Jumping the Queue

Bleep: all set up and ready for the audience

Bleep, in the heart of God's Own City (Manchester, for the uninitiated), is not, strictly speaking, an EMOM. It's not open mic. Instead, the Manchester Electronic Collective spend time curating each evening from a list of applicants. It tries to maintain a balance between newbies and seasoned performers, and styles of music, for each night it puts on.

Bleep is a special night for many reasons. The space beneath the Peer Hat is dark but just big enough, the lights and sound are great, the crowd is dense but friendly, and the welcome is overwhelmingly positive regardless of musical style or ability. You're on that stage because The Collective think you should be.

I, like a lot of other performers, apply to play Bleep EVERY month just in case. It's the only way. The queue for stage time must be immense, which is why I was extremely surprised to receive a message on Instagram a couple of weeks ago asking if Libby and I could fill a slot left by a pull-out. YES! A thousand times, YES!

And so, after the luxury of driving to gigs all over the Northwest, Yorkshire and the Midlands, we once again trudged up the hill to the train station last Thursday teatime, 19lbs of kit on my back.

Another good thing about Bleep is that the collective takes recordings from the desk and puts them on Soundcloud. The downside is that the recordings are in mono which gives them a kind of old school underground bootleg feel, but it means you can listen to all the acts from this and all previous Bleep parties here: https://soundcloud.com/electroniccollective/sets

A great tip for EMOM organisers is to put the running order up for the audience

First up was The Velvet Shadow, with a 30-minute DJ set while the audience gradually wandered downstairs from the bar. By the end of his set, however, the Collective was beginning to look nervous.

 Could Libby and I set up early in case Steve Hardaker didn't make it? Sure. We set up and plugged into the desk, but with seemingly seconds to spare before we were going to be introduced as the next act, Steve bustled his way through the crowd, full of apologies.  Traffic and parking issues had ensnared him. With his enormous master keyboard under his arm, he set up and played an exquisite set, covering styles from trance to drum and bass. A real crowd-pleaser. 

The mighty Steve Hardaker, as impressive as ever.

 So, we were next up. Libby introduced the first song, and we were underway with the usual loud, fast, doom-laden, cynical stuff. The reaction was great. Our new anti-war anthem Make War Not Sense seemed to get a particularly good reaction. And suddenly, I was reaching for that extra A sharp on the final chord of Three Liars, and Libby was thanking people for listening. Brilliant, and only a couple of bum notes!

Jon, concentrating hard to try to make it through our set with a minimum of bum notes.

 Next up was a young duo called Gunworm, a new name to me, but one I'll be following with interest. Industrial, lyrical, rocky, and lots of fun. Their sound is commercial, but hard to pin to a genre. Visually, their vibe is, to those who remember them, slightly "Ting Tings". I hope they'll become regulars on the EMOM scene because they certainly got a great reception.

 

Gunworm with a blizzard of ideas hitting the speakers in every song. And tennis balls!

Also getting a great reception was Gulliver. His slick, commercial, soulful, sound is radio-friendly and smooth, combining great vocals, grooves, keys and even guitar work.

Gulliver providing a slick, soulful radio-friendly sound.

 Time was beginning to press and trains wait for no man, so as usual I had a deadline to leave. I managed to stay long enough to catch the start of Paradigm X's set. He began slow, with a massive and credible dub sound, as impressive as his kit on the night, which gradually resolved itself into an acidic dance vibe that put me in mind of vintage Orb.

 

I also had to miss Me Am Mad Cat, who luckily I've seen several times before. His solid 4 on the floor sound builds and builds and builds. I last saw him at Derby in May, and predicted then that a Bleep audience would love him, and I bet they did. 

I also missed The Electric Tentacle's own Andy Cartridge, A.K.A Tekkas. His brand of hard, acid-infused techno is always a floor filler (and he likes our track Monday Can Wait!).

 Do check out all the acts featured here and look out for them in the coming months.