No Bounds Festival 2024 – a review

I spent the weekend at No Bounds Festival in Sheffield, marvelling at the splendour of the city's cathedral and revelling in the raves held in its grubby old factories.

This was my second trip to the festival. You can read my review below. What I didn't include is I treated myself to a hotel room with a proper veranda, I trilled with delight when I crossed its spooky Cobweb Bridge, and I had a smashing time having a pint with my mate Lee.

Also you can see me in one of the photos on the Electronic Sound website. See if you can spot me. It's like Where's Wally with emphasis on the wally.

I sit at a picnic bench in the cold night air. Surrounding me is a cluster of industrial buildings, and inside each of these is a rave. Dirty techno rhythms pulse from inside, and the windows dance with colour. In the relative peace of this outdoor smoking area, a student called Chris joins me and exchanges pleasantries. He tells me about the DJs he has seen here and the DJs he wants to see. In turn, I preach about the strange sounds I heard in the cathedral, and I ask if he is going to chapel on Sunday. He does not flinch. This is No Bounds Festival. It is no ordinary rave...

Continue reading my review on the Electronic Sound website^ – including the stunning full photograph by James Ward featured above

Hitting the Sweet Spot and not going to the circus

What is word? How is sentence? How grammar work does it?

I'm glad you've brought those questions to me, a literary genius. 

Alongside blogging for the past gazillion years, I also like to tell stories. I've not written much this past year due to general apocalypse concerns: it's amazing how much headspace is taken up by a constant low-level of panic. I'm keen to get back into it. The writing, that is, not the panic.

Arts organisation Spot On Lancashire has a series called Spot On Shorts, where professional writers, storytellers and actors make short films to impress you with their narrative, poetic and artistic wizardry. I was born in Lancashire – just: they renamed it Greater Manchester when I was seven months old – so I was delighted to get involved.

My contribution was released today and is called The Sweet Spot. I won't spoil the story for you, but I can tell you it was inspired by (a) eating too much during lockdown and (b) not going to the circus during lockdown. Not that I went to the circus much anyway. Hardly ever, in fact. Anyway, shut up and watch The Sweet Spot (watch it on my video page if you want to browse more of my gubbins).

That's a real helmet, by the way. Honest.

I want to do more story things this year, more narrative oddities with my stupid cartoons, and more performances in actual real rooms. If you're planning an event that you want improved / enlightened / confused / ruined with my mad entertainment skills, then get in touch. My email address is next to Lionel Richie at the bottom of my About page.

As Covid restrictions ease, venues will re-awaken like neon-lit kraken. I've missed the terrifi— er, I mean, entertained looks on audience's faces in the heat of performance. In fact, there won't be long to wait because, as long as regulations allow, I'll be appearing on the bill at Pride Trafford's Making Waves: Queer Edition on May 22nd alongside especially commissioned works from Cheddar Gorgeous and Jason Andrew Guest.

What is word? Eggs. How is sentence? Verb-handles. How grammar work does it? Absolutely jackson. I'm glad I could clear that up for you.

Fat Roland at the Garden Fringe — at a distance

On Saturday, I took some crack. Some sweet, sweet crack. 

At least, that's what it felt like. I performed 20 minutes of comedy at the first Garden Fringe event. It's a new post-lockdown project where people put on shows in socially-distanced back gardens.

We were in a suburban garden (location only known to ticket-holders). There was a garden bar and shed toilets and it was all kinds of fun. I was on a bill with comedians Danny Sutcliffe, Allyson June Smith, who I thought included the overlooking neighbours brilliantly, and compere Dave Williams. 

My last performance had been at Leeds Lit Fest for Tales of Whatever in March, which seems like forever ago. I'd forgotten how much I need to perform. Big emphasis on the word NEED: there was a wild look in my eyes as I typed that. Although my knowledge of crack is limited to its usage by characters in 1990s postmodern fiction and the television comedy Peep Show, I'd image this is what crack addiction feels like. It's very "moreish," as that bloke in Peep Show said.

And the gig was a sell-out too! Admittedly, the limited capacity helped to achieve that, as we all still had leave enough space for the virus not to attack us. But it quickly became clear that, with a lack of shows around at the moment, audiences are really keen for local, safe entertainment. I suspect there will be many more shows like this.

As a matter of record, here's some notes for my set, which is all a bit coded, and it's really for me to look back on this first post-corona gig at some point in the future.

My set: Eel-vis Presley, socially-distanced pop stars, put on the hat, gay nose, record shop prices, pop star envelopes, more nose, pop music maths, knight meets dragon, puppy competition, even more nose, book of friendship, eggs, last bit of nose. (Gig also contained a dig at Daft Punk about which I am thoroughly ashamed.)

Loads of people have got in touch with the Garden Fringe already, and you should too if you have I have a suitable show, a suitable garden, or would like to attend events. It's a good crack.

Further Fats: Fly my pretty: a performance set list (2016)

Further Fats: All posts about my Seven Inch show (2017–2019)

The quarantine raves: Top one, nice one, get Covid?

A bunch of people in Greater Manchester went raving last night. 

This would not normally be news because, as we all know, 100% of people in Manchester are raving 100% of the time.

However, these raves happened in the middle of the pandemic, and it's kinda not okay. A tonne of party-goers descended on two sites in Trafford and Oldham for 'quarantine raves'. Several videos on Snapchat caught lots of revellers half-heartedly swaying to fairly commercial dance music. 

In the aftermath, Warehouse Project founder Sacha Lord slammed them as "morons" and "selfish idiots", while local volunteers collected over 200 bin bags of rubbish from the mess they had left behind. He's right. Top one, nice one, get Covid? If you went to one of the raves last night, you're a wrong 'un.

I understand the need to be at events like this. Hold on. Let me clarify. I wouldn't be caught dead at crappy park raves where WKD-glugging drones cheer as the DJ drops Get Lucky. But I do get the need to go to places with speaker stacks banging out tunes; to feel the heat of the bodies, the music and the lukewarm sweat dripping off the ceiling. I miss clubbing.

But surely us ravers can keep our glow-sticks in our pants for a bit longer? The more these Superdry-wearing sub-Parklife plonkers go to illegal raves like this, inevitably spreading the virus because that's how viruses work, the longer the rest of us wait until we don our party pants. And the longer the club industry will take to recover.

It has also occurred to me that if Covid hangs around for a long time, we may never go raving again. We'll have to go to clubs in human-size hamster balls, zorbing our orbs against each other like a kinky lottery machine. It sounds weirdly appealing, but raising our hands in the air like we just don't care is going to be a logistical nightmare.

I can cope with people protesting in large numbers for #BlackLivesMatter, because that is about a threat that is every bit as immediate as this pesky virus. If you disagree with that sentence and you're white, you've just proved the need for #BlackLivesMatter. But a bunch of rave babies dancing to low-rent wedding reception dance music because they feel stronger than the virus? No thanks. 

It's like they listened to the chorus of Rozalla's Everybody's Free without paying attention to the verse: "We are a family that should stand together as one / Helping each other instead of just wasting time." Together is a metaphor: that means staying home, you clubbing Covidiots. Also, I bet that was the only track the DJs had: just Rozalla over and over again.

If you want to support Greater Manchester clubbing instead of frightening a bunch of hedgehogs in a field in the middle of the night, then support United We Stream.

Edit: Since posting this, the news story has advanced. In addition to the idiocy of a quarantine rave, there have been some pretty serious crimes at these events. It's pretty depressing reading.

Further Fats: "Short of performing a skiffle set on the grass, we were going to have to pull the show." (2011)

Further Fats: Review – Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (2013)

Lapse dancing: the stories of Manchester clubbers

Maps are great. You can get big paper ones that are difficult to fold, and digital ones that ask you to rate places you've been nowhere near.

The Lapsed Clubber Audio Map is a crowd-sourced map that was launched a few years ago by the Manchester Digital Music Archive. The great thing about this map is it talks to you.

The Map contains audio and text memories of Greater Manchester ravers of their clubbing experiences between 1985 and 1995, easily covering the peak years of rave culture.

I had a pleasant trawl through some of the stories uploaded to the site. Here are some highlights from various clubbers in various venues, appended with my comments because I'm a blabbermouth who wants to make everything about me.

808 State at G-Mex: "It was a hell of a gig for us coming from out of town, us small country people... we heard all the same music that we listened to in the clubs of the back and beyond, but on a massive sound system and with a massive crowd of people."

Growing up in Manchester, it's easy to forget that the city was a bit of a Mecca for people out in the sticks. I went to the Hacienda because it was just down the road – albeit quite a long road. My earliest gig memories were at G-Mex: Radiohead supporting James comes to mind, mainly because it makes me sound cool. I probably went to awful gigs there too.

Tangled at the Phoenix: "It was small and it was dingy and there was sweat dropping off the ceilings... Everyone would end up at the garage at East Lancs getting Ribena, the king of all drinks. That was pretty much my life for about five or six years."

The Phoenix was very sweaty. We're talking Piers Morgan's armpits when he has the guilty sweats, which is all the time. I did my first ever DJing gig in their bar – I was terrible – and I remember grubby acid techno bashes in the club. I worked near the Phoenix and watched its building get knocked down. It's shops now. On warm summer nights, you can still smell the perspiration.

Daft Punk’s first UK live gig: "Daft Punk played live for the first ever time in Britain and played that song [Da Funk]... Still to this day, the B-side Rollin’ & Scratchin’ is the only song I can never listen to without vomiting."

When I saw Daft Punk DJ at Sankeys Soap back in the 1990s, a French stranger tried to roll my torso like plasticine while saying "wide boy, wide boy". I have nothing more to say about Daft Punk.

Devils Dancing: "I had this strange-shaped pill I bought, which actually turned out to be ketamine... These lights were making red shadows and all I could see were these weird devils dancing, in this weird, satanic fire dance, and my friend took me home."

I've always stayed away from the more hallucinogenic end of the drugs spectrum. My imagination has always been vivid and strange: my silly creative activities are my way of pressure-cooking that intensity out of my brain. If I didn't have that kind of release, I really would be seeing red devils all over my walls. For now, I just have slightly muted woodchip.

Dancing at Sankeys Soap: "I felt this body come up behind me and start dancing in the same rhythm as me. It got a little bit too close and so I turned round, not forgetting that I’m off me chops, and it was Zammo from Grange Hill."

So many good nights at Sankeys. And a bad trip that nearly destroyed me. Easy come, easy go. When I took on the name 'Fat Roland', I didn't even think of the Grange Hill connection. I should have gone for something different. Wide Boy, maybe. The forward Frenchman was right. Dammit.

I've plenty of memories of clubbing back in the day, so I really should upload something to the Lapsed Clubber Audio Map. Have a browse, why dontcha.

Further Fats: Store Street blues: waddling with the scrotes, the clubbers and the tokers (2007)

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011) 

Performing Flash Fiction with Fat Roland - a workshop

Some people reading this blog won't have met me. For all you know, I'm some Pringle-guzzling keyboard warrior vomiting words at the internet from a mouldy basement, Family Guy t-shirt slowly rotting from my own sweat.

However, some of you may have seen me in real life, namely on stages around Manchester either performing my own material or compering other people. Prancing around on stage is something I have come to love more and more.

Although I had dabbled previously, performance isn't something I've always done. In fact, it's nearly nine years since I started reading material on stages in earnest, as evidenced by this tweet.

The @BadLanguageMcr anthology launch was packed. I hope @thecastlehotel do it again. Oh and my first ever short story reading went well.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) November 24, 2010

So it's not something that comes naturally: I have spent two-thirds of my adult life quite specifically prancing around on anything other than stages,

My confidence in the spotlight is something I have learned. It comes from observing other performers, both proficient and terrible, from testing the boundaries of what I can do, and from setting myself loads of challenges and rules to become better at what I do.

Yes, rules. I've had loads of them, from how to cope with nerves, how to handle a microphone, and what works best for certain audiences. I made rules, I perfected them, I broke them and now a tonne of that has become muscle memory, making performance feel easier than before.

On November 23rd, I will reveal some tips and tricks on how to be a better performer for LitMacc in 'Performing Flash Fiction with Fat Roland'. The two-hour Saturday afternoon workshop focuses on performing flash fiction (i.e. very short stories), but it'll be a useful workshop for beginners and just-past-beginners on how to be stronger on stage in any context.

Even better, the tickets are really cheap. If you're within a train-jaunt of Macclesfield later this month, do come - tickets here.

Now do excuse me. I need to finish these Pringles because the sweat chemicals on my t-shirt are turning Quagmire's hilarious quote into something quite illegible. *guzzle guzzle guzzle*

Photo: Mark Croasdale

Further Fats: Not much coming up (lie) (2015)

Further Fats: This is what happened on stage tonight (2017)

A very Roland-y night out

I invented some new dance moves last night. This is a list of those dance moves.

The Hip Destroyer
Surprise Jerk
The Mancunian Twitch
Polygon Windowing
The Tragic Octopus
Jackhammer Backflop
The Seven-Fingered Fly Swat
Reverse Moonwalk
The Slow Bez

Why the dancing? I went to the tenth anniversary of the I Love Acid club night. The venue was Hidden, a no-frills warehouse tucked along the banks of the River Irwell. It was a great space with a nicely uncommercial feel. They had triangular speakers (pictured). Star of the night for me was joyful acid-twiddler Ceephax, But Luke Vibert was pretty flipping acid-tastic too.

Luke Vibert being delightfully awkward at @HiddenClubMCR. Loops tripping over themselves, breakbeats scattering across the dancefloor. #acid

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) April 2, 2017

The strangest moment of the night came when I read about the death of Ikutaro Kakehashi. He's the chap who founded the synthesiser company Roland, whose TB-303 unit makes the acid sound techno-heads like me adore. As I read the news on my phone, 303 squelches burst from the speakers and there was a guy next to me wearing a Roland TB-303 brand t-shirt. RIP Ikutaro Kakehashi - without you, I'd just be Fat.

All this came after a trip to the brilliant ARC in Stockton-on-Tees at which I performed a set of cartoon idiocy. Some people on the line-up did proper dancing. There were a load of theatre and venue professionals in the audience - they even gave feedback, which is a pretty flipping rare thing to receive. Thanks to Arcade Platform for letting me be part of that.

So exciting to see new work in progress by the extraordinary @LucaRutherford & hilariously surreal @FatRoland at @arcstockton what a day! X

— paula varjack (@paulavarjack) April 1, 2017

What a day. I'm off to perfect my Mancunian Twitch. Hopefully this time I won't have someone's eye out.

Further Fats: Manchester International Festival: hot, sweaty, dramatic fun (2013)

Further Fats: Fats goes to Herbal Tea Party - a Storify slideshow (2016)

My first time performing in London was-- oh hold on, I just need to pop in here for Rizlas

I spent this weekend in London, hosting a four-hour spoken word stage for Bad Language at Mirrors Festival.

The main thing I've learned about Hackney is there are loads of newsagents. When I was at the Edinburgh Fringe, you had to walk miles to find a single newsagent.

Not here. Literally every shop is a newsagent. You want Softmints, a lighter and Take A Break Puzzler magazine? Come to Hackney.

By the way, the performers and audience last night were amazing. It was a privilege to make my London debut, and proper props to my Bad Language colleague Joe who shared hosting duties.

But back to the newsagents.

I've never seen so many newsagents. The tube station is a newsagent and the trains themselves are dressed up as Smarties with a price sticker on.

Even the people are mini-newsagents. Pick a random pedestrian in Hackney and they'll charge you £1 a week to pin on them an index card advertising cleaning services.

I exaggerate, of course. I saw a mobile phone accessories shop too. Which also sold tabloids, crisps, fizzy drinks, a slightly random selection of stationery, and curiously small £2 bags of chocolate raisins.

So yeah. London debut. It went well. Here's me in action with a pocket full of sherbet lemons.

Curating your life with Toast

I did a ten minute performance on the theme of 'curating your life' at the closure of the Toast art space in central Manchester. At least, I think that's what was happening. I went into the gig knowing pretty much nothing.

Sometimes, going into a gig blind isn't a good idea. What I found was a makeshift, friendly, scrappy, laughy affair in a place that was clearly in the advance stages of being junked.

My fellow performers included Tales Of Whatever's Mark Powell and my longtime pretend twin brother Lee Moore. The set-up was a bit, um, minimal, so we put a load of chairs out and nipped to the Co-op to buy beers for everyone. We took donations, and there is a special place in hell for the people who dumped foreign coins on us.

I read an updated version of my tweets from David Cameron, a couple of short stories and, in what has turned out to be a live favourite, an untitled piece about an attractive stranger told through web searches.

We left when people started wrecking stuff. Went to a bar. High-fived a DJ. Sorted.

Dramatic PowerPoint Slide: performing in Sheffield

I managed to get lost at least 92 times in Sheffield the other night, but that didn't stop me performing a co-headline set at a prose special of poetry night Word Life.

There were some great open mic acts (a Louis Armstrong trumpet and comically-timed side effects information come to mind). My own piece was 20 minutes of deadpan PowerPointing (as demonstrated by the slide, above) where I careened between dog lists, yes dog lists, and proper short stories ("He sagged like an old house. He... dripped time.").

The turn-out was impressive and the hosting was great. Word Life's next event is in March and it will tap into Yorkshire's radical history.

Earlier this month, I teased an audience with non-origami at a Blade Runner-themed Flim Night. This was one of those moments when a new night has such an energy about it, you know they're going to have a good year. Get preppy for their next one, based on Mean Girls.

If this makes you want to book me and you run something good that's not one of those rubbish nights where everything goes on fire, then get in touch. I don't say yes to everything, but it's worth an ask. Meanwhile, do allow me some shameless self-promotion...

Loving fat roland. We love the screwing up and throwing of the paper @Wordlifeuk @MoorDeli with @charlotte_tim pic.twitter.com/nB8wcUCFwM
— ForAsLongAsLoveLasts (@longaslovelasts) February 20, 2015

I *loved* literally EVERY act at @flimnite Stunning. @FatRoland -as always - a shining highlight. Exemplary work, all pic.twitter.com/p6FyNrgJLd
— Dominic Berry (@thepoetdominic) February 9, 2015

"But you made the quiches yourself": becoming a better stage performer

 THE FAILURE.

The stage lights burning the back of my eyes. The solitary microphone and the stares from the audience. And the sudden and lurching gap in my memory.

I remember my only attempt at stand-up comedy well: I died on my backside: a brutal failure. The years have not diminished my shock at the experience.

The next time I took to the stage was for Bright Club with a comedy lecture called Gospel According To Aphex Twin. It wasn't stand-up but I played it for laughs and I shook like a leaf. Four years later and, for the first time ever earlier this week, I had a "performer moment". A moment where I wasn't just on a stage reading funny stuff, but I used a learned technique to elicit a response from an audience. Like a Performer, capital P.

THE MOMENT.

The moment happened as I compered Bad Language. A couple of open mic acts hadn't turned up, and at one point there was a risk that it could have derailed the night. I needed to make light of the situation on stage, so I used a stupid metaphor, explained slowly with the best deadpan I could manage. I likened the no-shows to me making five quiches for a dinner party, with only four guests turning up, leaving me to eat the final broccoli-filled quiche even though I hated broccoli.

And then came a friendly heckle. "But you made the quiches yourself."

"Sorry?"

"But you made the quiches yourself."

The heckler shot my metaphor down with brilliantly-timed wit. I couldn't fight the logic. Why would I make a quiche I hated the taste of?

THE CLICK.

Something clicked. For the first time, I could use a heckle to gain a bigger laugh. I feigned a dawning realisation at the audience member's insight, and while I acted this out, my mind wrote a punchline. The punchline went something like: "This is what my life has come to: me making quiches I hate for people that don't exist."

As I spoke the punchline, keeping my timing regular and my voice steady, my brain went into planning mode again. I decided that after the word "exist", I should turn from the microphone. A visual full stop to land the phrase with a decisive thunk. It worked. People laughed.

It was only a small moment, and by writing all this out, I am probably overplaying it. I'm also not trying to tell you how hilarious I am. The point is this: what struck me about that moment was I could multi-task my little brain gremlins to enable me to plan mid-performance. I'd not done that before. I felt like a stand-up.

THE FUTURE.

The heckler apologised afterwards, but he didn't need to. I thanked him for making it funnier than it ever could have been.

I guess the moral is that performance skill can be learned, that's probably worth trusting the moment, that a strong-enough stage presence can withstand almost anything.

There are many stage performers better than me. But sometimes it's nice to look back and see how far you've come - because the energy I still get from that long-past stand-up failure still drives me to be a better performer today.

Special FX at the Royal Exchange

Tonight, I will take to a stage in the Royal Exchange to read alongside Abi Fernandez-Arias Hynes, Kieran King, David Hartley and Joe Daly for the theatre's regular early-evening entertainment slot. It's hosted by Bad Language.

Details here. It's a kind of a post-work start time, so do pop along.

Next week in the same slot, there will be a jazz quartet and the following week will be an hour of stand-up. All I can promise is a new short story about Come Dine With Me, which is neither jazz nor stand-up but maybe a tiny bit of both.

Keep up-to-date with all my peformances on my live page.

Live performances in February

I've added a couple of live appearances to this site. Click yourself here if you want to see - in real life - my flesh, my bone, and my ornamental puppy Barry. The live appearances are:

- A talent contest and cabaret night;
- A London-based open mic night visiting Manchester.

I'll keep my gigs updated on that page, just for you, dear netloafer. Come see me. I do a strange mixture of literature and comedy.

By the way, I lied about the puppy. And, if I'm honest, the bone. I do have visible flesh though, I think.

Manchester International Festival: hot, sweaty, dramatic fun

I spent most of this year pretending Manchester International Festival didn't exist. Blah blah blah, leave it to all the Macbeth-quoting theatre luvvies.

And then I won tickets to The Machine (pictured) courtesy of the Postcode Lottery of all things. It was an edge-of-the-seat, imaginative and funny play that bent reality and built the stakes beautifully.

Massive Attack's behind-screen visual soundtracking I've seen done better (Murcof's eye-poppng collaboration with AntiVJ, for example), but it was a powerful narrative that renewed my love for Adam Curtis' visceral pessimism.

Then I thought that was it. Done the festival. Tick box. Outta here. Fat Roland has left the building.

However... you know when you lace the jelly with heroin and all the children get addicted and no-one suspects you because you're the clown and no-one's going to check your shoes for high-grade class As?

That. Except the clown is the festival and I am the children and the drugs are:

- Maxine Peake's passionate and haunting Masque of Anarchy, which reminded us that great theatre can send hearts reeling:

- Tino Sehgal's unsettling and mesmerising This Variation, which replaced one's sense of safety and security with a surreal horror;

- James Murphy's friendly and inclusive slow-disco club night Despacio, which used a custom-built sound system to dance away the mothballs;

- Festival Square and its fun transformation of Albert Square / the magical access to old buildings / the super-friendly volunteers / tremendous word-of-mouth buzz that deserves some kind of marketing award.

So yeah. All that. MIF transformed Manchester into a living hotbed of creative surprises: theatre for the people. It was hot, sweaty, dramatic fun and it made my city a community again.

With thanks to Cowboy Boots Dave, Ros + Lee + Sarah, Dancing Matthew, Hartley Hare + numerous people to whom he's either engaged or related or friends with (mostly the latter), various ticket sellers, um, the Postcode Lottery, and anyone else who mainlined me some festival.

Further Fats: Murcof's amorphous star clouds at Futuresonic 2009 (2009)

They catch me in the beer tent, you sound the alarm

DJing in a beer tent at Greenbelt Arts Festival is probably the best fun you could have with your trousers on your head.

I've been going to Greenbelt almost every year for the past 20 years. It's my spiritual and artistic home and it's even Mark Thomas' second-favourite festival.

This year, I had two DJing slots in the Jesus Arms organic ale tent, which gave me the chance to do a dark set (techno and IDM on the Saturday night) and a light set (ambient and 4/4 beats on the Monday night). My co-DJ Dan flipped things in a different direction with the likes of Desmond Dekker and Prince.

Being in such close proximity to beer attracted the usual punter comments:

- Have you got any Beatles?

- Have you got any Abba?

- Have you got anything with a tune?

That last comment, dear readers, really means "have you got anything that I recognise" because most people want spoon-feeding with the same old mulch. It's a minority view, so I didn't compromise: back-to-back Autechre tracks were a personal highlight.

The picture shows the free software we used to DJ with. A massive thanks to Dan (who really needs a snazzy DJ name, like DJ Dan The Destroyobot or something) who not only brought proper good choons but also brought the kit to make it all work.

Battles at the Apollo: A gaping hole where Imelda Staunton should be

Apart from the odd blog thing and a number plate I once won at secondary school, I don't tend to get many prizes.

So when I won tickets to Battles and Caribou at the weekend, courtesy of Now Wave and Chimp Magazine, I was somewhat made up.

It came on the back of getting a story into an anthology for the first time. You can read it if you want to. The tale will be especially pleasing for people who like speedboats, Lenor or guttering.

Anyhoo, Battles were superb, what with their complicated rhythms and unreasonably-constructed high-cymballed drum kit. It took me back to 1926 when I first discovered post rock, back in the days when music had to have subtitles because it was still all silent.

Manchester blogging legend The Pigeon Post got a shout-out from Star Slinger, which was lovely because it felt like "one for the bloggers". And I ended the night at the Greenroom for one last hurrah as that brilliant venue was finally mothballed.

It was strange, then, that there was a sour taste to the night. For that taste, we have to look to a curious no-show from one of the support acts: Actress.

You cannot underestimate the hugeness of Actress. He co-founded Hyperdub and through his Werk label has brought us Starkey, Lukid and Zomby. I called his Splazsh LP an "essential album for 2010". I was looking forward to his set more than the others.

Despite the hype (NewsicMoos pick of the week, for example), Actress forgot to put the date in his diary. He simply didn't turn up. It's not the first time, of course: he also failed to show at Deviation and Eastern Electrics' bank holiday bash in London a week ago.

My views on artists that don't do their jobs has been made crystal clear on these blog pages before now.

I'm not sure how to react. I can't tweet him because he's deleted his account. And he hasn't updated the Werk Discs website for a couple of years.

There's only one thing for it. I'm boycotting all actresses.

I now dedicate my life to the following:

- an entire absence of Nicole Kidman;

- approximately zero amounts of Michelle Williams;

- no Greta Garbo;

- not a single Halle Berry: not even one;

- a gaping hole where Imelda Staunton should be;

- no Whoopi Goldberg, although to be honest...;

- Grace Kelly? Not on your nelly;

- I'm even boycotting Frances McDormand. Don't try and stop me.

Actress has driven me to this. I'm prepared to unleash a torrent of similar boycotts, so watch out - especially Zomby, Deadboy and Border Community's Lazy Fat People.

I went to see Kylie...

...however, it will be almost impossible to explain what I saw, other than to say the phrase "that's the gayest thing I've ever seen" in increasingly shrill tones. So:

- A half-naked man angel: that's the gayest thing I've ever seen.

- Kylie singing to a half-naked man angel: that's the gayest thing I've ever seen.

- Kylie riding around in the air singing on the back of a half-naked man angel: that's the gayest thing I've ever seen.

- Kylie singing There Must Be An Angel to the half-naked man angel: that's the gayest thing I've ever seen.

Chariots, Greek baths, golden shells, S&M slaves, sychronised swimming, a massive Kylie bust (not that kind of bust), and a huge man fountain. This was not Aphex Twin.

Here are some blurry photographs that weren't completely ruined by me shaking from heart palpatations.

She's on the back of a chariot in this one:

 Here comes the angel:

 

 

 

 The fountain climax. Some of it looks like the dancers are weeing, but actually they're performing acrobatics on sodden ropes in increasingly precarious ways. The biggest jets of water are just out of shot:

  

 

 

 

 I'll be re-enacting this one on the fountain outside Manchester town hall:

Welcome to the Boy Band Family Tree

Boy bands. Where would we be without the curtain-haired, squeaky-voiced, smooth-abbed, white-teethed, non-sexed, freshly-pressed, short-lived torrents of snot?

Bright Club returns to Manchester next week. Hailed as the 'thinking person's variety club', it presents various experts waxing lyrical about their field of expertise, hopefully in an entertaining way.

The theme this time round is 'family'. And so, on Thursday December 16th, 7.30pm at Nexus Art Cafe, you'll hear talks about families of particles, attachment and the early years, families of galaxies, and biotechnology and familes, and entrepreneurship and families.

Then there will be me. Talking about boy bands. They have no idea I'm an imposter. They haven't the first clue that I am, basically, a dribbling fat man ranting through a haze of crystal meth at an imaginary image of an axe-wielding zombie corpse of Thora Hird.

My Boy Band Family Tree will take the entire history of pop's most steam-cleaned phenomenon and bottle it through a fictitious family tree. All in eight minutes.

Of course, I haven't written it yet. I'll probably start scrawling some notes about five minutes before I'm due on stage. It worked with my last appearance when I presented my Gospel According To Aphex Twin.*

While I'm updating you on my whereabouts, it seems right to let you know about a couple of internet things. My increased activity in the wonderful world of fiction is being taken off this blog, and instead you can catch updates on Bionic Matthew's Pen Of Doom. This is a secret blog that I'm now making public. It contains a fair whack of poorly written material from the past.

I'm also keeping videos off this site. Instead, you'll find them at my third blog, Fat Roland's Oozy Bleeps.

So then. Fat Roland On Electronica. Fat Roland's Oozy Bleeps. Bionic Matthew's Pen Of Doom. Three in one. The internet trinity. The holy family. Maybe I should have done a talk on that.

*this is called false modesty. It's at least ten minutes.

"I was not at ease at all / at Socrates’s gall."

While I have been scouring the unhoovered corners of my dungeon for my much-neglected mojo, I've taken part in a strange and distracting competition.

Chris Killen is the author of a novel of sleaziness and good manners called the Bird Room. I read it ages ago, and I'm still haunted by a moment in the novel when a character goes to the toilet while--- well, I'm not going to spoil it, but let's say I'm surprised he didn't wee on the ceiling.

Mr Killen raised a challenge on his blog that his desktop background was tidier than other desktop backgrounds, and if yours was any tidier, why not email in a screenshot and there would be a grand 'desktop battle'. This is what writers do when they're not writing blockbusters.

In short, I took on Chris' own desktop and won, beat the challenge of the most minimal desktop ever, then finally fell against Socrates Adams-Florou and his army of folders. It lead me to write a terrible poem of 12 rhyming couplets in the comments of this post here., although thankfully my friend and colleague Dave Hartley took on the challenge after me.

All very silly. I also spent a night as Bo the frightened gorilla (pictured) at Manchester's Cabaret Formerly Known As Bucket, which was, I have to say, the hottest thing I have ever done. Oh and if you missed my seminal Gospel According To Aphex Twin, I plan on performing it in another venue in Manchester in the next brace of months or so.

I've not been well, but I think I'm re-finding my mojo. I'm not quite right, because I've just spent several paragraphs talking about organising folders and left only one sentence for dressing as a gorilla (for which I spent a day's research at Chester Zoo, for crap's sake).

PS - if you do blog and you're based in Manchester, come and meet me. There's a blog meet on Tuesday night this week and the lovely Lowry are providing boozebeer.

Review: Autechre at Pure, Manchester, March 11th 2010

Autechre's show at Pure in Manchester last week was a mixture of the brilliant and the bloody stupid.

Tumbling

The hour-long set was grounded in hypnotic loops and much more beaty than new album Oversteps. We had rasping snares for the first five minutes, persistent knocking, and taps all over the place. The music sounded like it was literally tumbling out of the speakers.

The first half of the set was fractured, gloomy and, in true Autechre style, awkward. As the mid-point loomed, we began to get more melancholic chords.

And then, after some 4:4 rave masculinity (you don't get much thump-thump-thump normally), the beats seemed to kick in more. Or maybe I was just into the groove by then. They certainly saved their heaviest sounds for the second half.

Desolate

It was a desolate performance, the darkness deepened by the band's usual insistence that the flashy lights be turned off (see photo!), and it ended in a mass of wailing noise and, at the very climax, a mess of percussion.

It's the Autechre I've known and loved a long time, and for about 20 minutes, I was totally immersed in every intricacy.

I can't produce a track list. There was some Oversteps in there, but I get the impression they were going with the flow. Anyone waiting for a record-perfect rendition of Arch Carrier would be disappointed, but then again anyone wanting that has probably never seen Autechre before.

Painful

The support was superb too. Didjit diddled around with hip hop before extreme noise experimentalist Russell Haswell threw 15 minutes of painful circuit bending at the crowd.

As a gig performance, Haswell's screeching, white noise and frequency murder only served to annoy. I did hear a friend claim this was music from the future, only to get a reply from a random punter, "yeah, only after everyone was dead and buried, then someone shat on a keyboard".

But as a performance of sound sculpture, it delighted the geeky bit of me that has spent many hours building noises from sine waves.

Meanwhile, Gescom collaborator Rob Hall's DJ set was the most straightforward thing of the evening. Proper, solid techno with a 1990s focus and ending with a stupendous remix of LFO's Freak.

Stupid

So that's the brilliance taken care of. This brings me to the other element of the night: the bloody stupid bit. This can be summed up with one four-letter word: Pure.

Who chose Pure as a venue? Come on. Own up. The airport style scanners were bad enough: they insisted on beeping for everybody, so we all got some lecherous thug giving us the pat-down.

Then you had to exchange your ticket stub for a paper ticket which was then exchanged for an ink stamp, all within the space of about four yards. It was, quite simply, silly.

The moaning of the venue staff was nearly enough to dampen the atmosphere (you can guess Pure's level of awfulness by the number of Basshunter posters advertising a 'meet-and-greet' for £15), but then you had to cope with finding an exact sweet spot to listen to the finer bleeps of Autechre's music.

Anyone outside that zone, which must have been most of the venue, would only have heard a muffled fog of meh.

Rough

There are rough recordings of the gig here and somewhere in here. They're great if you like listening to your favourite band and someone else's conversation at the same time.

Meanwhile, do read this guide to enjoying a concert performed by Autechre by a reluctant fan, which contains the joyful line: "Listening to their music takes a lot of mental energy and can be slightly agitating."