LTW newsletter 47

Welcome warriors,

As we stagger out of our Louder Than Words festival weekend that we have promoted for ten years we have the usual attendant colds and hacking exhaustion but it was worth it!

The event, held at the Innside Hotel in Manchester, has been a big success and many of the in-conversations sold out making it the most successful that we have ever done. Always look forward to this annual jamboree and celebration of the word!

Sadly this week has been marked heavily but the sad news of the death of Keith Levene. We knew the guitar genius really well and his mind-blowing sound was one of the key components of post-punk. Decades later Public Image Limited’s three early albums still sound like the future. Keith never lost it despite his lifestyle though and he would often get on stage with the Membranes when we played near his home in Norwich or in London and sounded as magical as ever.

This week we also lost Mike Bryson the bass player and illustrator from John Peel faves, Bogshed. The tragedy is doubled by the fact that the band were finally about to be released on CD after decades of being hard to find and they were finally getting talked about again. The third member of Bogshed to die of cancer, Mike’s bass was the spine of the band’s post-punk wonk and his illustrations for the record sleeves were genius - a dark cartoon of Northern life and with echoes and shadows of the League Of Gentlemen decades before they got on TV.

Nova Twins delivered a brilliant show in Manchester that captured their fiery fast forward take on metal that is grabbing them awards across all musical fields. They truly do capture something special about 2022. showcasing their Mercury-nominated Supernova album and more they delivered a night of uplifting, exhilarating highs.

The Hacienda has been much in the news recently with the recent BBC documentary and now a huge party celebrating its 40th party since it opened and changed the narrative of club culture in the UK and also Manchester itself. There is much talk about the nostalgia being a bit too much but then it depends on what is being celebrated and most people hold onto something from their youth. The Hacienda was crucial in the rebirth of Manchester as a design piece and a stunning architectural interruption of the future into the post-industrial and what seemed outrageous then by building a hi-tech super club in a broken city would barely even get noticed now in 2022 which is a signifier of its game changing power.

There is no band in the world quite like Sigur Rós, and few live experiences that can compare to the sheer emotional weight and musical catharsis that they provide. David Edwards reports back on one of the most extraordinary live shows of 2022…

This week we also lost Nik Turner whose time in Hawkwind helped to define that band’s crucial sound. His sax playing and general colourful personae were key to the band and his flamboyance and free-form attitude were key to the whole Hawkwind classic period vibe.

Martin Bramah has put the Blue Orchids into animated suspension and rounded up the various key players in the Fall that are still knocking about in town for an underground supergroup. The talk is that their upcoming album that is already recorded is very good indeed and any band that can boast the Hanley brothers, Si Wolstencroft and Peter Greenaway from later lineups is worth shouting about.

Sweat, screaming and mosh pit are all characteristics of the insane show that determine what went down at The Black Heart when Wargasm was playing. We sent one of our more daring writers into the mosh pit to report back from this stunning show.

Mysterious Swedish psych collective Goat sound as enigmatic as they look. The band will be touring their latest album Oh Death in eight cities. The audiences in the UK will unlikely see them unmasked, yet the real look of the artists is always compensated by the intensity of the music and the thrilling sound they make.