Talking about psychedelia conjures up different images for different people: To you, it may be a a swaying, hairy mass of unwashed men stood in a field. To me, it’s the spiralling poor-taste kaleidoscopes of 1960s counterculture comic strips. Curiously though, if we turn to our minds’ ear, we all hear the same sound – the screeching locomotive of guitar on clattering guitar. Psychedlia as a sound is so embedded in our collective conscious, not one of us could fail to pick out its arhythmic drone. With its ubiquity, it’s tempting to think of psychedelia as something of relic – broken, bent-double and clutching its worn dopamine receptors – but half a century on the genre is alive and well and still trippin’ balls. Which brings us to Manchester Psych Fest, now in its second year. This year’s offering includes performances from Clinic (post-punk, supported Flaming Lips and Radiohead),Wartime (loop-pedal wunderkind), The Watchmakers (old-school psych with a Mancunian twist), The Blackrays (debut performance for Underground Youth side project) and more to be announced. The epic 12-hour festival takes place at Oldham St’s Night & Day Café at the end of November, when hardened psychephiles will be invited to thaw the Winter frostbite with a warm broth of ragas and reverb. Ya dig?
Sat 29 Nov, Night & Day Café, 26 Oldham Street, Manchester, M1 1JN. Tel: 0161 236 1822, £12.50, 3pm-3am, www.seetickets.com
- Words:
- Jon Whiteley
- Published on:
- Mon 15 Sep 2014
