Liverpool Sound City Day Two

The second night of the Sound City and this is when the city centre came to life. Sure, a Thursday night is as busy as any other night of the week, but this is far more exciting than any other pre-weekend piss up and you get to see some amazing bands in the most unusual of places.

The day began in the secluded Static Gallery for the oddball, discordant Pony Harvest, which I was later told had nearly deafened their audience. Next was the Myspace-shunning Islet down the road. They vaulted around the Kazimier like it was their sandpit, shouting, screaming and willingly throwing themselves from the stage onto the floor. This isn’t to say they’re childish. No, because there’s the touch of the enigmatic and unhinged, but also the very militaristically organised about this Cardiff quartet. They swapped instruments almost by the minute, played songs with all four members on the drums, but also knew how to pull out an irresistible bass groove like on the only named song ‘Horses And Dogs’. Sound City has daily music industry conferences, today’s were about how important it is for bands to promote themselves online, but as long as we’ve got bands like Islet who push indie forward like this, word-of-mouth is promotion you simply can’t buy.

I was hoping to catch the whole of Holy Fuck’s set, but the word was that they’d gone on stage early so they could fit in a mammoth 90-minute set, which meant a mad dash up to the Stanley Theatre for me. On the way, we passed Mello Mello to see Jimmy Lightfoot & The Disciples and his questionable spandex trousers. Sadly, there was no time to catch any of his set but minutes later, we were watching the Canadian electro experimentalists Holy Fuck. They came with high recommendations, but something was a little flat about their show, so we’re hoping it was just an anomaly in an otherwise seamless stream of success tonight.

We ran back down to the Kazimier, but on the way poked our heads into the Masque to catch the awesome spectacle that was the Phenomenal Handclap Band. And once at the Kazimier, we caught the last song from North Atlantic Oscillation before settling in to witness local heroes Wave Machines. For once, they were without their trademark masks, with their leftfield pop gems equally managing to be lyrically engaging and rhythmically pleasing enough for there not to be a static body in the room. Aside from a few festivals over the summer, they’re taking a break from performing to work on their next album. They’re one of Liverpool’s favourite bands, now make them yours.