‘Nobody Will Do Anything For Us Well Do It Ourselves! Newcastles Wild DIY Music Scene Thrives Against The Odds
It's a Saturday night in Newcastle-upon-Tyne city center and a small but hyper-engaged audience is immersed in a 40-minute version of space soul dub, a soundtrack that plays over a centuries-old montage of shipyards , estates, dance halls and cafes stretch. . . This was followed by great live background music by local duo Golden Shields, followed by a very intense set of minimalist compositions, Early grime and Björk by Spanish singer and producer Laura "Late Girl" Stutter Garcia from Newcastle.
We are at the world headquarters, in a room of Curtis Mayfield House, every wall is covered with portraits of black radicals and musicians, anarchist and anti-racist texts and the commandment to "love one another". The event is hosted by Geoff Kirkwood, left-wing dance DJ producer AKA Man Power, head of community engagement at WHQ and record label and promoter Me Me Me. He also performed the opening set under his Bed Waiter moniker, a test of an upcoming release. for the Royal Northern Symphony Orchestra, with support from American environmentalist William Basinski at the grand Sage Arts Hall near Gateshead earlier this month.
Tonight is the product of an experimental music community - from the pagan electronic folk of Me Lost Me to the raw noise of Kenosist - that screams creativity and regional pride. This is a sustainable scenario despite the serious challenges. After nine years, the radical and community art space The Old Police Station (TOPH) recently closed after being hampered by the Covid blockade. The Task Festival, which features secret international foundations from Moore Mother to Terry Riley, is so exploratory and internationalist that after nine years of successful applications it was unable to get further funding from the Arts Council, apparently due to increased competition.
However, there is no shortage of spaces and DIY collections. Star and Shadow Film and Event Space (which hosted the first activity festivals) have volunteered non-classification policies since the 2000s. Cobalt Studio is a concert hall, club, print shop and cafe in a labyrinthine building and a workspace for rent in a container, halfway between a social BMX and a folk bar. ("We often have loads of dancers come to the bar," says Cobalt founder Kate Hodgkinson.) The non-profit venue, bar, lab and radio studio is a new addition to Luber Fiend, co-founded by Stephen "Bish" Bishop. Opal Tapes exotic electronic label.
Much of this is driven by the feeling of being misunderstood. "The North East has been neglected and isolated by successive governments," said Kirkwood. "Especially after Covid there was a great feeling: OK, no one will do anything for us, shit, we'll do it alone." Speaking of the works they visited, Hodgkinson said: "I didn't expect much, thinking of that end-of-line shipbuilding and those coalfields bringing nothing extraordinary." Its purpose is to provide them with an audience that welcomes them and demonstrates the opposite.
Concerts, workshops and projects continue every day. The activity starts again and starts with a new series of concerts. Kirkwood is carrying out a plan to create an affordable workspace for local residents of poor North Shields, in stark contrast to the quaint and prominent Tynemouth neighbourhood, full of oysters and craft markets.
And the preservation of the hidden but essential past is ongoing. N-Aut (No-Audience Underground Tapes) offers free recordings of past concerts and festivals at venues such as TOPH; It was directed by David Howcroft, believed to be the inspiration for the comic, Newcastle's Revy Davy Gravy. A new documentary, Susie Davies' The Kick, The Snare, The Hat and a Clap, follows the outdoor raves in Ouseburn Valley in the 1990s, while Tusk TV's brilliant YouTube channel has captured much of the underground culture.
Kirkwood will continue his orchestration of Bed Waiter in Sage with a new composition with Fiona Bryce. It will be performed in part by a choir of people with dementia, including a grandfather, in the church where his grandparents were married 70 years ago. The piece certainly speaks of the past, but it is also about building an artistic future and, as Kirkwood says, "besides focusing more on an area away from what is happening, it has its own culture". to own"
It's hard in an all-white, pro-Brexit area, but this scene struggles to be inclusive. Miriam Rezai is a platinum artist and scholar who now programs Task with founder Lee Etherington and leads TOPH with noise musicians Adam Denton and Mark "Kenoist" Wardlow. He credits avant-garde harpist Rhodri Davies and William Edmonds of noise-pop duo Ya U with not only inspiring and inspiring talent, but also providing an alternative social space with landmark performances and collaborations from the millennium to today. “I'm a dark-haired, mixed-race, working-class girl,” he says. "When I was studying full-time, it was always hard for me to make friends. I heard the class lines and I'm so grateful that I was included." His turntables take his career worldwide with growing commissions and collaborations.
There is also a remarkable sense of local history behind it all. Etherington has led the business since 2011; In the previous decade, he promoted concerts as a non-fi with local ambient industrial duo Ben Ponton of Joviet France, creating a local micro-infrastructure for weird 80s music. -Fi often mentions the places where he programmed shows, such as the Morden Tower, "guild of medieval craftsmen in the walls of the old city, which in the 1960s hosted Ginsberg, Trocchi, Bunting and then avant-gardes of all kinds".
The culture of clubs and raves is an essential historical pillar. World headquarters since 1993, founded by Tommy Caulker, the first mixed racing licensee in Newcastle city centre. Before the WHQ, Culker fended off attacks from the National Front to run Trent House, a city-centre bar that housed the founders of viz. He was one of the first in the UK to play house music and drew gay crowds to his late night Rockshots. Although WHQ has new directors, including Kirkwood's creative partner Gabriel Day, Kolker's emphasis on being a safe space against discrimination remains in its ethics and environment.
Throughout the 1990s, the North East had a thriving illegal party scene, from techno tears in the valleys and warehouses - as Suede Bergman of the Golden Shields recalls - to "crazy parties above a chic clothing store in Whitley Bay, where you can get. Sort of melodic Warp of Ninja. Get a weirder and more evocative side to the act and play live." Me - and Stevie. , founder of Freerotation, the UK's small festival community for the millennial electronic music community.
Of course, it's impossible to talk about the Northeast music scene without touching on people. The Cumberland Arms pub, where these hoof dancers congregate, is at the center of a scene that nurtures emerging talent such as Domino Records signature art rockers Richard Dawson and Me Lost Me, and hypnotic stompbox manipulators and endless singers. . Nathalie Sterne. It's barely distinguishable between DIY circles and local folk acts like Unthanks. Mark Knopfler also revisits his roots in the same bar scene decades ago. A city this size creates a bond that adds Kirkwood to Viz's canonical catchphrase, "Sting's father made me milk." (Ernest Sumner actually ran a milk tour where he grew up in Kirkwood Wallsend).
Amidst all this underground heritage is Sage, a large, bright multi-art hall. Its cultural dominance is ambivalent to say the least: Etherington talks about "pouring money into iconic places" (Sage, with companies such as Gateshead's Baltic Centre, has received millions over the years), while excluding independents. Rezaye served briefly at Sage but left shortly after hosting Ukip's conference in 2014. "I cannot and will not accept hate speech and racism," he said. Others are more forgiving: Day is an administrator there and Late Girl is a resident artist. Kate Hodgkinson of Cobalt says she created cultural gravity when it opened in 2004, helping art graduates like her to "stop and shake things up" instead of "indulging in the hustle and bustle" of London.
So Kirkwood's upcoming Sage show is an attempt to present something northeastern and underground on his big stage. We mingle with the WHQ crowd, which includes teenagers and seniors, join the Saturday night drinkers and hear their intense passion: a curious mix of left-wing politics and entrepreneurship and a certain Geordie enthusiasm for success. Caught unaware, many musicians repeat Kirkwood's line: "Damn, we'll do it yourself".
Joining musicians alongside local DJs, poets and rag men, we head to Zerox, a new independent LGBTQ+ bar where kids get to party with Eraser, Grace Jones and Talking Heads. It's very different to the hypnotic immersion of the WHQ show, but in its way it challenges the idea of the North East as a monoculture like "chickens and hens". No one is resting on their laurels here. Each of these artists and DIY sites struggle every day.
“It's tough out there,” Rezai said. "But we did something on our own and I'm proud of that."