Antlers are about to start...

I've some sort of album sampler CD of theirs somewhere that Ciaran at Wotgodforgot gave me to promote a gig I didn't end up going to. Jon MM went instead and wasn't impressed, writing that "there’s just an overkill of swirling organ for me. It all ends up sounding at times, like a kaftan clad version of the MC5 flirting with the 'Mac and the Eagles on acid, which on an ordinary day might not be such a bad thing." I remember liking the CD though but Jon would appear to be correct - or maybe I've reached saturation point. But they wouldn't be the first of the new wave of American space-rockers to be great on record but a bit on the crap side live. Time to call it a night then - well, it's a perfectly respectable 12.30am and I have been watching bands since half three in the afternoon.

I wonder if Hjaltalín ever did get to play? I'm looking at their Myspace page writing this and they do a fascinatingly arranged mixture of Arcade Fire, orchestral post-rock and soul, and had come all the way from Reykjavík - the name's definitely on my list if they ever come over again. And with that, I'm off on my holidays - it's Primavera time again! Not promising any level of write-up, but you know me, I probably will.

+ + + + +

http://www.myspace.com/snailhouse
http://www.myspace.com/wintersleep
http://www.myspace.com/serpentinepadmusic
http://www.myspace.com/aircavmusic
http://www.myspace.com/saddayforpuppets
http://www.myspace.com/kyteband
http://www.myspace.com/mapsmusic
http://www.myspace.com/barbieshop
http://www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart
http://www.myspace.com/dagfordag
http://www.myspace.com/65propaganda
http://www.myspace.com/titusandronicus
http://www.myspace.com/thejoyformidable
http://www.myspace.com/fightlikeapesmusic
http://www.myspace.com/crystalantlers

SATURDAY

Ooh, the sun's shining! Time for the traditional Saturday afternoon trip to Japan, then. Always a highlight of Great Escape, It Came From Japan has moved this year from the Albert (today hosting an Irish showcase, and judging by the general overheard buzz about headliners Fight Light Apes in every third stranger's conversation it's going to have to have been extended tenfold) to a small function room in the Queens Hotel. Which looks like any other small function room in any hotel ever, apart from the fact that it's 1pm and a wobbly-looking speaker is pounding out 80s kitschpop classic "Japanese Boy" by Aneka (who was actually Scottish, incidentally) on a loop. By the fourth time it's just getting surreal, so whoever's in charge flips to "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" by Japan the band, from the same era. Meanwhile, one of Remain On likes his culture very British...

And using the Manic Street Preachers' "Motown Junk" as walk-on does imply a certain confidence. Or obsession, I'm not sure. Look at the clothes...

And, yep, the first song does sound pretty Manics. The second one sounds like Fear of Music's "Skin And Bones" - which was of course the best Manics song the Manics never wrote. By half way through they've diversified as far as sounding like The Only Ones (as in, not that far at all) and the rather sweet mini-Nicky Wire on bass is down to three strings, not that he seems to care much. Quite a noisy little wake-up call, and we'll forgive them the lack of a great deal of originality because they're so much fun.

Natccu (pronounced "na-chew") has a dirty, grungey guitar sound and a voice that wanders from the deep and sultry to squeaky hysteria, often within one line. She also has some blokes backing her who make a decent stab at the more interesting end of 90s American alt-rock, but this is her show. At which point the largely male crowd are faced with a massive great big dilemma - pretty girl rocking out versus free beer? I'm always kind of surprised ICFJ isn't more packed, given that they effectively pay you to watch bands - that said, it doesn't appear to have made it into the programme this year, leaving it the preserve of regulars and those in the know. This might be deliberate. The free sushi turns up next; being vegetarian the options are a bit limited but I nevertheless enjoy three small lumps of unknown green crunchy vegetable wrapped in rick and seaweed that'd have cost me about four quid in some poncey restaurant. Alfie goes for the mystery-fish-on-a-stick. And then - given that veggie sushi is never goung to be that popular with people wanting the "real thing" and there's loads left - I have about ten more. By which time the second bucket of free beer's come out. Bonus! Um, sorry Natccu.

Attempts to fuse techno and rock (as in Rawk!, as opposed to pop or indie) have led to some highly dubious music over the years, much of it courtesy of Belgians, but Skunkrice actually make a decent pass at it by splicing cool-spec alt-rock with some hard beats from a competent DJ and a drummer on a full electronic kit. It ranges from downbeat Nirvana-with-bleeps to full-on electro-metal without ever sounding like Kasabian or indeed Belgians, although they drag out what should have been a sharp shock "what just happened?" set to, well, I don't know how long as I'm getting texts from the pier (I mean from my friends who are in Horatio's, not, like, the pier itself) saying it's getting full.

Today Horatio's former colony of choice is New Zealand; Die Die Die apparently pulled a big crowd and it's queued half way back to the helter-skelter by the time I get there minutes before The Veils' set. But, you know, I doubt they've changed that much to look at in the 21 hours since I last saw them and besides, the sun'spretty warm at this point - so me and a couple of Welsh girls who were in front of me give up on the queue and sit down on the warm pier-slats just beyond the beer-garden perimeter and have a smoke and listen to the band knowing we can see as much of them as we could have done from anywhere near the back of the rammed pub. It's like listening to a band from outside the tent at a festival or something.

Digital is yet another of those Kings Road Arches venues and a pretty small one, which is why I'm doing a stakeout at ten to seven. Primed with a text message ready to go if there's a sudden rush. There isn't, and hardly surprising - with all the great bands all of us have seen this weekend, plus the great many more we've been forced to miss, the support bill here is best variable, at worst atrocious. Although maybe not the worst of the night - down at Concorde 2 early to guarantee entry for I Like Trains (with my apologies) Deb is suffering Turbowolf. Now Deb had more of a metal phase than most of us in our youth, but she's not impresseed with this racket. And we're not impressed with Alan Pownall - the programme says he's "described, amongst other things, as a British Jack Johnson". Is one of those "other things" by any chance "really fucking tedious"? I wonder. Next up, Telepathe are from Brooklyn, have the regulation David Sitek connection and describe themselves simply as "The Future". Right, so the future isn't amphibious space-cars and designer babies, it's two fashion-mag cool young ladies struggling to hold a tune while their laptop does most of the work. Next!

Or not. Debating earlier in the week the possibilities of getting into Digital without being there from the start, someone commented "I'd want to get a good look at the sort of person who would leave a venue just after Ben Kweller finished and before BSP started." Well mate, I've met them. A few of us have decided to get down the front while there's still some space, which means watching the main support at close range, and get chatting to a friendly couple who plan to do just that, being Ben Kweller fans. We chat about music; I reel off a list of my other favourite bands and they nod politely, although whether they are actually aware of the existence of The Longcut and 65daysofstatic is unclear. What is clear is their enthusiasm for Kweller, and with nothing else to go on I approach the experience with an open mind.

For about four seconds. Whilst not a hard and fast rule, I think I can safely say that music which I will like does not generally emanate from people dressed like that. Not surprisingly, it's commercial upbeat country, Americana with pop replacing the grit, and various other things the CIA could probably use to torture me should I ever be detained on suspicion of terrorism. My long-held hatred of "country music" has in recent years been tempered by variously the influence of a good friend with a brilliant alt-country CD collection, British Sea Power leading me to Brakes leading me to Johnny Cash, or shoegaze to Mojave 3 to Neil Halstead - but this is not that. I believe I let slip the phrase "probable God-botherer" and hope the nice couple don't hear me, but they're far too happy clapping and singing along, and do indeed depart - possibly for a nice mug of cocoa - just before one of the best live bands in the world takes to the stage in front of them. There's nowt so queer as folk, as they say.

With just 45 minutes' set there's little time for experimentation from British Sea Power tonight, just bang them out - and you can't go wrong with a set that kicks off with "Scottish Wildlife Experience" into "Waving Flags", although (going against common opinion amongst the regulars here I know) I could quite happily live my life without hearing "Larsen B" again. Still, it's grown a pretty excellent Spacemen 3 style coda, so I suppose I'll let them off. Yan seems in much better spirits tonight, and after last night's sober black top he's back to dressing like an accident in a school PE changing room...

And we get the ridiculous Krautjam that is "Pelican" which never fails to make me smile, both for its life-affirming one-chord churn and Hamilton's quite unique concept of what makes a good song lyric. The man is indeed a genius. Most people rate it as the better of the two performances; I personally don't, although maybe that's because a glorious "Lights Out For Darker Skies" aside there are none of my top-level favourites in the set - and much as I found the near-two-hour sets of the last full UK tour a little on the long side this is far too short; British Sea Power seem to work best for me over 70 minutes give or take ten either way. A top quality festival set, though.

It's only about half past ten and surely everwhere's going to be full by now, what are we going to do next? Someone suggests The Official Secrets Act at the Hope, but when you watched the best indie guitar band in the world about half an hour ago, all others look a bit shit in comparison, and I'm quite pleased to see a queue outside. We could head back to the Sallis Benney though, and try and get in for Thomas Truax? Yeah, why not, and if we can't we'll just go for a pint, I don't think any of us would consider that we hadn't had our money's worth this weekend. Round the corner - no queue. Inside, there are about 40 people scattered around whilst The DJ Bootsie Quartet play some sort of bizarre electro-jazz-prog with impenetrable slow-rapped vocals that flashes me straight back to the "Electro Stage" at last year's OFF Festival in Myslowice, Poland, except this time we're not in a fire engine museum. Right now it wouldn't surprise me if we did find ourselves in one - reality was quite a long time ago. Later research reveals that Bootsie is actually from Budapest, which definitely doesn't surprise me.

Thomas Truax - genius or twat? It's a question I find myself asking every time I see him, and I suspect the answer is both and he knows it. I marvel at his home-made instruments as much from an engineering as a musical point of view. He has recently released an album of songs from David Lynch films, which seems about right; apparently that's what he's playing tonight, although not in any immediately recognisable sense. And yes, he always goes off-mic at some point for a little wander round the venue and tonight is no exception; he's off out of one back door and in through the other, still singing, and suddenly it feels like some sort of private theatrical art performance as he spins on his heels and we all circle him, clapping the beat.

Eventually he gets back onstage, but he's not the only one. There's a rather stressed looking roadie type. The curfew has passed, the bar's long since shut; he plugs his guitar back in and after three notes a bigger plug somewhere's been pulled; he tries to carry on but the bouncers have entered the room and we're being herded towards the doors. One tall man with a - well, the words I have ritten in my notebook at this point are "mentalist beard", turns on his heel as he reaches the door and faces the rest of us as if to make a state address - is he going to lead us into some anti-curfew revolution? Nope... "THIS IS THE GREAT ESCAPE? WELL ESCAPE FROM THIS! ESCAPE BRIGHTON! BRIGHTON IS SHIT! SELF-CELEBRATORY... INDIE... CRAP!!!" What's he expecting, a standing ovation? He gets four people pointing and laughing at him while the rest either ignore him completely or pretend to. Well, it's hardly "I Have A Dream", is it?

Outside a woman on a bike shouts "Get out the way I'm drunk" as she hurtles towards us. Is there any live music left to see? I get out the now rather battered spreadsheet Alfie had so usefully prepared and distributed. Of the five or six options available, I seem to have drawn a circle around the word "Grasscut" - I have no memory of doing this, or why I might have done. But it's only round the corner, It'll do. So the last handful of bedraggled survivors drift off the main road, down back streets towards a distant red light like junkies who just can't help themselves. The venue is called The Basement, its tiny bar looking more like someone's kitchen. I wander through a curtained door to find a beautiful miniature theatre in which one man is playing an electric cello and the other a laptop to create a multi-faceted cinematic clash between classical music and electronica, with a hint of trip-hop's more unsettling side. People sit around on scatter-cushions or the steps and floor, their faces rapt with attention and lit red from the low lighting; it feels peaceful, like this was always going to be our journey's end. So this is Grasscut? Oh yes, we have come to the right place.

I head briefly back to the bar to help Riot with the large round he's buying and he beckons me close, and whispers."You remember I said that on the train down there was only one other person in his whole carriage and he looked like Jack the Ripper?" I do indeed. Something about it being a good omen for the weekend. "He's just poured me that pint." The ruggedly handsome young man in immaculate Victorian clothing - vintage has always been quite popular amongst the Brighton arty set - hands over our drinks, and we head back inside smiling.

Nellie offers me a lift back to my B&B, and and as we turn onto Edward Street my thoughts come in the following order: (1) "Hmm, the takeaways are open quite late round here" (2) "Which town - and indeed country - am I in?". It takes me a second to work it out.

In the morning Brighton station is flooded, the rain must have come back in the night - there were sporadic showers all weekend, but not one of them seemed to get me. I stop for a cigarette in my usual spot outside Euston station, then back through the invisible arch, homeward bound.

THE GREAT ESCAPE HONOURS LIST........

DRUMMER WHO LOOKS MOST LIKE A SERIAL KILLER AWARD

Yes, him in the middle, drummer with My Latest Novel. Don't know his name, couldn't get a good picture of him onstage, but here's one I found on the internet - a nocturnal frequenter of lorry-parks if ever there was one. We hope long-term holder of this position, I Like Trains' Simon "Peter Sutcliffe" Fogal, is not too disappointed.

THE "WE LIKE YOUR THINKING" AWARD

Horatio's, Friday, 4pm. Alfie, Riot and I are finshing drinks before heading back to Arc when a sensibly-dressed and well-spoken 30-ish woman approaches, indicating silently that she'd like to use our table to find something in her bag. Her first words are "I've laminated my map!" exclaimed with the sort of pride that, to look at her, you'd have maybe expected if she was talking about a new kitchen. "So when I get really drunk later it doesn't matter if I spill beer on it!" Now if the BSP away crew did "civilian" badges - sort of like Blue Peter badges, you know, only for demonstrating superior skill and/or creativity in our general areas of activity - this remarkable feat of calm and sensible preparation for a night of near-certain mentalism would definitely have earned one.

THE "I CAN'T BE TOO OLD FOR MY RIDICULOUS HAIR IF HE'S STILL DOING THAT WITH HIS" AWARD

Simon Price, esteemed music journalist and regular at BSP's Southern gigs and occasional contributor to the band's forum. The horns are a little smaller these days, but we salute you Sir. His take on Friday? "The song that really 'got' me this time (this varies from gig to gig) was "Canvey Island"... especially in light of the summer storms we endured on the way to the show. There were a lot of braying twats in the venue who didn't seem interested in the band (an inevitable hazard with a wristband event like The Great Escape, I suppose), but they didn't succeed in ruining it for me." Nor for us, mate, but I know what you mean.

THE COMEDY INSTRUMENT OF THE WEEKEND AWARD

I mean really, what the fuck is that? (Thomas Truax, of course).

EPILOGUE

I have been home about, what, three hours? Quiet Sunday night before work tomorrow? Well I would have done, only I haven't seen quite enough insane Japanese people performing music this weekend, and Night & Day has got a whole load of them lined up... ah, go on then. One for the road.

"I play fucking sexy Japanese dance music, I hope you enjoy it!!" He does, as well. Technicolour techno stuffed full of lovely little keyboard riffs and helium-sounding J-Pop samples, whilst bouncing about in a faintly silly hat. He is De De Mouse and this is music to make you smile.

It's the complete antithesis of the dour minimalism that's swept across European techno in recent years; it's the sound of the party that's going on in his head and we are all invited. "I want to see you dancing!! Do you like disco?!" Towards the end he introduces some "strange dance music" and he's not wrong there either, as a downbeat shuffle underpins vaguely loungey piano, samples of what sounds like childrens' songs and psychedelic synth strokes - which would actually be quite hard to dance to, however much you like disco. Then he works the beats up into such a frenzy it looks like he might spontaneously combust any second...

Whatever it is he's had for tea, it seems Riddim Saunter have had a double helping. Ostensibly a ska band, their take on it involves sunny sparkles of calypso complete with cowbells and, er, flute (!) shot through with the pace and white heat energy of punk. No, no ska-punk as in The Beat or indeed as in 90s Americans in crap shorts - nope, proper incendiary punk. At least three of them, at different points in the set, vault the speakers to have a wild thrash around in the actually quite small space at the front. Yep, it's a pretty full Night & Day considering it's a Sunday night and few here will have actually heard these bands before. Maybe it was the free entry and promise of free beer and sushi - if that does actually happen I miss it completely, but figure most other people probably do too, and they're still here and staying to watch bands. Not that you can afford to take your eyes off Riddim Saunter for long as they bounce off the walls and each other; their late-set curveball is a Big Swing Number, delivered with the same hotwired joy as the rest of it.

This evening is part of the "100% Genki" tour introducing contemporary Japanese acts to UK audiences, backed by the music charity Strummerville, which aims to create new musical opportunities for aspiring musicians. And in this case, introduce something pretty unforgettable to an unsuspecting crowd - if the last two acts were a bit crazy, Tucker is full-on three sheets to the wind. His "band" is two turntables, a keyboard, bass, guitar, theremin and a multi-use percussion item crafted out of a large vegetable-oil drum - and he plays the lot. Sometimes one at a time, spiralling between them at such speed he manages to draw blood from his own head. Or maybe that was when he did a headstand on the keyboard. The keyboard that he had just covered in lighter fluid and ignited.

Other times he loops it up, flicking pedals with any or all of his limbs as he races past boiling up a super-high-octane flavour of acid-jazz-hip-hop in which a few bars of anything from The Funeral March to the Seame Street theme to "Tequila" might make a fleeting incursion. Imagine a music shop being torn apart by a small tornado and you're maybe half way there. Only once every brain in the place has been pummelled into a more interesting shape does he hold up the back of his bass on which he's written - in sticky tape - "Applause!". The compere tells us he's just come from Brighton Great Escape where he was opening for "two English acts" whose audience "didn't know what to make of him" - a quick check of the listings reveals one of these was the rather grown-up Mr. Hudson; he must have been bricking it about having to follow that.

Check out this bit of video courtesy of Paul Green (cheers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMjbFpMmVQw

Tonight however it's 80kidz who have that particular unenviable task. The most commercial act on the bill tonight they've supported Justice and Hot Chip back home, and dish out a similarly heavy-beat onslaught of danceable electro, with the party spirit of CSS and a load of old-skool disco references thrown in for good measure. They do it very well indeed, and there's nothing here which would sound out of place soundtracking "Skins" or remixed into the latest Kitsune collection. And that's an important point - Japanese music has generally (notable exceptions such as Peel aside) been treated as novelty fodder here in the UK - a problem not exactly alleviated by various crap sugary dayglo indie-punk bands comprising grown women dressed like six-year-olds that I've seen over the years. Here, it isn't - even Tucker's antics have to be viewed in context with his extraordinary talent - it's just music. From another continent that's not America, It's almost a shame that it takes specially themed nights like this for it to be heard at all by British music fans, but far, far better than not hearing it at all.

Outside a man approaches me with a video camera, asks me what I thought of it. It vaguely crosses my music-stuffed mind that I am probably going to turn up on Japanese TV sometime talking sleep-deprived nonsense about "techno with punk spirit" and never know about it. That might concern me when I come down from this amazing weekend. I haven't, yet. Many thanks and much love to all those who made it what it was, from Alfie's spreadsheets to Nellie's much appreciated lift, and everyone else in between.

This weekend sees Liverpool Sound City and Nottingham Dot to Dot - time to do it all again? Yeah. I might need a week off to recover - but hey, I've got one... this time next week I will be in Barcelona, counting down to Primavera Festival. May is officially the new October - only with summer instead of winter afterwards. How good is that?

MUSICAL CAST

http://www.myspace.com/worriedaboutsatan
http://www.myspace.com/kontakteuk
http://www.myspace.com/thefmflash

http://www.myspace.com/hereldeduke
http://www.myspace.com/findlovenow (Asaf Avidan and the Mojos)
http://www.myspace.com/themoinonplus
http://www.myspace.com/mylatestnovel
http://www.myspace.com/fanfarlo
http://www.myspace.com/mapsmusic
http://www.myspace.com/grammatics
http://www.myspace.com/scum1968
http://www.myspace.com/wehaveband
http://www.myspace.com/datarock

http://www.myspace.com/indigochildrenmusic
http://www.myspace.com/swarathmamusic
http://www.myspace.com/heyrosetta
http://www.myspace.com/hellomedusa
http://www.myspace.com/theveils
http://www.myspace.com/micayomusic
http://www.myspace.com/britishseapower
http://www.myspace.com/neilhalsteadofficial

http://www.myspace.com/icfj
http://www.myspace.com/remainon
http://www.myspace.com/natccu
http://www.skunkrice.jp/

http://www.myspace.com/alanpownall
http://www.myspace.com/telepathe
http://www.myspace.com/benkweller
http://www.myspace.com/djbootsie
http://www.myspace.com/thomastruax
http://www.myspace.com/grasscutmusic

http://www.myspace.com/80kidz
http://www.myspace.com/tuckerelectone
http://www.myspace.com/riddimsaunter
http://www.myspace.com/dedemouse

Euston Station, about half seven on some weeknight or other - the portal. It's a shame they destroyed the Arch, which would have made a great physical metaphor for what happens here, what's happened here so many times over so many years; this is where one world ends and another begins. Maybe it's still there, in some other dimension. The trains from Manchester run every 20 minutes now and take a little over two hours - the 17.15, AKA (to me) the Live Music Express, is still the important one. Out of work at 4.30, fight the Ancoats roadworks, park up, don't even go inside; some soggy snack (today a "panini" I would have been ashamed to serve to anyone), Stockport, Stoke, Milton Keynes Central, and the weekend has begun. And this time it's only Wednesday!

Four hours after switching off the works computer (after a last ten minutes of the day spent printing out spreadsheets supplied by an accountant in Reading which have no more to do with my job than his - cheers Alfie!) in Chadderton, North Manchester I am watching instrumental post-rock in the Buffalo Bar, Highbury, North London. Recently some of the old Chameleons crew have been digging out pictures of the reunion tours in 2001 and 2002 and reminding me that it's not so long ago that trains to London went once an hour and took at least three to get there: a gig in London meant an afternoon off, it certainly wasn't something you just did because it was there...

The FM Flash are young, a bit nervous looking, the sort of band that hasn't yet stepped up to playing outside their home turf; like the excellent Johnny Horizontal in Caernarfon a few weeks back smaller-scale gigs are a chance to see bands in development and secret gems; other cities' equivalents to the potential and promise found in Dry or Retro. This lot have a nice line in lush melodic instrumentals - a basic sound echoing I Like Trains minus the vocals or Spokes minus the violin; here the "lead" is a prog-flavoured guitar which reminds one older, grey-haired observer (as he later tells them) of "music from when I was young". "As in early 70s Pink Floyd?" I as him - spot on.

Kontakte have a more shoegazey influence going on, as well as a drum machine which gives them a slightly different edge to the regular instrumental-post-rock blueprint. They also - as my mate points out and I can't really disagree - have possibly the least stage presence of any band, ever. Thing is I rather like this. All that thrusing from the waist and throwing guitars around is getting a bit cliched, after all. The precise, processed rhythms coupled with sawthes of fuzz and cliff-edge chord sequences are absorbing enough as they are.

"This is the most niche night ever" jokes my mate, as the DJ sticks on another record that sounds exactly like the last as well as not a million miles from the sound of both bands so far. It is in fact a club night called GooNite which deals in all things psychedelic, experimental and shoegaze (Daniel Land And The Modern Painters have done it a couple of times) - this is clearly their post-rock night and a look around the room reveals all the post-rock night cliches. There will always be a couple of blokes who look like Simon and Alistair from I Like Trains. There will be several lone males, often with beards (variable sub-genres thereof, from British Antarctic Survey to Pitchfork Reader Scratchable) and often carrying miniature rucksacks. Not many girls, but about half this number will be of Oriental origin. There'll be at least one person scribbling in a notebook. Tonight I tick off the full set.
 

And here it's me with the notebook; the other night I found a pile of my review pads from 2004 onwards and loved what I found. Some reviews almost written in full; others a selection of keywords and phrases with the crossings-out often as telling as what survived; a page where a band wrote their entire setlist down for me; train times and hotel addresses and people's mobile numbers - and a sketched map of how to get somewhere whose only clue is the a label indicating a particular junction of the M6, which turns out to be my good friend Deb's farmhouse up near Kendal where we stayed once after a British Sea Power gig in Grasmere. Suddenly I found myself remembering the tense drive back through the freezing February night with three passengers and my fuel gauge well into the red, a great many miles for any 24 hour garage, dreading every upward hill, all but freewheeling on the descents, and the massive relief as we finally made it, settling down by the fireside with a bottle of vodka and a packet of Uncle Joe's Mint Balls. All this from a half page sketch. The notes stop abruptly at the end of 2007 with the arrival of Gadgetphone; it seemed like the best thing ever at the time, but something was lost - and I can still write faster than I'll ever be able to type with that prodder thing, which for weekends like this is pretty useful. So somewhere on Euston station, between the train and the magic weekend portal, I bought a hardback A6 notebook, and most of what you'll be reading here started life there.

Back to Highbury May 2009, anyway. Worried About Satan's Roadhouse gig in April (with Spokes) was one of the greatest live sets I've seen this year; that's half the reason I'm here really. Tonight, lit by the venue's string of blue fairy lights instead of frightening Eastern European films, they're somewhat less intense but still bloody good. With one of the duo pulling eerie, atonal sounds from a guitar with a violin bow and the other processing twitchy electrobeats, alien-sounding samples and snatches of white noise from a laptop and control panel it's almost a clash of genres, but one which works beautifully. It's late, and there are maybe 12 people left watching them, but as one of the more interesting bands on the "experimental" circuit I am gald I am one of them. So why am I here at a low-key post-rock night in Highbury on a Wednesday? Well, I was just passing through.

I'm on the way to Brighton, The Great Escape, three days in a world of music superimposed on my second favourite city in the UK which will be temporarily populated by a load of my friends. London just happened to be on the way. I missed the festival in 2008 - not enough money or days off to justify a weekender without any of my top-level bands on the bill. 2007 remains one of the best weekends of live music I have ever experienced: "three from the top" in the form of I Like Trains, Maps and British Sea Power (as well as a 65daysofstatic gig in London on the way home) - all three are up again this year, although ILT may well lose out to the second of two BSP shows. Whoever booked that clash really wasn't paying attention. (This isn't just about me; if the two bands shared a small following prior to the five dates they played together in late 2006 then after that the crossover grew rapidly). Especially as British Sea Power are promising that all-important "New Material". Exciting? Yes - but I've hardly given it a second thought this week, cos they're not the only ones...

Flash back two years, it's the week before Great Escape 2007 and there's been one artist that's not left my stereo all week: Maps' stunning single "It Will Find You" has just been unleashed and I already know it's going to be my Single Of The Year; I've not even heard the album "We Can Create" which is out that very week because Amazon have been a bit useless but I half know that that, too, will sweep allcomers aside. Sadly the band's set at the festival is cut short due to poor organisation at their - and British Sea Power's - particular venue, but it's a sublime 25 minutes that even an on-form BSP (who are also forced to prune their set list) will struggle to match; they do, but only just. It remains the only time I have had the privilege of seeing my rather contrasting favourite musicians of the 21st century on the same bill; no such luck this year, and given some of the horrors (no, not The Horrors as in the band, that would have been brilliant!) we'll sit through waiting for BSP to play over the next couple of days this is a real shame. May 2009 (it's OK, I think that's the last time-jump now, you can let go of the handrails) and again I have been bouncing off the walls all week to a potential Single Of The Year, Maps' "Let Go Of The Fear", a massive pulsating techno space monster that grabs you in its tentacles and flashes coloured strobes through your frontal lobes. Their first night slot will be James Chapman's first UK gig with his new live collaborators, the mysteriously named August and Sefa, and the fact that I have absolutely no idea what to expect just makes it all the more exciting.

THURSDAY

Half ten in the morning at St Pancras station I run into Mark. One of the North Shields Contingent, the extreme drinking wing of the BSP away crew, the can of Strongbow he sups on the train down is not his first of the day. As the train pulls into Preston Park, the last-but-one stop, the buzz hits me. I have never lived in Brighton but I've had so many good times here it somehow feels like I'm coming home.

We don't get off to the best start at actually seeing bands. Wristbanded up by midday and signed up to the text updates service (which by the end of the weekend will have us dearly wishing we hadn't, as the 67th successive bleep tells us some crappy NME band nobody over 19 gives a shit about are playing an exclusive street gig the other side of town in seven minutes' time) we do a quick reconnaissance mission on the line of venues under the King's Road Arches on the lower promenade before settling for a beer at Arc, the bar which will (largely as a result of this "here will do" decision) effectively become our crew's HQ and centre of operations for the weekend.

Hereleduke (no idea, although it makes them nice any easy to find on Google) is playing next door at a pub called The Fortune Of War but his indie funk rock isn't really enough to drag us out of the weak sunshine. Hereleduke's press says "Imagine The Beta Band produced by Mark Ronson" to which the only reasonable answer is "No thanks". The music coming from Arc's own upstairs venue sounds better, so we go and investigate.

Asaf Avidan & The Mojos are described as "the soul and passion of gypsy folk music, wailing, screeching and banging their way to a ramshackle travelling circus of a sound" so we're half expecting some sort of Gogol Bordello thing; it's not the last time over the weekend that the programme descriptions will be found to be somewhere between a bit off and "are we actually talking about the same band here?". It certainly doesn't prepare us for Asif's absolutely stunning voice. He does wail, a bit; he also soars, flies, swoops - it's actually pretty undescribable but so full of passion.The first couple of tunes showcase the softer side of the band, mostly his voice and a warm cello, before they rock out 70s blues style - albeit very well. By the time they've done a few more of the crew have turned up. Riot tells me that on the train down there was only one other person in his whole carriage "and he looked like Jack the Ripper"; only Riot could see this as a good omen for the weekend.

The Moi Non Plus are the sort of band I think of when people talk about going to ATP: basically they're a quite hairy duo, one on guitar and one on drums, Dutch, and probably quite big fans of Sonic Youth. And they make a right racket for two people, their basic instruments being supplemented by a collection of samples and loops that are no less abrasive. What's also worthy of note is that they are just the third band of the day at this venue and it is now so rammed we can barely see the duo. This is also quite a lot to do with the shape of the place - the promenade arches (not unlike the railway arches that house venues in Leeds and Manchester and probably a few other cities) are fairly limiting, especially for a split-level bar. My ears already starting to ring (bands like this always like their guitars trebly for maximum impact) so it's off to check into the B&B and get some chips before embarking on Mission #1.

I am something of a veteran of this type of festival these days, and I am also aware that they are getting more and more popular. The tough economic situation - and rising awareness that events like this even exist at all, and even the fact that the last two summers have pretty much pissed down non stop - is tempting people to people shun the idea of spending £120 for a weekend's camping  featuring a load of bands who won't be as good as usual because they're either in the open air or a tent, when for considerably less (this ticket was £35 rising to £45 closer to the time; the single-day Live At Leeds was £10 to £15) you can watch bands in actual venues. There is the element of chance, however. All venues are subject to capacity, and bills are so eclectic in some places it is impossible to gauge the popularity of the other bands on them, so it's a case of turn up early to guarantee entry - but not so early you look like a twat / stalker. That said, by Saturday both Deb and I will be spotted by ILT and BSP respectively staking out their venues... Tonight there are various options at least for the early evening - some head off to watch Pulled Apart By Horses, some fail to get anywhere near the door for The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, but with Maps and Grammatics sharing a bill Deb and I are off to the Honey Club.

It's another one of those arches, a few down from Arc; it has apparently been there for years, although our local mate has never been inside; we're not sure if the name of the place implies a dubious past (or even present). It's actually a really nice space, except for a couple of things: firstly the stage goes back about half a mile, meaning any band who wishes to actually communicate with their drummer might be advised to borrow some walkie-talkies; and secondly there is a step up, about eight inches high and two people deep, in front of the barrier. Basically, if anyone stands on it during the gig, those behind will see nothing. Very weird and very wrong. There's a third wrongness too, but we've not discovered that yet...

My Latest Novel have always been one of those bands I catch by accident - support slots, festivals and the like. The sort of band I quite enjoy at the time and then manage to forget about until next time. This is impressive though - they seem to have found their inner Sigur Ros and let it take flight, with lush violin and lovely building melodies. I think it's the name, and the Scottishness; I always half expect them to be a bit twee but there's actually a fair bit of power and substance here. Maybe I'll actually go and see them in their own right now anyway. I love it when that happens.

I don't love it when I go to the bar in a venue and a bottle of water (Deb doesn't drink; I'm just taking it easy tonight) costs TWO POUNDS EIGHTY. There's taking the piss and there's actual robbery... WRONG.

As Fanfarlo's equipment is loaded on we have a quick round of Guess The Genre Game. There's a xylophone, various bits of brass and percussion, keyboard... and no, we've already given up on the programme being much help. (Not least the fact that Maps are not even listed, and apparently Charlotte Hatherley is playing here later, which is Fundamentally Not True). As it is they turn out to be a bit folky, a bit Arcade Fire, but without the pomp - well, until they start over-milking some of the song endings with about three trumpets lined up. And we officially pity whatever poor sod's got to check all their stuff back into the van afterwards. For what it's worth, the xylophone saw about fifteen seconds of action in the half hour set. (Editor's note: it might have been a glockenspiel. Yes, I do know the difference, I just can't remember which it was.)

It's time. I can't remember the last time I was so nervous-excited about a gig. What if I just don't like it? Loading his gear on, James Chapman looks visibly scared. And there's no introduction, no real division between the last line-checks and... well, I'd know that sound anywhere, the sound of 2007, the strange but warmly familiar electro-scrape of "It Will Find You" - but radically reworked here into something slower, heavier, darker, deeper. To James's left, and taking up about half the stage with his colossal rig of electronics, is August Jakobsen, Danish dance DJ and producer. To his right and almost stuck behind the PA is Sefa, multi-instrumentalist and serial collaborator, here in charge of a slightly smaller keyboard. Maps v2009 is one seriously powerful electro-beast that could have most guitar bands for breakfast.

New tune "Papercuts" first surfaced on a Youtube video diary sometime last year; it wasn't that great then, but it is now; there's another new one that's rich, pulsating electronic pop, and "Let Go Of The Fear" is brilliant, with James attacking a small electronic percussion kit. "Back + Forth" , the most outwardly techno-flavoured track on that first album, was always a highlight of the live set and still is. Then the last two tracks are even better. "Love Will Come" was also previewed on Youtube in 08, and it sounded like something pretty special even at tne demo stage; it's now grown into some amazing great big sprawling electro trip that goes off in several directions; the last is an absolutely beautiful Spiritualized meets Ulrich Schnauss type thing, and frankly I could go home happy now.

Actually, quite a few people do depart at this point - largely, it seems, in the direction of The Maccabees who appear to be the big draw of the day, much as they were a fortnight ago at Live At Leeds. I saw them opening up the NME tour a couple of years ago and found them pretty average - have they just got good or just got a better PR team? I mean that current single's not bad, but... anyway, I'm not about to find out - and nor are most of those departing into the torrential rain towards a queue that apparently numbers about twice the venue capacity right now. More fool them; they could have stayed and watched Grammatics.

There's a reason I haven't got a photo of Grammatics: there are probably about 40 people left in the venue when they come on, about 25 of whom immediately clamber up onto the aforementioned unnecessary step thing. Luckily for us they sound pretty good without any real need to see them, nice as it would have been. I saw them a few times in 07-08 supporting Forward Russia or at general Leeds-ish things and always found them a bit incoherent, even if all the parts were there. They even state on their own Myspace page that they're "a stylistically diverse band and like to hop though most of the genres related to indie-rock. Maybe we are stylistically incoherent. Maybe we are self-indulgent." But it's been about a year since the last time I saw them, and it's all come together beautifully. The mathy, oh-so-Leeds spikes are perfectly blended with the swirls of guitar and cello and proggy interludes and I'm pleased to see they still finish the set with the brilliant atmospheric one (their titles are all a bit weird, maybe I should actually get round to buying their album just so I know what's what) whereby Owen Brinley stands high upfront (yes, we can in fact see him at last!) plaintively singing "everyone loves a breakdown" as the guitars sound as devastatingly sad as guitars can.

Oh, did I mention they're from Leeds? They do, you see, after about every second song. We spot someone else from Leeds too: after sporadic discussions Deb and I agree that yes, the man in charge of the sound desk almost certainly is Backseat Pete who sometimes does ILT's sound, before concluding that it's probably a sign that you go to far too many gigs when you start recognising technical crew outside their usual context.

Thankfully it's stopped raining for a bit as they're the last band on this bill and we are now going to have to go somewhere else. There's been a vague plan to reconvene for S.C.U.M. at The Hope, although we're aware that they are quite popular with the London trendy set and about to go off supporting The Horrors on tour so we're not sure if we'll all get in. We do, only for it to suddenly fill up five minutes later. Result - apart from the oppressive heat in there. Suddenly that bottle of water that's still in my bag feels like the best £2.80 I ever spent.

Oh good, another young band in thrall to 1979. In their case, a Joy Division sense of bleakness coupled with the bubbling drones of a Suicide-esque Moog. Not a million miles from Magazine, at times (one track steals half a riff from "Shot By Both Sides") or the recently reformed genuine lost Factory act Red Turns To (see last week's blog) and I really don't want to like them - they're not doing anything I haven't heard before and their Myspace page oozes "pretentious", but they sound great and that's what counts. Singer Tom Scum (oh, please) also does a nice line in swinging from the lighting rig; I make a mental note to pay them more attention at the Manchester Horrors gig (Ruby Lounge, 1st June).

From there it's a windblown hike down the seafront to Concorde 2 (at least it's stopped raining by this point) where there are bands on well into the night, although exactly which bands is unclear. We're settled in the bar being rather not arsed about the upbeat poppy indie that's emanating from the venue, until I wander in to use the bog and find myself stopped in my tracks by a familiar tune. A very familiar tune. A tune that spent most of 2007 coming out of every radio in Britain in some single-handed attempt to rejuvenate the art of whistling - good grief, it's only Peter Bjorn And John. Special guests announced so late none of us knew they were playing, not that it would have made much difference to our plans, it's still pretty surreal to unexpectedly hear "Young Folks" live and in the flesh. The rest of their set passes us by somewhat. After which We Have Band do some scenesterish but pretty enjoyable electropop which would have been better in a small club - as it is Concorde 2's deranged acoustics swallow half the sound. And the problem is when you watched the best electronic musical artist in the world about three hours ago, all others look a bit shit in comparison.

Datarock finally come onstage at 2.24am, which is possibly the only time at which it is at all reasonable to be watching masked Norwegians in red hoods doing, well, anything really. The above picture might well be the most shit live band picture ever taken, but pretty much sums up how it looked from the point of view of our somewhat dwindled group of variously pissed survivors. I didn't even have a drink until we got to the Hope but I seem to have caught up. Dave's passed out on a bar stool. Riot is dancing. I decide to call it a night before either of these things happens to me.

FRIDAY

The mobile signal's been a bit dodgy all weekend, especially down by the Arches where it's pretty much non-existent, so I sadly miss the text from Paul The Portable Off Licence (see most of last summer's festival reports) who's supplied a liquid breakfast on the beach. That said, anyone who thinks drinking sherry at midday is in any way a good idea is clearly more of a mentalist than I am. And anyway, I am already at the far end of the pier, in a pub which looks like any town centre chain pub in Britain but is possibly the only one situated entirely over water - currently populated by about four early rising wristband wearers, three old men and a handful of very bewildered looking young Indian lads. Introduced as a fringe venue in 2007, Horatio's is now part of the official programme despite being a good 500 metres into the English Channel. It's also a thoroughly inappropriate place for bands to play ("like watching a gig in a Wetherspoons" says Jay Taylor, whom I randomly run into sometime the following day) - and and an even more inappropriate place for a showcase of up-and-coming Indian bands.

Indigo Children are late onstage. The tour manager is bollocking the little one with the bowl cut, who clearly thinks he's a bit of a rock star. Eventually his squiggly soloing is unleashed, he rambles a bit in heavily-accented but fluent English about the capitalist society, and I spend the rest of their four song set of fairly traditional Led Zep influenced blues rock trying to work out if I'm being racist for thinking "disillusioned call-centre worker". Probably no more so than when I said Kraftwerk (out of stage costumes) looked exactly like all the middle managers at the Day Job's German factory. Which they do. And I don't think that about the rest of the bands, nor even the rest of his band, just him. I bet the rest of the band even secretly think he's an annoying little twat.

Swarathma are much more interesting - and not just in the haircut department, although you have to admit the Hendrixian Afro on singer Vasu Dixit is pretty impressive. And who would have thought that a collision of traditional Hindi folk, krautrock, garage-punk and ska would even be possible, never mind sound pretty good. It's these daytime gems from another reality that make Great Escape what it is. The next song drafts Caribbean calypso sounds into an already sizzling pot of musical insanity.

I head back to Arc HQ to catch up with the crew and find myself transported into yet another country - this afternoon the bar is hosting a Canadian showcase, although oddly Hey Rosetta sound more Antipodean; echoing the Triffids, Go-Betweens even, and first-album Veils. Well-crafted quality alternative pop songs backed by - as opposed to led by - warm violin and cello, they're all seriously throwing themselves into it by the end and people are clambering over all the venue's many and strangely positioned nooks and crannies to try and get a look at them. The next band, sadly, sound so generic we can't even be bothered (a) going back upstairs or (b) finding out who they are, so we head back up the pier to catch the last of the Indian bands. They are Medusa, they're a bit post-punk and a bit electro-indie; a competent take on such that would neither offend nor shine especially beside its western contemporaries - although it is kind of unsettling how much singer Raxit Tiwari sounds like Ian McCulloch at times, given that he's about 20 and from Mumbai.

The music mostly stops between about 4 and 6.30pm each day, which is actually quite a good thing as it avoids that dangerous temptation to go without a proper tea because you might miss a band. Time for Mission #2. On the one hand the early-doors-for-priority-bands approach does mean missing bands with names like Tommy Tokyo And Starving For My Gravy, but it does reduce the "oh my god too many bands and if I go there I can see X but then it's a long walk and wil I get in" factor for at least part of the day. Anyway, a chance to see The Veils is never a bad thing, so come 6pm we are queuing outside the Sallis Benney Theatre, which appears to be part of the art college. They don't have gigs here often, apparently, and it shows. Faced with equally large queues of delegates and commoners the doorman gets into a terrible panic, moves us all around, then tries to do it again at which point everyone refuses. Most of us make it through the chaos; the North Shields contingent bypassing it altogether by slipping in through a back door by posing as visitors to the art exhibition. (Anyone who knows Mark and Keith is currently having a good laugh at that, by the way).

The Veils play a short set, largely drawn from the more placid (if no less emotionally raw than its predecessors) third album. Finn Andrews still seems to be talking in a mutant Irish accent between the songs, and still lacks consonants during them. He's so quietly intense that watching him up close almost feels like an intrusion, a window into a soul that's very dark for one so young. Not that the lads in our crew would notice if Finn set himself on fire, as they all seem to be more interested in the other side of the stage, for some reason.

I am, I think, the only one of us to have seen Micachu And The Shapes before, writing that they "have something of the early 80s about them - not so much in their sound, which is pretty much impossible to reference to anything past or indeed present (apart from, possibly, a primary school class covering The Cardiacs), but in the spirit. The sense that pop shouldn't be constrained by any rules. Songs chop and change in pace, rhythm, anything. A miniature guitar with possibly alien tunings, batteries of unexpected percussion, twinkly things, Fall-like fuzz guitar and snare-drum mantras, twisted bossanova pops, sing-song hallucinogenic nursery rhymes and deranged chants... This is the outermost fringe of frothy art-pop, and it'd be pretty damned weird at any time; at midnight on a Sunday in the sort of shiny bar the vast majority of people watching would never set foot in normally it's a very long way off the scale." I was undecided whether any of this was a good thing or not, but in my defence it was In The City (last year), and the eighth gig I'd been to that day. In the cold light of half seven in the evening they just sound crap. At least two of my mates go as far as to describe them as the worst band they've ever seen, but in fairness none of them have been forced to watch Malakai (see Doves gig reports, last two blogs). Deb is more disgusted that there are "grown men clapping".

It's time, again. Now I know British Sea Power had mentioned the possibility of new material but I hadn't got too excited about this - might not happen - but... blimey.

They open with the Hamilton-fronted "Smallest Church In Sussex" (described by one slightly confounded but accurate reviewer as an "obscure B-side" - is there any other sort?) but it's been completely reworked (the original recording having been made on the organ at said church, and occasional live run-outs using an electronic one) into a full band guitar-based piece which is strangely beautiful. Hamilton stays upfront for another one which is a brilliant slab of Krautrock indie folk; and there's another new one, mostly instrumental but with Yan upfront, which sounds like Wooden Shjips' psyched-out Spacemen trips. Yes please. 

A lot of the crowd are by now looking a bit blank, a bit "come on, where's the indie hits", so sticking "Remember Me" in next is a good move. I was quite sure this is what happened, anyway, until set lists posted later on the band's forum would seem to imply I have that in completely the wrong order. Oh well. It's a relatively Hamilton-heavy set in any case, with "Down On The Ground" and "No Lucifer" - surely one of the weirdest unashamedly pop singles of recent years - both sounding great. I've said it before, but the younger Wilkinson is in my opinion responsible for most of British Sea Power's true moments of genius. Yan, however, remains the greatest frontman of our times. Even when - as tonight - he is far from his wildest, he's still compelling. Later there's a beautiful "Carrion" and "Fear Of Drowning" as well as a return for the traditional and almost universal (until a couple years ago) set ender "Lately". A magnificent gig.

Most of the crew head off to try and get in to Dananananaykroyd but I know they won't, and I am not massively predisposed towards an interest in a band whose name I'm never going to be able to say. It's been an amazing two days, I've heard great new material from two of the most inspired musical creators of this generation and right now I could just do with a nice glass of red wine and a chill-out to something warm, gentle and fuzzy. I walk into the Redroaster cafe just as Neil Halstead is about to start - how perfect can timing get?

It's all laid out with seats but the only free ones are right in the middle, so I settle down on the floor. I'm aware I was sitting on the floor last time I saw Neil Halstead (Sacred Trinity in Salford late last year) and would like to point out that this is purely circumstantial as opposed to any sign of being an irredeemable shoegazer (honest). I'm told Halstead has recently lifted his self-imposed embargo on playing Slowdive songs, but we don't get any tonight and nor do we need them. A selection of Mojave 3 and solo tunes, a rich acoustic guitar sound and his gorgeously soft voice show he never lost his feel for a perfect melody. It strikes me, briefly, that I am watching a man with a beard and a woolly hat play gentle acoustic indie-country in a wholefoody-looking cafe - I almost have to pinch myself to make sure I've not fallen asleep and somehow woken up in Chorlton.

He's done, the cafe's closing, I really want to go to bed, but it'd be nice to have a last drink with my mates - and if that means watching the might-be-OK-if-they-weren't-obviously-trying-so-bloody-hard Metronomy then so be it... but it's one in one out at the Corn Exchange and not many people are coming out. I stick it out for about 15 minutes before the bitterly cold wind threatens to spoil a brilliant day, so I cut my losses and head back to the B&B. Turns out none of the rest of them got in there either - the small number of venues still presenting live music after midnight compared with the large number of punters still looking for some is, I think, something the organisers need to address in the future, but already the improvements I've seen since the 2006 and 2007 Great Escapes imply that they know what they're doing so I'm sure this will happen in time.

Once again I have written too much for Myspace. Part Two will be along in a minute...

When I say I don't do telly it's not strictly true, but breakfast news, two or three primetime series a year and whichever Formula 1 races I can be bothered to get out of bed for barely justifies the licence fee, never mind the extra people pay for satellite or cable. Mates of ours round the corner have got one or the other and going round for drinks often involves a flick through the 20 or 30 music channels available to them - and to coin a well-worn phrase, it says nothing to me about my life. "Come On Eileen" or "Take On Me" will usually be airing somewhere, as the golden age of 80s pop videos is celebrated by replaying them until any glimmer of nostalgic enjoyment has shrivelled and died. There will be some heavy rock, usually of the modern-day Kerrang variety impenetrable to anyone over the age of 18; twenty infinitesimally different r'n'b blingfests; and if you're really lucky some "modern" "indie" of the lowest common denominator about-as-indie-as-Tesco variety. You're certainly not likely to see live studio performances from the likes of Puressence, Maps, Holy Fuck, even under-the-radar acts like The Tides; interviews with bands yet to sign a record deal (or indeed local pretend music writers); local cult legend Frank Sidebottom interviewing fellow local cult legend Johnny Bramwell from I Am Kloot, or a full half hour of live gig footage from a band such as Air Cav. Or at least you wouldn't expect to - and yet all these things have indeed been broadcast in the past three years and for people in some areas of Manchester you didn't even need cable or satellite to see them; they came courtesy of Channel M Music, and if for the local music fan that seemed just too good to be true, then sadly it seems it was.

Last week Channel M announced large scale redundancies, following news that the channel - largely run out of Urbis on a budget considerably less than any one of those nonsense r'n'b blingfest videos - was losing a couple of hundred thousand pounds a month. Camera operators, technicians and admin staff are waiting to see which third of them survive to continue the channel's output of local news and sport programming, but for some of us it's the end of an era. Channel M Music is being wound up.

As well as knowing a few people who work(ed) there both in front of and behind the scenes I've been present at a good few live recordings and the almost maverick operation of the whole thing was nothing short of heartwarming. As a "talking head" guest once on City Centre Social I've seen first-hand how a one-hour music and chat show was recorded in its entirety - including live studio performances from three quite different bands - in under three hours. Which included the time needed to convert the one-room studio from newsroom to talk show set and back. They had to. The news was broadcast live at six and ten o'clock and City Centre Social got the time in between; the footage edited into an hour-long programme and broadcast within a couple of days. You watch episodes now though and they're no less professional than the magazine shows on far richer channels.

As a punter, I've seen some classic moments too. The experience of gliding up on the escalators through three floors of casino for those live sessions at Manchester235 never stopped being faintly surreal; the influx of a hundred typically scruffy Puressence fans into the well-dressed establishment almost felt like class war, even if the drinks prices did remind us of the old casino rule that the house always wins in the end - even if you're not actually playing the games. And Channel M music staff still remember Jimmy's standard requests for the lights to be turned down, until eventually someone reminded him it was for TV and they couldn't be. Later sessions within the Urbis HQ itself were no less bizarre, whether it was Frank Sidebottom's mini-gameshow The Squid Is Correct! or guest presenter Clint Boon getting Holy Fuck to record mini-electrosquelches to blank out the "fuck"s in his links for pre-watershed transmissions.

All good things must come to an end though, and yes, in the real world market forces are everything. I'm not about to write long tracts of semi-informed opinion about what could and should have been done to make the channel as a whole more commercially viable as I don't know all the facts. But from the point of view of a Manchester based music fan who knows first, second and third hand just how difficult it can be for a whole lot of amazing bands to get any form of media exposure at all, it'll be a gaping hole I hope someone has the guts and the budget to fill.

You can watch the most recent sessions here - http://www.channelm.co.uk/music/ and if you watch the footage of ex-Fear Of Music frontman Jo Rose showcasing his absolutely brilliant new almost-country direction you can see me sitting in the background, subtly getting the words "Death Is The End" onto the screen courtesy of an I Like Trains T-shirt. Wednesday's final show saw the great and the good of Manchester's grass roots music scene gathered to say goodbye, to watch a fantastic live studio performance by a rejuvenated Nine Black Alps as well as acoustic slots from Jo and from I Am Kloot's Johnny Bramwell, and to eat sandwiches and cake. I was flattered and honoured to be invited to this session, and as someone who's spent much of the past couple of years with the axe of redundancy hanging over my day job I wish all those losing their jobs the best of luck in these difficult times.

A special mention goes to Rachael Kichenside, long time reader of this nonsense and important part of the Channel M Music team who hopefully won't have to wait too long for a new career to take off - her excellent band Run Toto Run have just announced a national tour (more dates TBC) in support of their imminent EP release, so do yourself a favour and check them out here http://www.myspace.com/runtotomusic and indeed in a venue near you (well, some of you) soon.

There was a lot of talk in the pub afterwards about the independent music scene, so this also seems like a good place to plug this year's Un-Convention, which describes itself as "a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies". This takes place over three days, Thursday 4th to Saturday 6th June, at Salford Sacred Trinity Church and the nearby Blueprint Studios and features a host of panel discussions and information and advice for bands and small labels trying to make their mark in the current music scene - you can read more about it here http://www.music-dash.co.uk/news/news.asp?item=2374 and if that sounds like it could be of use to you, follow the link off there to the event's homepage.

Thursday night features a whole host of grassroots musical activity in action as Calvin Party bring their Dutch friends Cradle over for a couple of gigs as part of a sort of ongoing exchange scheme - they'll be back in Holland themselves in June for a short tour which includes the wonderful - and decidedly grassroots - Sub071 in Leiden (as featured in my profile picture). The evening is brought to us by an important figure in Manchester's independent music scene, Graham Thomas - as promoter of the longstanding Blowout night he has, for a good few years now, presented bargain-value line-ups of the best up-and-coming bands from here and elsewhere. In fact stick this one in your diary now, it's going to be a great gig...

Tonight, however, the Irish Club is populated by those (for the most part) a little older than your regular Blowout crowd. Because as well as Calvin Party and Cradle, the bill fatures Factory Star. Who? Well, anyone playing Ex-Members-Of-The-Fall-Club Bingo would have been delighted with tonight's pickings; Marc Riley is at the bar and there's probably a couple more of them lurking somewhere, as Factory Star is the new musical venture for former Fall legends Martin Bramah and Steve and Paul Hanley. Bloody hell. (Apologies to all concerned, by the way, for the lack of a proper review here. I'm juggling a lot of jobs right now and I'm actually writing this at 12.35am purely because I don't want to post a blog without at least mentioning them.)

Anyway before that, Mr. Heart, who excel at abrasive punchy bass-heavy things influenced by the tuneful end of Riot Grrrl and the quiet-loud dramatics of PJ Harvey. I know I keep promising them a proper review but I'm not on official duty tonight and time is short at the time of writing, but they're doing something that there's not a lot of around right now and they're doing it really well, so let's just make it a massive great big recommendation instead.

Mark E. Smith once famously said something along the lines of "if it's me and your granny on bongos, it's still The Fall". Well, yeah, I'm not going to argue with that, but Factory Star are by their very existence technically at least as much the Fall as The Fall. If you know what I mean. Although with Martin Bramah singing in his low-key way instead of Smithy growling. (And before he sends the "bigger blokes than you" round, the Smith growl is a national treasure.) There's lots of excellent retro keyboard courtesy of a bloke apprently called Hop Man Jr who looks like they found him at a festival, a cracking tune called "Bad Education", some early Fall tracks I can't remember the titles of (calling James Sui or Alex Staszko to the rescue here please...?) and a cover of "To Love Somebody" -  yes that one - whereby Blowout's Myspace tagline "A Wedding Reception Disco From Hell" (credited to Sandman magazine) suddenly becomes dangerously close to existing.

Cradle could actually have transported in from some Mancunian suburb circa 1979 - all Peter Hook (Joy Division spec) bass and monochrome tension, a bit Magazine even - actually they're from Rotterdam. Which, it has to be said, is a city not without a certain level of post-industrial flavour. There are echoes of the more Suicidal (as in the band) end of Magazine, although some tracks are a little over-long. Interestingly off-centre, certainly.

Calvin Party continue on the wave of good form that's seen them close to completing another album what seems like about ten minutes after their excellent "Godard's Girlfriend". The recruitment of TamsinA, also lead vocalist with Mr.Heart and sometime solo artist of some quality, has really revitalised the live band just as John Donaldson is writing some of his best songs to date. There's plenty of new stuff in tonight's set, but the highlight is an absolutely exhilarating take on recent single "8 Days". And old favourite "Lies, Lies And Government" is as wonderfully sprawling and simmering as ever.

Friday it's back over to Leeds for the last night of Doves' tour. A gig originally scheduled for Friday 24th April, it was postponed due to one of the band being ill; we had no plans to go to that one but the re-availability of tickets due to returns from those who couldn't make the new one made it rather hard to resist. If you were one of those people, then thank you very much, and you might want to skip this bit as I'm afraid to say you missed an absolute blinder...

Leeds O2 Academy, to give it its full title, is what used to be Leeds Town And Country. It reopened in late 2007 under the Academy brand (Carling, as was) and after visiting the chain's pretty nondescript venues in Sheffield, Birmingham and Liverpool we're pleasantly surprised as soon as we walk into the place. According to Wikipedia the building was originally opened in 1885 by Prince Albert and is a grade I listed gothic building; known originally as the Coliseum it hosted many different events during the early 20th century such as political meetings and circus shows, and then between the 1930s and 1990s the building accommodated a cinema, television studio and bingo hall. According to me it looks like a church, with lovely exposed brickwork around the high balcony. And it's got an excellent sound system. Which is completely wasted on the stodgy efforts of tour support Malakai (see Manchester gig report, last blog, if you must) - even a concerted effort to miss them by getting a later train than we normally would for a gig in Leeds has failed, and we end up seeing three songs, which is three more than anyone should have to. It's worth it though to get a decent front spot for Doves; I hadn't expected this, so didn't have a camera on me - but you know what they look like anyway...

It starts with a jetplane flying over; on the projection screen and from the speakers; the audio-visual aspect of Doves gigs is often overlooked but this is right up there with the now legendary "popping next door to the pub" film from Apollo gigs past, and the band walk on to massive cheers and launch into "Jetstream" as the noise dies down; simple but sublime. "Snowden" sounds massive and I have to admit these days to finding many things to love about the "Some Cities" album which I did not at the time of release; the band look happy, the crowd are enthusiastic without being stupid about it... and then four or five tracks in an exceptional version of "Pounding" sends the whole thing up another level or two, from which it never comes down. Even songs that never did much for me before are hitting the spot - "Ambition" is gorgeous, fragile and moving.

And the encore is something else. Down in the front ranks we've found ourselves in a lively bit of Friday night three-beers-merry jumping about and the song - still probably the greatest, most assertive second-album-trailer single there ever was - is immense. We don't want it to end. They don't want to stop. Come on... yes, traditionally "Space Face" is just for Manchester and special occasions, but what's this if it's not special? And so the tour is seen out with a bang; by the time the train home's passed Dewsbury I'm thanking whoever or whatever it was made a band member ill two weeks ago and making the sort of rash-sounding statement that here, four days later, I'm prepared to stand by: that was the best Doves gig I have seen in over six years, and for a band that's been going for twice that long (or three times that if you count Sub Sub days) I can't tell you how astonishing and delightful it is to be able to write that.

Saturday, from Factory Star to, well, Factory stars. Well, sort of. When you think about Factory, at the top level there was Joy Division / New Order, The Durutti Column, latterly Happy Mondays. Then there's the next level - the legends: A Certain Ratio, Section 25, Crispy Ambulance. Dig deeper you get to the ones that you only ever hear about when the discussion, conversation or article is specifically about Factory: yep, Stockholm Monsters and Thick Pigeon, I'm talking about you. And eventually you reach the one-offs, the ones nobody who doesn't have a roll of FAC136 sticky tape has heard of. (Yes, I do, actually; there's some doubt as to whether it's an original but it's a lovely shade of mint green and lives in a shelf near my British Sea Power Kendal Mint Cake). And even I hadn't actually heard of Red Turns To until Air Cav's label, Surbia, sent round the flyers for their May club night, and scratching my head as to why a band I had never heard of was above Surbia's leading lights on the bill I did a little digging... and found a classic Factory story.

They had come together sometime around 1982, coalescing from the splinters of bands such as The Things and Formation, footnotes of footnotes in Manchester's musical history, and rehearsing in a room in Robert Adam Crescent in Hulme - I think that was the red one although my memory's not what it was. There had been a meeting with Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton in a stairwell by the fire escape in the Hacienda basement, a session booked with Steve Morris producing, and thus was born Red Turns To's only single "Deep Sleep", FAC116, a twelve inch released in March 1985 but labelled 1984. There are supposedly around 2000 in existence. By 1986 Red Turns To were no more.

Which begs the question, where the hell did Surbia dig them up from, and how? Well, I'm still not quite sure. Tim Lyons has been a regular fixture on the local underground scene the past few years with the excellent Krautrock band The Sandells. And Surbia do have a Factory connection - one of the South Manchester duo who manage the label came within a whisker of fame in the Madchester era as frontman of Plenty, who were managed by the legendary Phil Saxe and after regular supports with late-period Factory band Northside became the only unsigned band ever to headline the Hacienda - sadly Factory fell to bits before Plenty could grab themselves their own FAC number, but Surbia's 2008 (re)issues of their unreleased singles-to-be have seen a resurgence of interest in the band. So maybe this is just another extension of Surbia's musical archaeology...

The Generalissimos are up first, energetic and fun as ever. Indie in the traditional sense they're a riot of slightly wrong haircuts, frenzied punky jangling and slightly bonkers vocals. I know from having seen them before that they also boast some of the funniest and most bizarre lyrics you'll hear on the local scene, but a dubious sound mix tonight means it's just too much of a strain to try and hear them.

The fascinating thing about Red Turns To is how utterly contemporary they sound. A glacial drum machine, stark bass, brooding vocals and swathes of very Factory keyboard, they're an illustration of the influence that era still has on music today. Play them back to back with, say, Young British Artists and you'd be hard pushed to say which band comprises people who probably weren't born when the other last played. The emphasis is on long, almost motorik tracts of near monotone whose excellence lies in its use of space, occasionally filled by Tim Lyons' bleak trumpet notes. I have no idea if this reunion was a one-off but I rather hope not; it seems a hidden treasure has been unearthed here and it would be a shame for it to be buried again just yet.

Air Cav are plagued by sound problems that make the Generalissimos' ones look minor, and we miss most of The Jannocks as we're packing the stuff away but they don't seem to be having much better luck. It's a pretty disappointing end to the evening really and we'd have hoped for better from Night & Day, but sometimes these things happen...

Sunday it's a rare trip to Academy 3, and half way up the staircase from hell I decide I very much need to start getting fit again, although with Great Escape just days away I have possibly left it too late. Anyway time to catch up with one of those bands everone in Manchester is talking about, who to my shame I've not managed to see yet. Better late than never. Although a little reserach reveals I did probably see them under their former name of Headlines. I'm not 100% sure which of the two or three Headlines that were around a couple of years ago this lot are but I suspect it's the ones I once described on MM as "a smart and polished guitar pop sound, youthful good looks and a shedload of energy; the main drawback being that pretty much all their songs sound exactly like a Mancunian Maximo Park"...

I don't know why but the name Dutch Uncles always sounds to me like a euphemism for something slightly unsavoury. I like this. Quite how a band from Marple came to be signed to an obscure German label is beyond even my comprehension, but it seems Tapete Records (who? exactly...) stole a march on the UK here. Their starting points are the wriggly rhythms of Foals and the clipped yelpings of Talking Heads, squint and singer Duncan Paton even looks like a young David Byrne too, carrying off the normally ill-advised 80s baggy white T-shirt tucked into grey slacks look with some panache. Though where David Byrne always sounded paranoid, Paton sounds relatively cheerful - and his dancing really has to be seen to be believed, best described as a man feverishly trying to keep an invisible hula hoop going. Where Dutch Uncles really stand out however is the fact that for all their spiky mathy complexities every single track has a great pop tune writhing around somewhere inside it.

Maybe they could lend a few to It Hugs Back. This Kent four-piece make all the right sort of noises - a bit shoegazey, a bit American college lo-fi, possibly in possession of some Jesus And Mary Chain records, but for the most part they don't sparkle or shine where it feels like they should. It's not a good sign when I realise I'm finding the guitarist's bizarrely cape-like hair more interesting than what's coming out of the speakers. It's basically like music that got a bit too stoned for its own good and forgot where it was going, and when they seem to wake on the last song with a thrusting dive into quiet-loud post-rock indie the overwhelming feeling is why didn't they get going until the end?

It's pretty wonderful in itself that a band like Holy Fuck can get big enough to headline Academy 3. Who would have predicted that a band whose very name limits their PR opportunities and who play demented Krautrock-flavoured dance music on things that look like they found them in a skip would be a viable proposition? But this is 2009, where it sometimes seems like a krautrock influence is what electronica, post-rock and post-punk influences have been to previous years, namely a cool genre semi-appropriated by indie bands looking for a way to be more interesting, and Holy Fuck are here to blow them all out of the water. With their exceptional and acclaimed "LP" getting on for two years old there's a whole load of new material in tonight's set and it's based around much heavier rhythms from both the drummer and bassist; you can feel the floor trembling. Meanwhile the other two hunch over their tables of fascinating stuff, occasionally making strange noises into the microphones which stretch the definition of "vocals" a very long way from actual singing.

And they've got a much bigger piece of tape for that analogue sampler thing too; a couple of metres are pulled back and forth to make the sort of unearthly sounds rarely heard outside of White Noise's early proto-electronica. And people are dancing, too. The first time I saw this band I was surprised people weren't, but tonight it's half way to a rave in there; the deep primary coloured lights and billows of smoke all adding to the atmosphere. When they finally launch into last year's (sort of) hit "Lovely Allen" it's like a party down the front with a sea of raised hands. And on a Sunday night, too. Mind you, if they were going to get struck down by lightning for blasphemy it would surely have happened by now.

Which is where the in between ends. Great Escape this weekend - if you know anything about my music taste whatsoever you should be able to guess which is my priority gig for each of the three nights. I can usually be relied upon to attend bizarre daytime Japanese showcase events. Might see some of you there. Best get packed...

LINKS (most of them, anyway...)

http://www.myspace.com/blowoutmusic
http://www.myspace.com/factorystar 
http://www.myspace.com/calvinparty
http://www.myspace.com/cradlespace

http://www.myspace.com/redturnsto
http://www.myspace.com/generalissimos
http://www.myspace.com/aircavmusic
http://surbiarecords.com

http://www.myspace.com/dutchuncles
http://www.myspace.com/ithugsback
http://www.myspace.com/holyfuck

F*** me, what a couple of weeks of gigs that was! So I won't waste time with any flowery intro here, let's get straight to business, starting on Thursday 23rd April...

It still amuses me occasionally, even after a year or so, that we have a venue called the Deaf Institute. We can only imagine what touring bands think when they see it on their booking list. But if you were researching possible causes of deafness, being down the front at a 65daysofstatic gig would probably have to feature somewhere. Sadly Laymar have had to pull out of what to these ears would have been the support slot they were made for, but tour support Amusement Parks On Fire ensure all our senses are prepared for what's coming, via an onslaught of My Bloody Valentine distortion and copious use of a strobe light.

One of the first wave of noisegaze revivalists when they emerged in 2005 I had always assumed they were American, as many of those bands were (they're actually from Nottingham) - their lo-fi stoner-pop melodies coupled with guitars that could blister paint are more in the realms of Film School and A Place To Bury Strangers than the British Sonic Cathedral set.

The venue is by this point more packed than I've ever seen it. At the front an excited crowd of devotees wait for their cue to mosh; towards the back people are literally crawling over each other to reach friends or the bar. The lights dim to the strains of Zager And Evans' "In The Year 2525" - a frankly bizarre choice of intro music, but it all becomes clear when Zager (or was it Evans?) reaches the fifth verse, and the words "65 65" splinter into a repeated loop, inflitrated with electronics; the strobe fires again and Sheffield's four horsemen of the post-rock apocalypse walk out onstage. It's been a year since they last played Manchester, and since then they've toured the world with The Cure, playing at the likes of Madison Square Gardens, and it seems to have instilled them with confidence to match the talent that has neve been in doubt. And they still make an almost incomparably awesome noise. When their first single proper "Retreat! Retreat!" was released in 2004, one review simply said "Ow, my ears!" and almost five years on its impact is no less intense, and the kids down the front erupt into a seething flying mass of mosh frenzy from which your correspondent does indeed have to retreat, due to still sporting the remnants of an injury resulting from a 65days moshpit a full year ago.

From the back, the sound is still pretty massive as the band mostly leave out their quieter, piano-led pieces in favour of the more brain-melting parts of their first three albums and some previews of new material. At which point it's safe to say that fourth album (still some way off completion) could be their best yet. Sheets of guitar criss-cross a bubbling melee of grime and techno beats and samples that seem to hit you from every direction. After which the mournful introduction of "Radio Protector" feels like a brief moment of calm before one hell of a strom; the band request for the giant glitterball to be switched on and fire their strobe light straight at it as the track builds in volume and intensity before exploding into sci-fi techno.

I love the way people always look slightly shellshocked after a 65daysofstatic gig. Many of them stagger towards the merchandise, which is doing a roaring trade in copies of the band's newly released live album. In reality it's probably impossible to capture the full-sensory experience of the band on a little disc in a box, but it'll keep us going til next time.

Friday and Saturday bring a couple of trips out to the suburbs. Very different suburbs in different directions. Up until recently, suburban gig going (for me, at least) tended to mean heading north or east - Oldham, Middleton, Ashton, Bury - but this weekend we're headed first west and then south...

Just past Salford but before you get to Wigan is the small town of Leigh. Once famed for its cheese-making and the alleged (and later pirated by industrialist Richard Arkwright) invention of the spinning jenny, commemorated here in the town centre bypass known as Spinning Jenny Way, these days it's the sort of satellite town that has little to distinguish it from many others - except for the fact that one of Manchester's biggest bands, whose last headline gig was at Academy 1 and next will be at the Apollo, have taken it upon themselves to play their first North West gig of the year here. Or more precisely half of them have. Even in their stripped down acoustic format of singer James Mudriczki and guitarist Lowell Killen, Puressence are a big draw and the intimate pub venue is stuffed to the edges as relative newcomers to the local promotion scene TJ Events celebrate their third sell-out show in as many days. Anyone quite small who didn't get here early is going to struggle to see the duo - one punter is overheard saying to her mate "Oh look, there's someone in the corner with a guitar!" It took her three songs to notice? But that's the thing - in this form, even more so than at their regular full band gigs, James's voice reaches every corner of the room and every part of your soul. And besides, Lowell spends the whole thing sat on a flight case quietly strumming away from somewhere behind his overgrown hair.

Songs such as the opening "Life Comes Down Hard", "Casting Lazy Shadows" and "Don't Forget To Remember" take on a new poignancy stripped back to their bare bones, with the latter especially transformed from an indie-rock anthem into a soulful lament for love gone cold - the line "none of that shit was ever real" sounding angry and broken in equal measure. There are a couple of unreleased tracks amongst the familiar ones too - "Raise Me To The Ground" is epic, dark and brooding; it's not altogether clear if the distortion on Lowell's guitar is deliberate, but I rather like it like that. And aware that there are possibly people at the back who haven't seen much apart from the top of his head, James brings old favourite "Standing In Your Shadow" to them, trailing his long mic lead through the crowd and singing the words inches from peoples' faces.

And you wouldn't have thought it could work, but the cover of Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" which opens the encore almost feels like it could have been written for his voice. And given that the majority of Puressence fans are much the same age as the band, thirty-something with the heartbreaking scenes of "Watership Down" amongst our earliest formative memories, it's no surprise to see tears misting the eyes of a few blokes in the crowd who will very much not admit to this in the morning. That's Puressence for you - wherever they go, people leave genuinely moved by what they've heard. Even in a pub just off the East Lancs Road.

Saturday it's down to Chorlton, fast becoming Manchester's prime gig-going outpost. Remember three or four years ago, when every Thursday meant High Voltage at the Music Box and every Friday Blowout at the Bierkeller (RIP)? Where you could just go out without any idea what was on and know there'd be something worth seeing? On a good weekend down here there'll be as many decent gigs as in some city centres. Blowout has returned to its pre-Bierkeller roots with regular sessions at the Irish Club, there's often stuff on upstairs at the Royal Oak - and here at Abode, a shiny bar pretty indistinguishable by day from any other shiny bar including those either side of it, Saturday night is The Canteen. Reminiscent of those quality nights of a few years ago inasmuch as you get four well-selected bands and some decent tunes spun in between, it's also got the added advantage of being free to get in all night.

"That's got to be one of the bands" says my mate as a bunch of lads with vaguely mod hair walk in. She's not wrong - they turn out to be The Suns, product of the general musical wasteland that is Chester, and as often happens with bands who've done their development outside of big cities and scenes they're rather wonderfully difficult to pin down. In the first minute, theyremind me of the very early and somewhat rudimentary Teardrop Explodes, even a bit of XTC in the vocals. And just about everybody else. Singer Jono spends a couple of tunes apparently reading from (or maybe just holding) a large notebook - which'd be a fine gimmick if the young Maximo Park hadn't done it five years ago. By the next song it's exchanged for a maraca, and the post-punk-indie for dark melodrama, before they drift into kind of dubby indie ska and Coral shuffle. Somewhere along the way, sadly, "eclectic" (their cited influence list is equally so, although I wouldn't have guessed any of them) becomes, well, a bit incoherent - and 40 minutes is probably a bit long for an unknown opening band at one of these things, and by the time they've stuck a very long harmonica solo onto a cover of Van Morrison's "Baby Please Don't Go" they've lost us a bit.

Rising local stars Sycamore - their early slot due to the fact that they're DJing elsewhere later - are on fire tonight, make no mistake. The sheer power of this trio is even more apparent in this rather in-your-face little space (there isn't really a stage as such, more an extended bay window) than in the likes of the Roadhouse or Ruby Lounge. It comes in the form of faintly apocalyptic darkly psychedelic post-grunge with visceral vocals, and could strip wallpaper, but as such is also surprisingly tuneful. Some moments where Paul and Ian Hodon, on bass and guitar, are playing borderline traditional Led Zep rock or even distorted to fuck Black Sabbath riffing, but drummer Luke Chase is just doing all this amazing split beat post-everything til you're trying to work out if he's got a third hand somewhere. And they know the value of always leaving people wanting more, not less. They're apparently picking up some label interest too, deservedly so.

3 Dimensional Tanx, from Lancaster, are a very late addition to the bill (as in about five hours ago) - but after their outstanding performance here supporting Air Cav a few weeks ago the Canteen boys knew exactly where to look when they found themselves with a vacant spot. From 1969 (in general) to The Horrors via early Inspiral Carpets you just can't beat the combination of fruit bowl hair and an antiquated organ when it comes to top quality psychedelic garage-punk. The guitars are pretty loud too - and far from being carbon copy revivalists of an era they don't remember, there are Northern soul, krautrock and Detroit punk influences shining brightly in this thrilling high-octane set. The band recently earned the ultimate accolade for purveyors of this kind of thing by being invited to play with Damo Suzuki, and recommendations don't come much higher. Certainly here people are going mad for them, chicken dancing, the lot, before it all ends in a mass freakout of swirling sonic thrash with the guitarist on his back on the floor.

Forthcoming Canteen Saturday sessions see performances from a whole host of MM favourites including Hayley Faye, Cyril Snear, The Lightshines, Hard Luck Child, The Lucid Dream and Daniel Land And The Modern Painters. So next time you're stuck for something to do on a Saturday night, we strongly recommend an 86 bus ride in the direction of new music.

Actually there is a fourth band on, Orphan Boy. I've seen them a few times and never been that impressed, and whilst I'm told tonight will be one of their "more interesting" sets (in which case, why ever play a less interesting one?) they've got a couple of hard acts to follow there. Yes, there's a bit of Krautrock going on I've never noticed before, but I'm already starting to worry this is going to follow post-punk, post-rock and electronica in the list of cool genres semi-appropriated by indie bands looking for a way to be more interesting - and it rarely works. They pull a good crowd though and there are a hell of a lot of people dancing at quarter to one in the morning, so I leave them to it.

Sunday it's a night off. We did ask for press passes for Doves but it never happened, so I'm here as a punter - which at least means I don't have to try and think of anything nice to say about support Malakai. In fact I am only mentioning their dreadful gloopy funk-bothering 70s rock so I can show you their entry to the 2009 world gurning championship.

With so many amazing up-and-coming bands in Manchester right now I can only think that this horrible mess from Bristol are in this hallowed slot due to some sort of record company dealings.

Doves themselves are bang on form. It's a bit strange to be seeing them here at Academy 1, given that probably more than any local band of recent years they have almost made The Apollo their own, but a change is as good as a rest I suppose. And it's right up there with those classic Apollo performances; only marred by a fight breaking out down the front causing them to stop mid-track whilst it's sorted. "Kingdom Of Rust" is definitely a contender for singles of the year, "There Goes The Fear" as brilliant as ever, and they even find room at the end for the legendary "Space Face" and for a minute it feels like 2002 again...

Sorry, did I say 2002? Monday we're going even further back in time, as Night & Day plays host to 80s indie legends The Nightingales. Well, sort of... I was meant to be reviewing this for MM, and started off doing so, but in the end it wouldn't have done anyone any favours.

"He's got sciatica you know" says a bloke I vaguely know, as I walk through the door of Night & Day "and the girls haven't been allowed into the country..." sorry? Was this some conversation we started weeks ago? No, it transpires he is talking about Robert Lloyd, bona fide indie legend and tonight's headliner. Now apparently without half his band and a fully functioning nervous system. Still, the support should stir up a few memories for him. Hotpants Romance being the greatest musically questionable all-girl thigh-flashing DIY indie punk pop car crash since Lloyd's old chums (We've Got A) Fuzzbox (And We're Gonna Use It) were barely legal. The Hotpants' eponymous arsewear seems to go down rather well with an audience rather more skewed towards the sort of bloke who looks like he owns a shed than your average N&D crowd, certainly. As does the fact that it's four 90 second songs in before one of them randomly hits a note that could be considered "in tune". These are, after all, the generation for whom C86 represented a step towards a polished mainstream and the ladies' version of "Twist And Shout" is something that will stay with me for a long time.

Ted Chippington - you either get it or you don't. I generally do, although the time Alex forced us to listen to two hours' worth of his box set in a Midlands traffic jam did somewhat test this allegiance. Tonight, for reasons best known to himself, Ted has decided to do half his set in German. This concept should divide the world quite neatly into those for whom the line "Ich war auf der Strasse" is about the funniest thing ever and those who go "er..."

I find myself watching The Nightingales (above) with a member of Calvin Party, which seems oddly appropriate; both Peel-ite indie survivors still plying their trade at a somewhat lower level than the Official 80s Peel Faves triumvirate of The Fall, the Wedding Present and Half Man Half Biscuit. Sadly - as per my earlier exchange - the female and American half of the band have been refused entry to the country following their German tour (I guess Ted thinks he's still there) and thus Robert Lloyd gruffly tells us they'll just be doing a set of Stooges covers. Whether this is true or not I have no idea; "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is certainly one of them but I believe "I Can't Control Myself" was actually The Troggs, and the rest of it is garagey punk with vocals bordering on Vic Reeves' Club Singer, whose origins are never clear. Most upsetting however is the state Lloyd is in. We last saw him at Akoustik Anarkhy's In The City session at the end of 2006 (me and Jon did a joint effort on the reviewing; see http://www.music-dash.co.uk/live/archivelive.asp?item=1049 ) where he spent most of the set storming around in the crowd frightening people - tonight he is clearly wracked with pain and hardly able to move. We leave rather disappointed, although with no blame attached, and all hoping we never get sciatica.

Thursday Dry Bar has become an offshoot chapel of the sonic cathedral, and as we walk in to the smell of incense and the sound of The Lightshines it has the feel of a psychedelic "happening".

It's business as usual from the one man psychedelia machine - fringe over face, build a track with drones and guitar and tambourine and eventually a couple of whispery vocal lines - and as intoxicating as ever. The last few minutes of the set, where he slides his hands up and down his guitar neck to create what's best descrobed as a sonic whirlpool effect, are possibly the closest you can come to being completely off your face on psychedelics despite having consumed nothing stronger than a single bottle of fruit cider.

This is the first time I've seen Insect Guide with a live drummer and he's definitely added power to their sound without dispensing with the precision beats which always made their otherwise very woozy, fuzzy dreampop so appealing. They blend sweet and fragile male and female voices, half-buried in a mass of MBV distortion, whilst projecting really quite strange and disturbng images (only some of which involve insects) onto a screen behind them. As the rather ungrammatic saying goes, what's not to like?

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters have also sprung an extra member tonight, wlthough this is just for a couple of songs. Russell is a hugely talented pedal steel player, whose German tourist mullet and 'tache combo strongly imply that shoegazing is not his core business. That said, the perfect slides he adds to the already halfway to country "Benjamin's Room" are quite brilliant, and it looks like he'll be guesting on a couple of tracks on the currently-in-progress debut album too. The remainder of the set sees the band continue their run of near flawless performances, and the now traditional set ending noise-wash is sublime tonight with Graeme Meikle hammering so hard at his guitar he's probably going to be shaking his hand all the way home to stop it seizing up.

And then, it's May! The weekend! And indeed the month where you can quite easily go to more gigs than there are days, although Friday sees just the one. The first of the month's great many awaydays, can you guess where we are tonight?

Indeed, we're in Barnsley. Exit Calm are soon to set off on a national tour supporting The Sunshine Underground, and with many dates sold out before they confirmed a few fans suggested the band did a little warm-up date. Being affable chaps, they agreed; a hometown show was mooted, and with Barnsley not exactly being overburdened with decent venues since the closure of that whatever-it-was No.7 place (Air Cav were one of the last bands to play there but it's not our fault, I checked) someone came up with the exceptional idea of having it here...

It's already shaping up to be quite an event before a note has been struck. People have travelled up from London and further south, Jam and Pedro have flown in from Spain; pretty much everyone who's been a part of the band's story so far is there. There's nothing like a proper away crew party; old friends greeting each other with hugs and beer (the frighteningly fizzy Lech bringing back memories of last year's visit to Poland) and others meeting for the first time. I briefly think back to British Sea Power's legendary gig at Cargo, five years ago this very week, and in a way this feels like that. There are a couple of support bands, but I'm too busy catching up with people I don't see half often enough.

Fittingly, the band pull out one of their greatest ever performances. Opening track "Hearts And Minds" seems to be regarded by many of the regulars (myself included) as their finest musical moment to date, and tonight's rendition is nothing short of spectacular - which might have left people wondering where they could go from there, had anyone touched down for long enough to wonder. We don't get the chance. They're straight off into the epic "We're On Our Own" - AKA one of those "Greatest Spiritualized Songs Spiritualized Never Wrote" moments. I'm standing right in front of bassist Simon Lindley, whose rolling rhythms are the band's secret weapon and foundation stone, and I've rarely seen anyone so completely absorbed in the music they're creating.

The euphoria doesn't let up for the whole set; it's one of those classic feedback loop things with the band playing harder and harder as the delighted crowd shout back every word to them in between outbreaks of air-drumming and shoulder-hoisting; I find myself on the floor at one point due to a combination of said very reasonably priced Polish beverages and the sheer enthusiasm of those around me but I'm soon pulled to my feet and back into it. And later, as a handful of us sit in a takewaway trying to work out where we are and how far it is back to our various accommodation, we already know we've been at one of those gigs that people wil talk about in years to come.

Saturday dawns though the Travelodge window, think for a few seconds what town I'm actually in, then it's off over to Leeds nice and early for Live At Leeds, the first of the month's sprint/stagger (delete according to tightness of schedule and/or alcohol level) between venues watching as many bands as possible sessions. On arrival in Leeds it becomes immediately clear it's going to be a rather messy day - the sun's blazing, Leeds United are playing their last home match of the season, and the station pubs are packed with fans warming up for the 3pm kick-off by downing pints at half ten. Two ambulances have blasted past with sirens ablaze on the short walk up to the Metropolitan University, wristband exchange and our first gig of the day.

The Dharma are just the sort of band you need to open an event like this - uncomplicated but energetic punky indie, with the sort of retro electropop synths that made The Killers' first album so much fun. They've got a shedload of the sort of perfectly formed tunes that you find yourself trying to sing along to even though you don't know them, and get everyone set off in a good mood. You don't really want 11/4 post-rock at breakfast time. No, even I don't...

More indie punk next from International Trust, officially MM's favourite Leeds band #1. Actually make that proper punk, albeit of the fun rather than nihilistic variety. Since I last saw them they've ditched the keyboard, sprouted an extra guitarist and sound even more rocket-fuelled, racing through old favourites "Is It Any Wonder", "Disneyland" and "Talk Of The Town" in about six minutes. And then... new songs! Three of them! Bloody hell, that's almost prolific! All classic Trust, we love the one with the lines "I've got a list of things to do before I die, like write a novel and give heroin a try" which pilfers the tune from The Tornados' "Telstar". Well, if you're going to steal, steal from the best (especially if they're dead). Next single, if they've any sense. Which is indeed debatable, given that they end this wonderful short sharp shock of a set with Christmas single "Let's Have A Dance" as the sunshine streams through the windows. Earlier in the set never-knowingly-understated frontman Neil Hanson tells us we won't see another band this good all day, and he might be half joking but he might also be right.

Right, time for a nice stroll past the park to the Brudenell Social Club. I fucking love the Brudenell Social Club. I'm even a member of a Facebook group called "I Fucking Love The Brudenell Social Club". Nearly all my favourite bands have played among their best gigs here, not just Leeds bands, and it's just £1.89 a pint. No, that's not a typo.

Lord Auch feature some remnants from much loved lost Leeds post-punk heroes of three or four years back, Black Wire. Now I liked Black Wire, but Lord Auch are an altogether more intriguing beast. The well-greased quiff on singer Simon McCabe is a clue - this is a band seeped in all things Johnny Cash, neo-gothic rockabilly and early rock'n'roll, with 21st century trimmings such as a cowbell (there's probably a surfeit of the things in Leeds right now, a few years back you couldn't move for them) and some lovely drumstick-on-guitar noise. Their last one heads vaguely back towards post-punk, the dark, brooding and ever-so-slightly epic end of such; quality stuff all round. After which the sunshine outside seems particularly incongruous. Back inside then?

It's thinned out a bit for FrYars, which is a bit of a surprise given that they're supposedly "hotly tipped" - but it is a particularly well-stuffed line-up this year, I could have easily plotted five different schedules without resorting to filler acts. FrYars pull quite a crowd in the end; most of them look very young, as indeed does fresh-faced mainman Ben Garrett, a 20(ish) year old Londoner who effectively is FrYars. As such, I'm very much not expecting them to sound like the unholy offspring of Gary Numan and Joy Division, which is the first impression. Nostalgic for an 80s he definitely doesn't remember, Garrett's goth-inspired theatrical vocals get a bit monotonous after a bit - he doesn't so much sing as intone. And whilst the music itself seems to cheer up as the set goes on, he's a misanthropic little sod if ever there was one; towards the end a relatively upbeat Pet-Shop-Boys-on-a-budget pop tune is graced with the refrain "You should have died that very night, good job for you I wasn't born a killer". I'm not so sure, it's always the sweet innocent looking ones...

Back down into the city centre, which is by now almost spookily quiet as everyone not watching bands is probably watching the football somewhere, and time to pitch up in the Cockpit for a bit, which has two rooms on the go. And, unfortunately, is anything but spookily quiet - in fact the queue stretches way back to the corner already. Guess we won't be seeing Fight Like Apes then. A bit of a contrast to last year where I don't recall having to queue anywhere. After 45 minutes we're in, but there's no getting upstairs to Cockpit 3 and there's another 15 minute wait at the bar... still, here's Katie from Sky Larkin to entertain us by line-checking with a verse of "head and shoulders knees and toes"... But then, as she tells us when they start, she is buzzing a bit. "I had a cup of tea before coming onstage, I've never done that before..." - yep, not a line of coke, not even a can of Red Bull, a cup of TEA. That's how Indie Sky Larkin are. She's even wearing a cardigan.

Musically they're not quite as twee as that would suggest; it's fizzy guitar pop but with caustic Wedding Present undertones, whilst human tornado drummer Nestor could have probably held his own in a punk band had he so desired. Slow Club are a little bit twee, tinsel on the drum kit, the lot. Just the two of them, Charles on guitar, Rebecca on stand-up drumkit, both singing, they mostly sound like Brakes' none-more-indie take on Johnny & June's "Jackson" - sort of rattling country shamble-pop. With a lot of friendly chatter between themselves and to the crowd. And they've got quite a lively little crew down the front, too, bouncing and singing along - unfortunately most of them pile out the fire door when the band finish which isn't going to help with the still fairly hefty queue outside.

The lights dim to red and it's MM's official favourite Leeds band #2, I Like Trains, and they've got another new band uniform! Once to be found attired in retro railway uniforms to match their name and early single about Dr Beeching, then swapping this for funeral-wear to accompany death-themed album "Elegies To Lessons Learnt", they're like a musical version of Mr. Benn. Today it's brocade-cuffed jackets so it's anybody's guess what they're writing about these days, this being one of a handful of relatively low-key gigs testing out some new material. About which they must be fairly confident, to start off with the outstanding 2006 single "Terra Nova" - I remember when this used to overshadow the rest of the set. Not any more.

The first new one (with a working title of "Sirens", apparently) sees Alistair Bowis swap bass guitar for deep rumbles of synth drone; singer Dave Martin does still sound mostly as if he is solemnly intoning someone's last rites, and it's unmistakeably ILT, but it's definitely progression in a good direction. The second new song is called "Sea Of Regrets" - "it'll be our next single, I believe", Dave tells us, and I hope it is. It'll be their best since "Terra Nova". Maybe their best ever. Starting quietly it builds up around Simon Fogal's military-precise drumming into an epic landscape of three-way vocals and effects pedal overload. And as the closing "Spencer Perceval" splinters into a brilliant psych-out ending with Dave, Alistair and guitarist Guy Bannister thrashing into each other and their pedalboards it's going to be hard to follow that.

The venue's half empty within minutes of them finishing, as apparently everyone's off to the Metropolitan University to see the Maccabees; we hear of a queue hundreds strong there. Wintermute sound like the stereotypical Leeds band circa 2006 - and yes, I know full well there's no more a "Leeds sound" than there is a "Manchester sound", but if I say post-punk spiky guitars, split-beat drums, rather yelpy vocals, you know what I mean - they're decent enough, but mostly just remind me how much I miss Forward Russia. Chippy time, and from what we hear sat out the back they don't really go anywhere uncharted - and Airship, upstairs immediately afterwards, still sound like Coldplay dabbling in post-rock. Still no queue, so we head back inside for last-minute-announced special guests Future Of The Left.

They're also quite spiky, but pretty crunchy with it. Alumni of much loved underground bands Jarcrew and Mclusky, theirs is the sort of mutant disco-metal-deranged-indie hybrid that causes spontaneous moshpit outbreaks. Singer Andrew Falkous has the sort of gravel-gargling howl that could well give him nodules in later life (whatever they are), and their heavily Welsh-accented between song addresses outstanding - "This is from our album 'Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Faeces'" (I bet it's not, you know) and "Even the Germans like this one". The Leeds kids certainly do, anyway - yep, here we go, first crowdsurfer of the day! And when Falkous swaps his guitar for an ancient synth and proceeds to batter seven shades out of it they get even better. "This song is for anyone struggling to combine a belief in Satanism with the trials of getting a babysitter." Quite. By their penultimate song (their words) they've turned into AC/DC with a Fugazi chaser, there's nobody over 19 left in the cauldron of flailing bodies down the front, then they go all-out punk, replete with loads of swearing, on the last one with bassist Kelson swinging from the lighting rig as they descend into a musical and physical melee worthy of British Sea Power. There's a turn-up; Special Guests who actually are.

The Cockpit line-up alone would have been worth the wristband fee, but we've once again failed to get up to Brew Records and Brainwash's mini festival within a festival, where two pubs up Woodhouse Lane are tunred over to the noisier end of things. What the guide doesn't tell us is how bloody far up Woodhouse Lane The Library is - nor that it's a horrible student pub currently hosting a fancy-dress pub crawl. Upstairs however's a decent little venue, it's half ten and there's one more band to go, the stunningly named Take A Worm For A Walk Week.

OK, I'm reverting to "say what you see" mode here in some attempt to convey the sight which befalls us, ten hours into this musical day. Four Glaswegian men in matching Lycra bodysuits which leave far too little to the imagination - and with the exception of the wiry little drummer, none of them exactly boast the physique for such. They play what could be termed post-hardcore, a frenzied mesh of abrasive riffs, rhythmic contortions and rasping assaults of angry vocal of which the only comprehensible words are expletives, although there's probably all manner of interesting stuff in there for ears better attuned to such. "This song is about poultry" explains the particularly disturbing frontman, before stage-diving off the bar and wandering towards us with a thousand yard stare and disturbingly wobbling outsretched hands. This seems to go down well with the fan who's accessorised his large build and bald head with a strap-on pig snout, anyway. Far more than just a scary looking racket, the drumming is nothing short of amazing as the most complex post-rock rhythms imaginable are rendered at terrifying speed and rammed with creative fills. It's a great insane ending to a brilliantly curated day of music. Same time next year then? I suspect so.

For me however it's more of the same on Sunday as Salford's Sounds From The Other City celebrates its fifth year with its most boundary-pushing line-up yet. I've made half a plan, but by quarter past three I've ripped it up. It had lots of guitars in, and I like guitars, but I saw lots of guitars yesterday and today I have Electro Head on; not going to argue with it, just see where it leads me...

It could have gone either way. Early SFTOCs were basically an all-day session of Manchester's most popular live club nights reloated to a handful of Salford boozers - Blowout, High Voltage et al showcasing the best of their recent line-ups. And they could so easily have kept it like that, dragging in a few bigger names alongside the city's great unsigned, upping capacity to accommodate the pop kids. Instead they decided to concentrate on the more underground side of things - which is how we came to be sitting in the Black Lion at half three on a Sunday afternoon listening to beautifully cinematic electronica.

The line-up here comes courtesy of Terrorist, and the opening soundtrack from a man* poring unassumingly over a laptop to unleash a stream of synthetic brilliance. There are flashes of traditional, Kraut-inspired electro reminiscent of very early 808 State and the stuff Alpinestars used to half-inch off Kraftwerk; there are Maps-like techno dreams, there are retro acid squelches mutating into sweeping little symphonies and widescreen scattered beats like 65daysofstatic let loose on a Morricone trip. Apparently there are still people who don't trust music made from silicon chips, but then they're probably also the sort of people unlikely to go to a club called Terrorist. Good. With a full day's line-up of such including the exceptionally named Gordon Tinnitus I'm tempted to stay here all day, but that's not really the spirit of SFTOC, is it?

(Editor's note: We've since learnt that Digitonal, whom we thought this was, had to pull out of SFTOC, so who we were watching at 3.30pm we have no idea. If anyone can enlighten us, please do!)

From the wholly synthetic to the wholly organic, but no less intriguing, The Lexie Mountain Boys are from Baltimore, Maryland. Now like most British people my knowledge of said city comprises what I've learnt from watching The Wire, but it seems there are indeed white people there who aren't disenfranchised dockers (although one of them is wearing a hard hat and fluoro safety vest), and some of them like to wear false beards and chant spooky acapella mantras.

Incorporating elements of Middle Eastern mysticism, campfire rounds and atonal folk (alongside anything else that fits) the five Boys - who are actually all women - explore the versatility of the human voice, creating weird and wonderful sonic pictures without often resorting to actual words. Close your eyes and you're thinking somewhere out there is a psychological thriller missing its soundtrack; open them and you're somewhere between muci and performance art. Unfortunately half way through the spell breaks. Not sure if it's the gradual Spinal-Tap-esque collapse of the backdrop, the standing on one leg or the increasing outbreaks of giggles but suddenly it all goes a bit Students Just Back From Their First Glastonbury and we have to escape in case someone starts fire-juggling in a jester hat.

Next door at the United Reformed Church, A Middle Sex are laying out their collection of cables, miniature bongos and detuned guitars. Best known for their 15-minute sets of abstract brain-melt at Wotgodforgot, today they're playing along to Hitchcock's "The Lodger". There are various ways to approach this sort of thing: Laymar often use "Battleship Potemkin" effectively as appropriately unsettling illumination, whilst British Sea Power's initially semi-improvised music to "Man Of Aran" grew into a full alternative soundtrack which sees a formal DVD release later this month. This venture falls somewhere in between; it's an accompaniment more than a soundtrack, and sees A Middle Sex at their most musically conventional - by which I mean there's no atonal ear-shredding feedback, just plenty of mostly electronic tension building.

As the caped stranger arrives at the boarding-house for the first time, a paintbrush scraped along a guitar sets nerves on edge, then as he lulls his landlady into a (false?) sense of security we hear the trio at their most melodic to date, all chiming chords drenched in shoegazey echo and heartbeat rhythms. Accompanied by the venue's enterprising wine-and-cake-for-£2.50 deal (an anomaly of licensing meaning this is legal but the wine alone wouldn't be) it's an hour of rather lovely tranquility, the sensibilities of Hitchcock's era meaning most of the blood happens offscreen. Several murders later, as a baying mob from the pub round on the wrongly accused lodger (yeah, plus ca change) jungle drums and slices of distortion well up like their grabbing hands. Justice prevails, of course, and the soundscape shifts towards calmer shapes. If we thought AMS were good before, this afternoon has revealed whole new dimensions. A stunning performance.

Tempted by Young British Artists at the Rovers, but it looks rammed - not that this is a disappointment, far from it; here at MM we've been banging on about them for a while, and with an imminent single release securing their spot in the Manchester's Next Big Thing list we're delighted for them - and anyway, how can I not go and watch a bloke who calls himself Gordon Tinnitus? Back to the Black Lion then. Formerly a resident, back in his native Belfast, at nights called things like Schizophrenia, Relapse and Grunt Productions, I'm actually expecting something a whole lot nastier than the golden-age-of-Warp progressive techno he dishes out, although his love of floor-trembling bass frequencies coupled with heavy use of skittering synthetic hi-hat sounds mean Trade Descriptions won't have any issue with him, whilst audiologists might.

They've moved the stage in The King's Arms again. I'm sure they do this every couple of years just to do my head in. Two of Leeds-based trio Chops don't appear to be on it anyway, although getting there a bit late for them means I can't see much without perching precariously on a stool. At least one of them seems to be performing from the front ranks of the pretty impressive crowd, anyway. They're like a harder Holy Fuck or Damo Suzuki gone big-beat, shaking the whole building before erupting into near-anthemic tunes.

Banjo Or Freakout operate in a vaguely similar area of electro-post-rock genre-bending - think Fuck Buttons tribal krautrock with a bit of New Order in the (admittedly only occasional vocal tunes) or some fantasy collaboration between Kevin Shields and the Chemical Brothers at their most psychedelic. It's seriously heavy on the percussion, sometimes with both of them - mainman Alessio Natalizia and his mysterious collaborator Strato - going full pelt at a pair of floor toms; it's oddly hypnotic and yes, you can actually dance to it. People do. Their last five minutes of thunderous pile-up is so euphoric people take a while to blink when it's over - definitely a freakout.

Sadly schedule slippage here means we only walk in on GNOD's accompaniment to the already quite troubling "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" as it's reaching some sort of spaced-out climax; both members of Blood Moon - who aren't even playing today - are sitting on the floor adding extra percussion and everyone in the room seems to be in some sort of trance. At which point the review baton is handed to other members of Team MM; I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. That a selection of such exceptionally curated leftfield music even exists is a cause for celebration; that it's managed to sell out (tickets) without "selling out" (to commercialism) is nothing short of a triumph.

Well, I wasn't going to miss I Like Trains' first Manchester appearance of the year, was I? We even manage to get there in time for Spokes.

I've watched this band grow from their earliest Manchester gigs, seen them quite a lot of times, but today with one of the travelling ILT crew in tow and watching as a punter rather than a reviewer it's great to see them go down so well. And indeed play one of the best sets I've seen. I'm guessing that like Air Cav and any band who have a female violinist (or even viola player - British Sea Power don't seem to be exempt from this) they must get a bit tired of being compared to Arcade Fire, but that's my out-of-town companion's first impression. Thing is today they seem to have the immense power to justify that comparison; it's a massive great big sound which firmly places them, in my opinion, in the top ranks of Manchester's up and coming bands.

If last night's Leeds show with two new songs in a five song set was bold, tonight I Like Trains are in all-out preview mode with five unreleased tracks from a set of nine. "Sirens" and the deliciously gloomy "Divorce Before Marriage" are the best of the early showings, but "Sea Of Regrets" just seems to get better with every hearing. Coming here at the end of the set on the back of a stirring "Victress" and ever fantastic "Terra Nova" it more than holds its own.

I know I'm not the only longtime fan and supporter of ILT who, whilst not disappointed per se, didn't think "Elegies To Lessons Learnt" hit the standard they have always been capable of, but this weekend's performances have left me with renewed enthusiasm for the band. It's also quite telling that - like Puressence, The Futureheads, and indeed any number of bands you or I could mention - this resurgence comes on the back of being dropped by a big label. Some bands, of course, give up at this point but it seems for those who don't the experience makes them stronger. Just a shame it usually also means a return to day jobs. Something that even I, as a music fan and itinerant rambler - know only too well; tomorrow's going to be tough, and with Great Escape less than a fortnight away I reckon a couple of nights in this week may be in order...

That said, I can strongly recommend this Thursday's Blowout (Chorlton Irish Club) where Calvin Party are playing alongside their Dutch mates Cradle and an amalgam of ex-Fall legends (Bramah, Scanlon and a Hanley, can't remember which) in Factory Star. And the weekend sees another lost band revival when Factory Records underlings Red Turns To make their first appearance in about three million years at Surbia Records' club night at Night & Day (Saturday 9th) alongside Air Cav (check my last blog post for a link to the Incendiary review of the Dutch dates and come and see what you've been missing, if indeed you have) and The Jannocks with a couple of other bands opening up too. Meanwhile if you happen to be in Leeds that night, Daniel Land And The Modern Painters and Insect Guide take their space dreams to Joseph's Well with the equally magnificent Laboratory Noise. As ever, I wish I could be in two places at once... talking of which, best start plotting the Great Escape schedule! I'm hoping to get a blog in before that as if previous years have been anything to go by I may end the weekend not remembering much that happened before it. Finally, you can hear the amazing new Maps single in full on Myspace now (go via my front page, in fact you can hear it there too) - released on the 11th I think, and I'm possibly looking forward to his/their upcoming live dates more than anything right now - May is officially the new October, and I love it.

LINKS

http://www.myspace.com/malakaibristol
http://www.myspace.com/dovesmyspace

http://www.myspace.com/hotpantsromance
http://www.myspace.com/revtedchippington
http://www.myspace.com/nightingalesmusic

http://www.myspace.com/danielland
http://www.myspace.com/insectguide
http://www.myspace.com/thelightshines

http://www.myspace.com/exitcalm

http://www.liveatleeds.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thedharma
http://www.myspace.com/internationaltrust
http://www.myspace.com/lordauchuk
http://www.myspace.com/fryars
http://www.myspace.com/skylarkinskylarkin
http://www.myspace.com/slowclub
http://www.myspace.com/iliketrains
http://www.myspace.com/wintermuteband
http://www.myspace.com/futureoftheleft
http://www.myspace.com/takeaworm

http://www.myspace.com/digitonal
http://www.myspace.com/mountainlex
http://www.myspace.com/gordontinnitus
http://www.myspace.com/mightychops
http://www.myspace.com/banjoorfreakout
http://www.myspace.com/gnodgnod

http://www.myspace.com/spokessound

Oh god, what a couple of weeks. I started writing this in a previous life, at least that's what it feels like. The weekend just gone, I was in Holland, taking Air Cav and Daniel Land And The Modern Painters to play two gigs in Leiden and Groningen. Most of the past two months of my life seems to have been spent planning this trip and I'm delighted to report it was a blinding success, with both bands playing the best sets I've seen from them and a brilliant reception from the crowds.

I'm not going to write about it in any great detail here, as it's pretty impossible for me to take any sort of independent viewpoint - although Damian Leslie from Incendiary Magazine is writing gig reviews as we speak which will be published both there and on manchestermusic.co.uk within the next day or two, and Daniel Land is busy typing up his tour diary which I'm guessing will be on their Myspace page at some point. In a way, for me, it was a culmination of everything I've been trying to do for the past six years - to get the bands I love the best possible exposure. That's all I ever wanted, that's why I write for MM and Incendiary and why I do this. And it's been a pretty eventful six years. Later in this entry there'll be reviews of Yucatan, No Tokyo, Brakes, The 66, Music For Aborigines, The Loves and more - but first, a trip back to 2003 - via 2008...

Mid April. A time of nostalgia for me and many of my friends; another year down and it almost defies belief that it's now six years since The Chameleons, Manchester's greatest band of the 20th century and one of the most influential locally and worldwide, fell apart. I won't reiterate the story; I've told it enough times, although if anyone does want the gory details (along with typically deranged awayday stories) here's the piece I wrote about it three years ago.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=59983142&blogId=108306596

(Apologies for the apparent absence of punctuation from parts of that post - something bizarre happened during the file transfer, I always intended to correct it but never got round to it.) And yet even after six years, the reverberations still echo, and they always seem to echo the loudest round about the anniversary time.

In April 2008 the publication of Mark Burgess's autobiography reopened old wounds in some parties, along with the "reunion" of his first post-Chameleons band The Sun And The Moon. I say "reunion", because the band featured Burgess and guitarists Andy Clegg and Andy Whittaker - but not Chameleons and TSATM drummer John Lever. At the time Lever cited no reason for not getting involved, although he raised no opposition to it. The general assumption amongst fans was that he simply had no interest in the nostalgia; he was busy getting his current band Bushart off the ground. And they've done pretty well - a "new" band of 40-somethings was never going to hit the trendy radars, but they've had some success supporting other bands of a similar vintage such as Half Man Half Biscuit and Spear Of Destiny. And in April 2009, it's Bushart who are at the centre of the Chameleons reverberation echoes, which started with a Myspace bulletin reproduced here. And yes, John Lever always types with the Caps Lock key on, which does seem oddly fitting for the loudest drummer I've ever heard.

JOHN LEVER'S SECOND SKIN
THE IDEA FOR THIS PROJECT CAME ABOUT THROUGH CONSTANTLY BEING ASKED THE QUESTION" WILL THE CHAMELEONS EVER REFORM?", AND NEW FANS OF THE BAND SAYING THEY WISH THEYD GOT A CHANCE TO SEE THE BAND LIVE!, AND DOWN TO BAND POLITICS , I KNEW THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, SO, I DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, AND WITH MY NEW BAND WE STARTED REHEARSING THE SONGS FOR THIS PROJECT, WE ARE NOW AT THE STAGE WHERE WE FEEL WE CAN DO THIS SET LIVE, AND SO ON THE 19TH OF SEPTEMBER WE WILL PLAY LIVE AT MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3 ,PERFORMING A SET COMPRISING OF SONGS FROM THE BANDS FIRST 3 STUDIO ALBUMS FROM 82-87, THE WILL ALSO HAVE VISUALS RELATED TO THE BANDS EARLY CAREER. HOPE YOU CAN MAKE IT DOWN TO THIS EVENT
TA. JOHN.
X

Within a couple of days Bushart's manager has written to me and asked for my opinion. Part of me doesn't want to get involved but it's a can of worms that won't go away (a few days later Andy Clegg will ask me the same question and get much the same answer) - this is a slightly edited version of my response; I don't claim to speak for "Chameleons fans", "the Manchester music press" or anyone but myself, but I think it's worth publishing here because this is one of those issues that does tend to get people a bit hot under the collar.

I have never believed that the performance of music is anyone's exclusive domain. I personally don't go watching covers / tribute bands because it's not my taste in entertainment (much as many other things like ballet and cricket aren't) but nor do I have a problem with their existence and the entertainment they provide to many - and of course their valuable role in prividing a cash cow for venues which would otherwise struggle to support new original bands. Music is entertainment, and sometimes people seem to lose sight of this. So it stands to reason that I believe any musician has the right to perform music they were directly involved in and indeed to earn money from their past work.

I had no issue with Mark Burgess playing Chameleons and The Sun And The Moon songs at his solo gigs and see absolutely no difference between him doing so and John doing so. Some might carp that it's not right for a man who isn't Mark to be singing those songs, but John's drumming was as much a part of the Chameleons / TSATM sound. So long as neither of them go round calling themselves The Chameleons when they're not, that's fine. And neither of them have. There is, however, a certain minority faction of old-school Chameleons fans who are rather possessive about "their" band, and can't quite get their heads round the fact it's not 1985 any more. Some of these people still blame Mark (and to a possibly lesser extent John) for the band's original split, and despise on "principle" anything he does which they feel is "disrespectful" to the band's legacy. By the same token some will probably level the same criticism at John. I can appreciate that they may not personally wish to see the songs of a band they loved performed by one ex-member and other people: I didn't go and watch The Wedding Present on their 2007 "George Best" 20th Anniversary tour because only David Gedge remains from the line-up that made my favourite album of 1987 and given that Peter Solowka's guitar sound defined the band's early days at least as much as Gedge's vocals it wasn't going to be the band I knew and loved back then. But I'd never have said he shouldn't do it, and hundreds of people enjoyed those gigs.

It's interesting - and bordering on irony - that the harshest critics of ex-members of long-split bands performing their old songs are often the same people who live their whole musical lives in the past, only going to see bands from 20 or 30 years ago and taking no interest in anything new. Me I've always been more interested in the here and now. I delight in seeing new bands, equally I love Half Man Half Biscuit and their reluctance to stand still even after 25 years. I'm not really that big on nostalgia acts of any flavour. In terms of band reunions The Chameleons pulled it off remarkably well, although ironically it was splitting up again before things got tired which saved them from becoming a self-tribute act.

In his own Myspace blog, Mark Burgess assures fans that "Reg (Smithies, ex Chameleons guitarist) and I are completely supportive" (of John's and Bushart's plans). The implication of course being that Dave (Fielding, other ex Chameleons guitarist) might not be. This is not for me to say, although it's common knowledge that it was the rift between Mark and Dave which blew The Chameleons apart both in 1987 and 2003; it's a rift which, sadly, time has very much not healed although I don't know what his feelings are about John. Equally John is probably aware that this new venture might attract a fair bit of vitriol but it goes beyond personal opinion - John Lever has every right to perform his old songs, and if you don't like it don't go, simple as that. I look forward to watching it as a one-off nostalgia show, but don't expect me to be there every night if they tour; I've got far too many bands to see on a limited budget of time and money as it is.

The legacy for me of the Chameleons' all too brief reunion is that you should never take a favourite band for granted because you never know how long you'll have them for. On the middle weekend of April last year, as the fifth anniversary shit started flying, I was off on another away trip, laughing about all the pettiness with a fellow longtime Chameleons fan in Dublin. The object of this particular away trip was 2008's first headline dates for Maps.

It was a little over a year since I had first seen the band who had subsequently risen to the top of my list; I saw them 15 times throughout 2007 although by the end of their autumn tour I was already wishing I'd made a few more dates - a London midweek I could have driven to and from with a couple of cans of Red Bull down me; one at my beloved Cologne Gebaeude-9 where an attack of carbon-guilt stopped me booking Easyjet's 99p each way special offer. I should have just planted some trees or something. In 2008 I was determined not to miss a single gig - I wasn't far off; they played just six times and I made five. Three of which were great, one a bit under par, and one absolutely stunning. The latter, of course, was their headline set in the Sonic Cathedral barn at Truck Festival - the undisputed gig of the year for me. (See Live Review Of 2008 post). It ended with the announcement that it would be their last gig of the year, but I felt it was more than that. When you truly love a band you half know. Sitting backstage in a venue in Hamburg in November 2002 I half knew I would never see my beloved Chameleons perform together again. As my good friend and touring companion Ernst and I said our goodbyes to the exhausted band and drove away through the freezing fog of a German winter night, the feeling that we were driving away from so much more than a gig was unspoken. But it was there. And nearly seven years later, saying another set of goodbyes round the back of a pig barn on an Oxfordshire farm, I could feel it again.

The five piece 2007-8 Maps were one hell of a live band. On a good night in a decent venue they made the most awesomely immense sound imaginable; on a not-so-good night with a rubbish sound set-up (*ahem* Sheffield Plug *ahem*, and no, not been back since... I just wish I had been there when supports Ulrich Schnauss and Exit Calm's Rob Marshall, normally two of the most placid individuals in music, apparently came close to strangling the venue's soundman - who was apparently fired soon afterwards...) they were still pretty good. I had the privilege of sharing a few slightly raucous nights out with them. But it was always the case - even if it was easy to forget sometimes - that Maps was and is a one man operation; the four amazing musicians who helped to bring it to life effectively session players. By early 2008 James Chapman was writing what would become his now fairly imminent second album, and had stuck a few rough demos up online. He was clearly heading in a very different musical direction; in a mini interview for my blog's review of 2007 he had cited Stephan Bodzin's "Liebe Ist" as album of the year and major influence on his work in progress. It is an incredible album, but it was a long way from the Maps 2007 sound; it's a kind of minimalist yet cinematically atmospheric techno symphony (and indeed my weapon of choice for tackling long overnight motorway journeys). By the time of Maps' 2008 gigs there were at least a couple of new tracks completed, but they never made it into the set.

After a period of public silence, there have recently been a few blog updates on the Maps myspace page, a couple of tasters of his work in progress (the first single's out on 11th May) and announcement of the first dates with his new live line-up. It's exciting stuff. Much like British Sea Power's on-paper insane decision to follow up their most commercially successful album with a largely instrumental post-rock soundtrack to a 1938 film ("Man Of Aran", released 25th May - yep, May's looking rather good isn't it!), I love it when artists put what they want to do ahead of what anyone else might be expecting. Elsewhere this week I read that Klaxons, the band who scooped that 2007 Mercury prize that anyone with an ounce of taste knows should have been Maps', have been forced to re-record large parts of their second album because it was too strange; that they agreed to this says all you need to know about them and artistic integrity. Me I can't wait to see the new Maps in live action at the end of May, but at the same time I raise a glass to Ben, Phil, Matt and Andy and to 20 great gigs in 2007 and 2008. All the best wherever you may be now lads. Maps v2009 plays Liverpool Sound City in mid-May, and you'll read about it here I hope.

So... things move on. And this year the middle weekend of April sees more threads running through the past, present and future. On Saturday, Music For Aborigines are playing a gig at Retro Bar. It will be the first time in over 20 years that they've performed under this name. Sometime in the 80s they released a single called "Sitting On A Biscuit" which featured John Lever on drums, and soon after, in the wake of The Chameleons' split, guitarists Andy Clegg and Andy Whitaker joined with Lever and Mark Burgess to form The Sun And The Moon. Also appearing will be The 66, a bright and energetic bunch of kids from Warrington whose music recalls a past they're not even old enough to remember. Sunday we're heading up to Newcastle to watch Exit Calm, currently putting the finishing touches to their debut album - and it's been a long time coming for the three quarters of the band who started out as Lycasleep and for the fans, ourselves included, who used to go watching them all over back then. It would be nice and fitting if that Sheffield Maps support had been the first time I'd seen them as Exit Calm but it was actually the second. Then Monday, time to remember another band I saw a load of times back in those immediate post-Chameleons days of 2003 and 04; a five-piece with a crazy loose cannon of a keyboard player and percussionist. They were British Sea Power, and for the most part still are; he was Eamon Hamilton and - whilst you wouldn't necessarily have guessed as much when he was ricocheting around venues in a tin helmet and underpants - a brilliant singer-songwriter in his own right. Brakes' debut album was seen largely as a side project and enjoyed mostly - at least at first - by fans of British Sea Power and his bandmates' alma mater Electric Soft Parade; their second saw Eamon now a full-time Brake and wider acclaim; their third is almost ready to drop and many fans are only vaguely aware of his past. Before all that, Thursday sees a visit to Ashton Witchwood, a venue significent in Chameleons folklore for being the scene of their first five gigs of the reunion era, back in May 2000, and a good few more over the two years that followed. But first to Leeds, and some unfinished business...

In the last instalment, we visited Caernarfon with Daniel Land And The Modern Painters. The gig had been arranged by local band Yucatan, although sadly tonsillitis meant they were unable to play themselves on the night. However by the return fixture on Tuesday 7th April they're fit and well, so whilst I am hardly short of opportunities to see Daniel's band in Manchester I really want to see Yucatan and being me I'm not prepared to wait until they visit Manchester. It's always nice, too, to visit a new venue and Oporto is a fantastic bar close to the station whose only slight oddity is that the stage area backs directly onto the front plate glass windows, so you watch the bands with cars, buses and passers-by as a backdrop in a way that's vageuly reminisnect of Robyn Hitchcock's "Storefront" film.

First on are Black Diamond Bay, a band who occupy a space somewhere between dance-pop and upbeat electro-indie (although they describe themselves as electro-folk), between "alternative" (whatever that actually means) and mainstream. Cited and obvious influences include the likes of Basement Jaxx, Moloko, Zero 7, Lemon Jelly, Morcheeba - sort of contemporary adult pop. Not really my thing but done well, and with plenty of commercial potential if they can tap into the right places. The fact that they have already appeared on Hollyoaks (as themselves, playing a gig, whilst the character playing their manager did the dirty on someone) implies they've made some headway here.

Yucatan are nine-strong; they don't just have a violinist, they have a string section. And a trumpeter. Mainman Dilwyn Llwyd is an affable lad in a bobble-hat which is not removed for the duration of the set which immediately reminds me of Icelandic bands like Mum and Seabear, which turns out to be not massively wide of the mark musically as well. He's also clearly a man with vision, think Jason Pierce or Greg "Flowers Of hell" Jarvis, assembling a deep squad to ensure faithful recreation of their expansive musical ideas - and again, those are sonic siblings. This is lush, orchestrated space-pop which builds into great post-rock towers, scattered lightly with vocals only when they are needed, and mostly in Welsh which here in England gives them that kind of Sigur Ros "no idea what they're on about but it sounds beautiful" thing. They don't play much outside of their homeland but luckily for Manchester types have tow gigs coming up here - Dry Bar on 21st May and Canteen at Chorlton Abode on 6th June - take that as a massive recommendation.

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters are here tonight in five-piece mode due to the ongoing saga of Marcus's finger (stitches are out, I believe) leaving the more than capable Jason Magee in charge of the drum kit. You really don't need to hear any more from me about this band, so I'll steal a quote off Leedsmusicscene forum: "The Modern Painters said that they ideally want Robin Guthrie to produce their first album. Since they have 3 guitarists who already sound like him I'm not sure what kind of creative input he would have." The poster meant this in a good way, and whilst the crowd has dwindled a little those left are all well into it. It's strange; when I am out watching a band close to my heart I notice this more, the number of people who - especially at free or cheap gigs - only turn up to see the band they specifically came for; I don't really understand it as you never know what you might be missing. Note to self - instigate "National Go And Watch The Other Bands Week" at some point when time permits. Possibly sometime around 2011 then. In the meantime, just do it...

Thursday it's the first venture for a while over to Ashton Witchwood. When we first started coming to gigs here the pub stood on a traditional terraced street; houses either side, and a clutch of rather down-at-heel looking takeaways over the road. Five or six years ago it stood strong as windows of neighbouring buildings were boarded up; the bulldozers moved in, and for a couple of years the area was a derelict wasteground. One out-of-town band visiting for the first time in early 2006 told me how they thought they'd made some dreadful mistake as their van pulled up to the only building left standing amongst the rubble. Shortly after that there were hoardings, signs of building work, and now it's all shiny new offices and a massive new health centre. Those far-flung Chameleons fans who made the pilgrimage in 2000 wouldn't recognise the place now, but inside the venue little has changed. The number of times it was days away from being bulldozed, in these times of legendary venues all over the country falling victim to redevelopments of various kinds just being here is a cause for celebration.

No Tokyo, too, are survivors. Way back in 2005 I reported for MM on a "band with great potential" but life moves quickly when you're 17 and 18 and within a year or two it had pretty much fallen apart. But they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that certainly seems true of the band in front of us tonight. Still younger than a lot of bands just starting out they've spent their time wisely, honing their sound into something that still wears the badges of their influences but has very much started to transcend them. Take the opening "Ego Healer" - it starts as a drifting psychedelic groove with space-cadet proclamations for vocals, so not a million miles from early Verve. But then this incredible prog guitar solo slips in there, as one person watching the band for the first time says "like The Chameleons crossed with Yes" - we're not sure we can actually imagine that, although it'd probably have pretty tripped out sleeve art. "Pearl" is a much looser take on stoner pop - psychedelia you can dance to with echoes of Madchester, whilst "Meander" has that midnight summer feel of solo Ian Brown at his best. Another new tune has much bigger ambitions, Verve now on a Pink Floyd trip - in fact all the newer songs outshine the older ones which is a pretty good place for any band to be in. As is The Witchwood tonight: "Passion in Ashton!" shouts singer Daz as it comes to an end; the thing is he's not wrong, a small working-class town on the eve of a four day weekend means there's a decent and already quite well-oiled audience and whilst many have come to see the headliners they're happy to give the support some deserved attention.

Survivors of a different kind, The Uzual Suspectz were almost nipped in the bud by the theft of all their gear sometime last year. Genuinely skint and working-class as opposed to simply wearing such things as a badge, they eventually got back on track and even got a song out of it. This is a band who have built up a following (and a pretty big one at that, with the 200-ish capacity venue packed from front to back) off the radar, through word-of-mouth, Myspace and internet TV show "Our House" - and are now at the point where the spiritually similar Frazer King were this time last year, ready to step up. Their genre-clash doesn't spread quite as widely as the Wythenshawe boys but then few bands do; The Uzual Suspectz brew up with rough-edged urban white soul, laced with indie and hip-hop influences. The latter comes through in the way they carry themselves - head-shaved Adidas boys with a faint air of football terrace menace - and with the live old-school genuine vinyl scratching; the indie bit in the strums of an acoustic guitar. The whole is a kind of downbeat, lo-fi Stereo MCs; and the scratching really comes into its own on slower tunes such as "Day By Day" where it makes a nice change from a keyboard in the old "additional instrument" stakes.

The best parts of the set are those where they push boundaries the furthest: "Grimesville" sees the singer take a step back in favour of a couple of young rappers, one black and one white, trading lines over a kind of organic acoustic- guitar-led grime hip hop which goes down a storm with the crowd; the only complaint being the singer's "None of you bought me a drink you bastards" when he returns to the stage. Meanwhile "Second To Spare" towards the end blends trip hop beats, Mondays guitar, brooding world-weary vocals and a dark psychedelic overtone. Back then to that robbery tale -"Take The Lot" is effectively their theme tune: part autobiography, part manifesto, part rabble rouser and even namechecks sometime mentor "Guitar" George Borowski whose loan of a guitar allowed them to continue. It's a great tune and should probably have been saved for the encore, except for all their onstage confidence they're not arrogant enough to assume they'll earn one. They do, and the more upbeat northern-soul flavoured new tune they showcase in it points to a band worth keeping an eye on.

Friday could not really be more of a contrast. Pull Yourself Together have over the past year established themselves as Manchester's leading proponents of all things unashamedly Twee, and Good Friday sees them take over the Black Lion alongside the mysterious It Sounded Better In My Head for an evening of Proper Old-Fashioned Indie. Free fanzines and cakes are part of the deal in this valiant attempt to recreate the golden days of C86; I'm half surprised none of the bands are actually selling cassettes of their work.

Pocketbooks - whose indie credentials go as far as to be involved with the organisation of Indietracks, a summer festival of alternative pop held on a 50s steam railway - even hark back to the sound of those semi-mythical times. Specifically Talulah Gosh, the indiest of all the mid-80s janglers. Their songs are upbeat, sugar-and-spice nuggets of perfect pop with warm keyboard lines and boy-girl vocals shared in a rather sweet way, sometimes finishing lines for each other, sometimes in sunny harmonies. Tunes, of course, always go exactly where they should, and they're even indie-twee when they're trying to sell us something... "if you want to know who got the words wrong in that last song, we've got albums at the back..."

First thoughts on catching sight of The Bobby McGees: god help us if there's a war. Gentleman Jimmy McGee's conmbat jacket is customised with brightly colored brocades whilst Missy Eleanor seems to have come as Alice In Wonderland. They have tinsel on their mic stands and do not appear to possess any adult-sized instruments - a ukulele, melodica and a really tiny banjo thing that probably has a proper name being the sum total of their arsenal. Even these are used only sparingly - they take lo-fi to quite astonishing extremes, singing large parts of their set of fast-paced dayglo weirdy-pop mostly unaccompanied. Or in one case, accompanied by the sight of Jimmy blowing bubbles. Sample tune: "Bambi Eyes", a bickering scrap about her coming home too late that sounds like The Shop Assistants busking with The Pastels. A bloke comes up from downstairs collecting glasses and his face is a picture - a picture which quite specifically says "This has got to be a piss take." It's not, although gentle digs at themselves and their ilk are scattered throughout, not least in the song about two indie kids with no friends going down the indie disco looking for love but they're both too crap to get it on.

The Loves are slightly older hands at this indie business, old enough to have counted John Peel as a fan and recorded four sessions, and to have got through almost 30 members in their nine years - both of which have earned them the tag "The Fall of the Cardiff indie scene" from one webzine. The one constant throughout has been mainman Simon Love, immaculately attired in the sort of polka-dot shirt and black jacket that looked 60s-retro when jangly-spec Primal Scream were wearing them 20 years ago, who also has a frankly bizarre line in between-song rambling. Not unexpectedly they deal in classic three-minute pop: a bit bubblegum, a bit dirty, inspired by the Beach Boys, Velvet Underground and all who came afterwards, with some tunes cheekily pilfered almost wholesale from the annals of pop history. We've ticked off "Wipeout" and "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" before deciding that it really doesn't matter and there are only so many tunes in the world anyway, and the fact that they're a bit crap kind of adds to the whole charm of the thing.

Before the evening is over, I've received a text from one of the PYT promoters which simply reads "Cath was found dead in the Black Lion, the autopsy reads Death By Twee" - well not quite, although I admit I could use a shot of nasty industrial electro right now just to even things up a bit. But people will always love the shambly, lo-fi sound of traditional indie-pop, and you have to admire these people's dedication to their musical love.

Saturday I am officially out with my mates and off duty, but by steering even those who don't fancy live music into Retro Bar I can slip downstairs and watch a couple of bands at the Red@Retro night - clever eh? It has, after all, been quite a while since Music For Aborigines played a gig. Put it this way, most members of The 66 were probably still sperm at that point. An odd billing at first then, but one that works.

It works because what Music For Aborigines are doing is timeless enough not to just sound like your dad if you're 20, well unless your dad was pretty damn cool. Songs like "Singing September Song" and "Kink In Your Plan" are the sort of North Western contemporary adult indie that sells by the truckload when people like Doves only a few years younger than these men do it, whilst their one single "Sitting On A Biscuit" is very much of its time (mid to late 80s) in a still-sounds-good Bunnymen / Mighty Lemon Drops sort of way. And looking at the set list I wish I could remember what "Pathetical Twat" sounds like, but top marks for the title.

The 66 meanwhile are old heads on very young shoulders; their influence list includes a load of the old stalwarts (Primal Scream, Stone Roses, The Verve, Oasis, Sex Pistols, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, BRMC) which is, I have to say, not normally an attraction for me - but there is nobody right now who does this as well as they do. Because with The 66, those influences are just that - influences. Not sources to be plundered wholesale. It's as much about the spirit of the thing as the sound. The sound is unashamedly traditional indie rock'n'roll, albeit with some very good original songs, but the spirit? Every time they play, they give it 100 per cent. And if the stylings are based on times past, the words are very much a product of their own time. They have a song called "City Of Culture", a great pile of hard baggy bluesy groove about getting attacked one night walking round Liverpool. "This one always goes down better in Manchester than Liverpool" comments singer Daniel Rimmer - ah yes, the old Warrington band thing, caught between the two and acknowledged with their Myspace location as "No Mans Land, Northwest United Kingdom". They end on the brilliant "Firefly" with Daniel out stalking the crowd with a long lead mic that reminds me of Ian Brown the first time I saw the Stone Roses, just before they got too big to really do that. It's twenty past one in the morning. This band just make me want to be 19 again, they feel so fucking alive.

Sunday is officially cancelled, and not just because we were up til stupid o'clock watching The 66. Exit Calm have pulled the Newcastle gig, which is a shame. Apparently Nicky Smith has lost his voice. He really needs to start looking after himself a bit. On the plus side, I do get to hear some rather tasty work-in-progress from the forthcoming Daniel Land And The Modern Painters album. Which I can already say is something worth looking forward to... and Monday it's been a whole nine days since I was in Ruby Lounge, better pop in and let them know I'm still alive...

The Voluntary Butler Scheme, as he explains, is really called Rob. Rob I can't remember what, although he did tell us - "and then I got a band, but now I haven't got a band..." but decided to keep the name - which is at least one you won't forget in a hurry. Tonight he's a one man band operating with that essential piece of modern-day one-man-band kit the loopy thing, playing very English quirk-pop with shades of The Kinks, The Divine Comedy and the music hall. And whilst his full (one man) band numbers might involve a guitar or drum machine ("I'll do another no-mates machine song") and at the end even gets into a small drumkit, where he really comes into his own is when it's just him and the piano, which he plays with the sort of laid-back virtuoso feel of a lounge singer whilst singing rather offbeat lyrics. Sound familiar? It will do if you're a fan of Aidan Smith - the line "if you were broccoli I'd turn vegetarian for you" could easily have been one of his. Luckily there does appear to be space for two offbeat lounge-indie piano poets in the world, and you can't help but smile at lines like "wear a De La Soul T-shirt once in a while to make you feel more hip-hop than you really are" - indeed he himself likes that one so much he sells T-shirts with it on. Which begs the question, would one wear a Voluntary Butler Scheme T-shirt once in a while to feel more quirky than you really are?

Brakes have been to the pub. Now I might have seen Brakes maybe once or twice when they're not demonstrating varying levels of inebriation, but I can't remember many. This time, they tell us, they've been checking out the delights of Mother Macs, a somewhat unreconstructed hostelry round the back of the Roadhouse somewhere even most people from Manchester have never ventured into, and singer Eamon Hamilton and guitarist Tom White have got the giggles before they've even played a note. Good start. No space suit this time round though - "after a week of wearing that thing it just reeked of rotting piss..." - possibly too much information there, Eamon. Brakes are the perfect antidote to anyone who takes this pop music lark too seriously. "I've got a 'lectric guitar and half a bottle of warm beer, I've got some funny ideas about what sounds good" - the opening lines to tonight's set, originally written by indie stalwarts Camper Van Beethoven, but it could be Brakes' manifesto, kicking off a mammoth 27 song set-list which will, of course, take about an hour to get through. They've got three albums' worth of material to go at, after all - the remarkable thing being that there's not one dull moment.

The magic formula is that nearly all of Brakes' own songs lie somewhere in a golden triangle between Camper Van et al's glorious punky indie pop, Johnny Cash's more upbeat moments (his barnstorming "Jackson", which they covered on their first album, pops up later) and The Jesus And Mary Chain (they've also covered them in the past, but not tonight). And they excel at all of them. The bright little bittersweet country tunes "On Your Side" and "and "If I Should Die Tonight" are just so perfect you wonder how it took pop music 50 years to come up with them, whilst energetic bursts such as "Cease & Desist", "Hey Hey" and "Porcupine Or Pineapple" manage to be thrashy punk and brilliant pop without ever sounding like the frequently rubbish genre that is "punk-pop". During the latter Tom launches a pineapple into the crowd, which probably contravenes the small print of some health and safety document somewhere, but nobody cares because despite being a fairly regular occurrence during said song it's still really funny.

Tom is quite capable of playing pretty much any instrument a band might require, and is outstandingly prolific across a wide range of other bands and genres, but in Brakes he always comes across like a slightly hyperactive and naughty kid, thrusting his guitar around like a toy gun and fluffing intros by making his bandmates laugh. And indeed everyone else. "This is a new song, it's quite long so if you want to go to the bar..." yes, they've even made a new addition to their legendary arsenal of songs that last ten seconds or less. "Consumer, Producer, A Chicken Or An Egg” last as long as it takes Eamon to scream the title. And yet the band are also capable of remarkable poignancy - "No Return" (which isn't even on that 27 song set list, but gets played anyway after a request from the crowd) is an overwhelmingly sad elegy to a lost relationship which makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Only Brakes could follow this with a four-second nonsense thrash about punctuation ("Comma Comma Comma Full Stop") and get away with it. Only Brakes would even think of this. Which is why they're still probably the best all-round pop band in Britain.

Thursday 16th through til Monday 20th was probably the most insane weekend of my life. Even by the aforementioned mid-April standards, this was messy. As I said, there will be reports elsewhere, and I'm still trying to process it all, but here are some pictorial highlights...

Every band who has ever done a European tour has a photo of them looking confused in the rain at a service station in Belgium. This is ours.

Air Cav in Leiden

Daniel Land chilling pre-soundcheck outside the venue. No, really. This is SUB071 (regular haunt of Calvin Party, incidentally, who return mid-June) and it might just be the second best venue in the world...

Air Cav onstage, SUB071

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters onstage, SUB071

Graeme Meikle, Modern Painters guitarist and tour driver extraordinaire, attempting to get large orange van through very small space in hippies' fence without being distracted by half-dressed hippy lady.

Me and my car - the overspill vehicle - outside Groningen Vera, which might just be the best venue in the world

Daniel and Graeme onstage at Vera

Air Cav then acquire insane Dutch temporary percussionist...

This could have got a lot more messy than it did, thankfully...

And somehow everyone gets back alive.

From a fan point of view both bands are on spectacular form right now. You can see Daniel Land And The Modern Painters at Dry Bar next Thursday (30th) with the excellent Insect Guide, whilst Air Cav play Night & Day on 9th May and then rather excitingly support Sonic Cathedral's latest wonderful discovery Sad Day For Puppets at Blowout (Chorlton Irish Club) on 20th May. All in all, it's yet another mid-April away trip that'll be with me for a very long time, to which 2003 and 2008 were steps along the way. I'm still buzzing three days later.

I probably shouldn't go out again for the rest of the week, but The Veils are on at Ruby Lounge and it's been ages since I saw them, and besides, I've kind of missed my second home. That Brakes gig feels like weeks ago. I'm too tired to think about reviewing and pay in. Support Sandbox mostly pass me by, apart from noting the rather caveman-like drumming technique.

Last time The Veils played in Manchester, singer Finn Andrews did not exactly look a picture of health. Legendarily volatile (he fired his entire band after the first album), he had us worried. And whilst it's true that the recent third album is less cathartic and angry than the first two, it's still a surprise to see him looking... cheerful? Chatty even. At this point I have heard the new album just three times, and most of the set seems drawn from it. It's a quieter, more introspective thing than the first two; a few tracks sung quietly from the piano (which would have been a lot more enjoyable had there not been some idiots having loud conversations behind us - thanks for that). It is the sound of someone a lot older than his 25 years, or someone who has seen genuine darkness and somehow learnt to live with it. Interestingly, when I had it on in the car somewhere in Europe someone who hadn't heard of the band before dismissed them after three tracks as "trying to sound like Jeff Buckley". And there is certainly an element of similar ground there, but I don't think Finn is trying to sound like anyone but himself.

It's the encore before we heard anything from the first album, Finn half-joking that the band don't know that material; as it is, "The Tide That Left And Never Came Back" still stands as one of the greatest singles of the decade, even if that, too, has a darker and more poignant feel to it now. They end on another quiet one and the idiots still don't shut up.

I tried to post this on Wednesday, but failed due to Myspace having removed the picture posting button from their blog entry form. Quite why they would do this I have no idea, and this blog is brought to you by manual HTML, a pain in the arse if ever there was one. Bring it back! Since then I've been to see 65daysofstatic - I last saw them either side of that Maps Ireland weekend a year ago, which is a pretty long gap for one of my favourite bands - oddly it seems a lot longer than just a year ago. That, and Friday's Puressence gig in Leigh (back to back sell out shows for the excellent TJ Events) will be reported at some point. Probably on MM in a day or two. And then the gig season proper gets underway - May sees Live At Leeds, Sounds From the Other City, Liverpool Sound City (at which Air Cav have just comfirmed for the Saturday - more details soon) and Brighton Great Escape... I love it when there are more gigs than days in a month. I might een have some time to write about them - we'll see.

LINKS

http://www.myspace.com/blackdiamondbaymusic
http://www.myspace.com/yucatanambyth
http://www.myspace.com/danielland

http://www.myspace.com/uzualsuspectz
http://www.myspace.com/notokyo

http://www.myspace.com/pullyourselftogethermcr
http://www.myspace.com/pocketbooks
http://www.myspace.com/thebobbymcgees
http://www.myspace.com/lovetheloves

http://www.myspace.com/weaveworld (MFA)
http://www.myspace.com/the66uk

http://www.myspace.com/thevoluntarybutlerscheme
http://www.myspace.com/brakesband

http://www.myspace.com/aircavmusic
http://www.myspace.com/danielland
http://www.myspace.com/sub071

http://www.myspace.com/theveils