Being a point of gathering, for the diverse and cunning folk of the city of Manchester, with particular attention paid to art, music, culture and the esoteric. Often associates of that place of exceeding divilry, THE PEER HAT.
We'd intended to release this blog entry yesterday, but the relentless stream of snowballs and black Russians took their toll and all of a sudden, here we are on Boxing Day. The main purpose of this blog entry is, of course, to wish you all a happy Christmas from the Peer Hat... to alert you that, despite appearances, we're stil very much alive and kicking. However, we want to talk to you a little bit about the future, both near and somewhat more distant.
Since re closing in November, we've considered the 'substantial meal' option. After a few minutes, we quickly realised that this was in fact, another dire little mirage in a year of punishing 'gotchas.' We pictured a Peer Hat filled with people simultaneously consuming scotch eggs and it just didn't seem on. From a more sober perspective, we were barely operating at a level that would allow us to cut even and that was at our social distanced capacity. Now picture every single person with a shitty meal and you'll actually find yourselves stifling a chortle. The 'substantial meal' con, although free money for Wetherspoons, was never going to be viable for us.
If you recall this blog entry, we played around with what a cyberpunk version of The Peer Hat would look like. For 2021, we're happy to tell you that an aetheric copy of our venue, will turn up on the internet. It's not going to be just a straight stream and gig proposition. Instead, we're looking at something like a question hanging in the spot we used to inhabit freely with our physical presence. In this moment we now inhabit, the myth is stronger than the physical reality. Thus, to there we must go, in the trust that what you witness and indeed, take part in, will inspire your own communities and sabbats. I can say little more on the matter than this, if only because we are literally within the process of exploring beyond the gate and all that might be encountered therein. Wish us luck and keep your fingers crossed, that what we bring back, is gold rather than any ancient evil... well, nothing too ancient or too evil.
In the meantime, we'd like to introduce the second Peer Hat Compilation album, Black Stage. It's finally here. A somewhat different proposition than the last record, on this occasion, we explore the topography of touring bands (with a few people who could easily have featured on the last release, sneaking on). It's got kind of a cyberpunk vibe to it.... I don't think this is any accident, ultimately. Grab it below:
There's a lot more to be said, at least in terms of my own experience over the past few months... but we want this information out today and if I spend any length of time pontificating on the subject, then there will be no album let loose into the wild. Indeed, the siren call of a second round of cocktails, seems only too enticing...
So with that, we wish you a very happy Christmas and festive season. Things look bleak but times, they are a changin' and yes, even this, shall pass.
I intend for this to be shorter than usual, if only because my time is precious and I don't have much of it (well, I didn't when I started writing this - things can change a lot in a few days) . Needless to say, the current climate is one which cannot succour a music venue for very long. However, I hope I've expressed adequately in previous posts, that the building is quite unimportant, that the temple to song is contained within each of us and must be re-consecrated when required. So far so good.
When I say 'within', I don't mean in some ephemeral sense, but in the blood, bone and connective tissue that form our bodies. We are, in a very real way, the dance and the dancer. When we are denied the right to movement, then we find our souls diminishing alongside our bodies. The natural state of things is to be in constant motion - this can also manifest in sound emanating from the viscera that constitutes the body. The drunken jig, the raucous song spilling over the tap room.
This slowing and silencing, is the worst aspect of our current crisis and requires addressing - it is no less important than any other aspect of our health, serving to form the topography of our vitality. It's about aligning ourselves properly in time, with a line of being that results in happy consequence,
I write because to write is a form of movement - and it requires real effort on my part. Certainly far more effort than the stories I would write as a child. The ideas seemed to flow freely then - I pictured epics with ease and although they rarely went beyond four pages of A4, there was great joy to be had in their creation. In writing, I see the Grail of childhood whimsy - it's about recreating that state, that place where all things were possible and no idea was considered weak. Indeed, the idea itself was never very important, very much less so than the fuel in the engine of it's motion, or perhaps than the invigorated container that enlivened anything that it held.
Yes, writing is about movement: both spatial motion (as my fingers trace patterns across the keys) and perhaps more importantly, temporal motion. The machinery of typing is as a time machine that has me gliding swiftly across epochs. Physical motion is also connected intimately with time. Time sung passes quickly, time danced is passed in the blink of an eye. This unlived time, is anything but - though we often ask ourselves 'where has the time gone' - what is encountered, is in fact the union with all time, the natural state of experience - all moments united and simultaneous. Funnily enough, this rapid movement, which is experienced as 'no movement' is intimately associated with the ecstatic state.This is no accident.
A collision of moments leading towards singularity - if you're given towards the creative act, then this will seem a familiar concept - is the best way I can think of expressing what I'm reaching for. I believe that this engagement with true time and motion, which is life, is the reason why we need to participate, rather than spectate. Or, as Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman put it: "dodge the bullets or carry the gun, the choice is yours".
There is no requirement, in particular, for quality. True enough, if the interior world of the artist is weird enough, or unique enough, then it will attract attention - to the degree permitted by the culture within which it manifests itself. But art made on it's own terms, as movement interfacing with the 'timeless event', is the solution to one particular puzzle of being - what is time well spent? By this logic, it might seem that I would be as well served typing 'all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy' over and over - and in a sense, this might lead to the ecstatic experience. But we only know art, if it seems like art to us. And it need ONLY be art to us, and seem like it fits the bill, in order to tap into that novel and unified dimension.
I can think of a variety of ways that this might play out in a performance venue that must close at 10 pm, that is not permitted to hold the musical revels by which it claims meaning and relevance. Bar games of ever increasing complexity. Chinese whispers, notes spread via table service. Parcels of information given with drinks which might contain hidden challenges or even violations of the law or appeals to the forbidden carnal. I speak theoretically of course - much of the appeal lies within the forbidden potentiality of play, if not it's fullest rendering (which might spell disaster for all involved).
A couple of days ago, my partner and I, made our way up to Thirteen Stones Hill in Lancashire. Following a somewhat time strapped ascent, we were confronted by a plateau of unremitting bleakness and not a single stone standing to be found. This was of some concern, since, according to the Modern Antiquarian, there was in all supposition, a single erect stone remaining (though it's suspected that it might have been re-established in a recent, guilty century). There was no such stone to be found - though we did note a somewhat perturbing scar in the hillside, revealing suspiciously fresh looking black earth beneath. I double checked my OS co-ordinates and was was forced to accept (with no small amount of dismay), that the stone was gone or hidden. Furthermore, the sun was swift slipping behind the hillside and if we did not leave with urgency, there was a disconcertingly legitimate chance of being caught in the high dark.
We made it back safely enough, but the glory of the Thirteen Stones can now only stand in the autonomous, art zone I am driven enough to establish for it. This blog is perhaps, not the place for that - I hope to bring that particular tree to fruition elsewhere. But I do think there is something to be learned from the experience - something very real, though it might be perceived only as a rainbow (though no less real for that). Manchester is a desecrated sacred site. To be sure, the process of profaning this special town, had begun many years ago. I don't need to make an arduous list of 'what we have lost' and 'what we have replaced'... Hacienda club for Hacienda apartments for example...or even more egregiously offensive substitutions such as Jilly's Rockworld for TESCO... the evidence is felt as an open wound in the psyche of any that have grown to adulthood in the city in the past 30 years. On the nose, so to speak.
But I can speak to the process of healing - nothing less than the piloting of time machines to treasured pasts and hitherto unthought of Utopian futures, with the simple mission command of 'Bring Back The Mother Lode'. Through our art, each and everyone of us, can participate in the creation of an illuminated and indestructible Manchester. One red brick at a time, if necessary. Not only is this possible, but it is our heavy obligation. Legions of the dead await resurrection via our arts. And not faceless ranks of spectres, but our ancestors, the very reason we stand here. Before them, temples must be raised, bridges built to span rivers we imagined uncrossable, labyrinths carved out of the collective bedrock, the cities fitfully dreaming unconscious.
This hearkens back to earlier posts I made regarding the telling of our stories and the rediscovery of our myths. It's the same continuum of thinking and it must not be silenced by the perceived necessities of our current age. Rethink and retrain? For sure. But not in the sterile cyber fantasies of the Ministry Of Information. Instead, artists of all disciplines and those that have formerly considered themselves but spectators, fans or appreciators - must learn how to be conscious with their work. To deliver upon the delicious promise of a new reality which, only at this terrible moment - finally permits itself to be glimpsed, heard or touched.
At any rate, we're closed again, so this is the ideal opportunity to test your time machine and visit The Peer Hat in all it's astral glory. I daresay, that you'll be quite surprised by who and what you meet. Of course, there's no reason to limit yourself to all too recent golden daze. The bio-political war being fought at this very moment, is begging for you to detach from blind obedience and inhabit it's fault lines as fully as you are able. Flex your imagination - if this thing is legit, then it can take the strain. Our stories, by utter necessity, must belong to us. We will never write them from the comfort of dread or from the fragile security that comes with compliance.
I hope to write here again soon, we have a strong plan for a performance season, so watch this space (custom built and cyber punk). Also we'll finally stick out that second album (we promise). The time is there to do all these things...and with that time, the repetition of the basic lesson - to breathe. The difference now, is that we must breathe into our actions. Though the first lock down and the constant existential threat directed at the things we love, served to rob many, myself included, of artistic inspiration, the luxury of stillness is no longer ours. Take a long look at the way things are. You know what you have to do.
What's Going On?
It's been a while since anybody has sent me anything. That's not to say that things haven't been taking place, because they have. Only, people's actions have become more personal, more private. I think I mentioned last time how the Lock-Down Album quickly became a somewhat derided form - and one that crucially, feeds upon it's own tail. Whilst being no time for escapism, the sense of reproducing one's own misery and isolation for the entertainment of others, has perhaps been stretched to it's logical limit. The dissociation of the ZOOM performance also leaps to mind -a sense of what we have lost and a sense that we might be giving fuel to the notion that this kind of digital simulacra, is any kind of substitute for what we are currently without - namely, the viscera of the live show.
Of course, this represents a very narrow analysis, there are ways of surfing this crisis. This is a time for film and radio - for the pirate broadcast and the video nasty...for the furtive narrative played out in chat room links to mysterious and revolutionary art. It cannot be any other way - for art to do anything less than devour this moment, is for art to become irrelevant. The shapes it must take, are the dragons which swallow suns, the beasts that come in roaring from the desert, the unthinkable abominations that rise dreadful from the watery aeons.
Flowing Backwards
What a triumph this podcast series has been, an audio autobiography that manages to capture the dizzy motion of one man's journey through the rites of life - whilst also serving to elucidate the sorrow of change and the human will to persevere, to see something worthwhile emerge from the ashes. If you haven't checked out Ian Moss' story yet, please waste no further time and plunge right in. The latest episode can be found below:
It's going to be an indeterminate amount of time, before we are allowed to see each other again. How we deal with this, each of us, is a challenge that may seem immeasurable or trivial, depending upon a great many factors. For now, do understand, that if any of you need to talk, conspire or be talked to, we at The Peer Hat will be on the other end of an email. If there's anything at all you need to tell us, don't hesitate. We have a long and difficult Winter ahead - months after this era defining occurrence first began, we remain caught in the slip stream of it's passage. But our commitment to the survival of our community remains, unbowed and relentless.
One day soon, much sooner than the jailers imagine - the stars will be right.
Warning, this episode of the blog is both long and weird. If it's at times indulgent, please grant us a reprieve, this once. In the future, we can chuckle about it over billiards and port. At any rate, buckle in...it's going to be hairy.
TODAY'S SOUNDTRACK
EARTHLING SOCIETY - KOSMIC SUITE NO.2
I suppose the big concern in the minds of those that occupy the increasingly niche world of live, underground music, is: has the world moved on without us? Is the Manchester we live in now capable of sustaining something like The Peer Hat (for example)? Never mind our brand of very distinct, ground level activity... can the city support the weight of a past which many people are now either dreadfully afraid of, or separated from by the very laws of the land?
In previous blog entries. I think I've been quite optimistic.
Optimistic about a return to normality.
And yet...there's an increasing sense, that a return to normality...is the last thing anybody wants, or perhaps feel permitted to want.
I don't simply mean in reference to the virus and safety. I also refer to the terms by which we live our lives, hour to hour, day-to-day. Personally speaking, I feel likewise touched by this unexpected sentiment. A peculiar and at first glance, alarming nostalgia for what lockdown represented to me, has arisen, unbidden.
There's this golden flush, an aura to the memory. The scent of a moment passed, a chance to breathe. A moment that perhaps we won't see again, or at least in so benign a form. Yes, there was fear. A huge amount of fear. I remember abandoning The Peed Hatton that last night in March. The evacuation of Saigon. I look back on that frantic hustle now somehow fondly, despite being in the grip of a rising terror.
The days and weeks would come and they would be difficult. That unwillingness to cross the threshold. Stay in. Shun contact. Protect your loved ones.
Weeks turn into months.
Longsight, Spring Equinox, The Beginning Of Lockdown
After a while, and I'm uncertain as to how long exactly, I discovered that my fear was steadily decreasing - or at least my fear of imminently arriving death. That said, I don't think death is something any of us take very seriously, day-to-day (or at least those of us with lives relatively ungraced by death's prolonged residence). And by seriously, I mean simply sitting with it's presence, with it's inevitability. With the thought of it happening to oneself and to everybody one knows. By seriously, I mean preparing for it, coming to an accord, squaring it, seeing it in it's full abundance; fractal wave, blossom of expiration happening over and over, life giving way to life. Seriously.
Was my lack of fear a new familiarity? An apprehension of the reaper's proximity? Was it in fact, the opening of the self towards an absurd newness? Death chosen, over a return to an increasingly sterile dystopia that we were told we were fortunate to be born into, "why look how they live in the gutter of Calcutta, in the ruins of Baghdad, in the Russian gulag". Jehova protect us. May your angels maintain the pillars of heaven...of time and of space. Hallelujah!
Most days I have walked past the geese blustering on the banks of the Ashton canal.
I have walked past people too, but it is the geese that are aggressively oblivious, as opposed to sometimes obliviously aggressive.
In those death friended months following, I found myself exploring the territory, which I had come to take for granted, had rendered merely a lifeless backdrop. I had occasionally engaged in the rites of psycho-geography, the derive made famous by the Lettrists and the Situationists and the older and better known act of pilgrimage - a new technique for me. I had brought it from the river a few years back and found it to be powerfully healing/inspirational.
A little while ago, I wrote a couple of pieces on LoneLady's efforts to re-conceptualise East Manchester, to finally replace that sense of mystery and Magic which had seemed in recent years, to have passed from the front of conscious appreciation.
There's a dense drizzle following me. It becomes more insistent.
This has been a summer of rains.
Morning, Arriving At Manchester Piccadilly
I had spoken about re-enchanting the territories that we live in day-to-day. To imbue them with magic, with legends, to mythologise place, hill, dale, forest, edifice. Of course when I say mythologise I mean to render environment in some sense hyper-real, contained within the subspace of the imaginal that we give over to creativity, the place where the relationship between the inside and the outside merge to form a crucible that can be said, without shame, to forge reality.
What I had not realised, was that I needed , as a priority, to re-enchant myself.
So disconnected had I become from the land, so comfortable within the nest of my own rhetoric, that I never noticed how lost I actually was.
A man.
Walks past
Draped in.
A colourless cagoule.
We make eye contact briefly. The roulette of folk, the hope for a smile or some glimmer of recognition. But not from him. Instead, the inverted goose. Where are my angry friends now?
I hide from the rain.
So yes, I required re-enchantment.
In order to do that my vehicle was travel. To weave the lazy pattern of opposites, rarely did I travel within a vehicle. Sometimes, like a rocket to a new moon, I would catch the train, but never further than three lines of hills. Except when it came to Hughes country, for which I, like so many people of this city, make an exception.
The Moors and Fields and Woodlands surround Manchester.
Before I could situate myself within that landscape before and unless I could situate that landscape within me there would be no England worth the trouble of re-awakening.
Ballardian Cuboids
Yes, I speak of lockdown fondly. My happiest days, my lost years found on the hilltop.
Despite the appalling challenge to freedom. Despite the presence of an unknowable virus
I look upon it fondly.
As an artist and as one of the owners of the Pier Ham I see a winding path up towards that plateau of Illumination, the one that kindled the first flame in the hearts of those of us taken by rock n' roll. That funny little lie. That's how it seems to me now, here.
The Pair Hart is situated squarely within the boundaries of a culture, fuelled by deception, many of us embracing the idea that if we just play hard enough, we will be noticed and exalted. We will make our way. Cold truth suggests, that there's more likelihood of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning, than finding a meaningful career as an artist within the industry.
Celebrities, rock stars, tweets.
Yesterdays.
We see them revealed.
Human? Or in fact only spectacle?
Either way tied to the culture which invited them into the party
It's difficult to imagine the opposite. It's difficult to imagine not being invited... difficult to imagine being the perennial citizen/subject.
You would assume the system works.
I think we touched upon this in a previous blog post. But now we feel it stronger than ever. That music must occupy its own niche... rock and roll must be redefined in terms of the enchantment. I spoke regarding my own journeys across the land and of those journeys as being healing. Now the music must adapt and occupy a position that might be reasonably described as medicinal.Think again. Rearrange the board.
Busy road - an old road - cars stream past. I must cross to reach the Fallowfield Loop. Peace for another hour. Before later and people and drummed back into the clutches of that. Weird life, which is becoming increasingly bold. Increasingly determined to press us down.
Cars stream. Puffed police school faces glance as if to ask: "Who goes there"? An endless cavalcade? I don't remember a time since all this began as busy as today. People are out there and yet the fear is not gone and worse than that.
Yes, worse than that the distrust, the division. And the lack of respect people have for each other's position, thoughts, feelings and dreads.
It's a monstrous 'State Of Affairs'.
Get off social media...tear ourselves away from the opinions of others. They have no sway beyond what we ascribe to them. They must go. I have never seen so many vehicles on this road before... vehicles and school children.The silence I crave has gone - countrywide. There's a scramble of metal, but at last I pass. The road says no entry. The rain continues to fall
I think about how hard it is sometimes to get even the simplest thing done. Because after all we were never in this to build a successful business. No, that was a side effect. It might be more accurate to say we were in it to pass our days. More accurate to say that the Peel Hack was a harness, keeping us attached to something we thought beautiful and worthwhile, beyond and beneath the rigour of the 9 to 5.
Is it not more accurate to say that this confluence of roads, of ley lines, of the daily dreams and hopes of the people that frequented it, had in fact taken on its own momentum?...become a planet with its own gravity formed from the super hot gas of the human imagination, the will and the need for hope and love and. most importantly, meaning?
Real
I have been to some strange places. All too close for comfort. Too close not to be wonderfully unnerved.
I gorged upon golden teachers, bereft atop hilltops, asked "what am I supposed to do?" Fighting against the elements, fighting against the sheer terminal velocity/dead weight of lives hopelessly entwined within the body of the plummeting, rotting Leviathan that capitalism has become, that culture has become.
I've clutched rock faces with nerveless fingers. Scraped unfit legs. Struggled to find a grip something to hold onto.
I've lost myself.
I have unzipped the urban forgotten, liminal space.
I've soaked myself to the Bone.
I have whistled aimless melodies. I have waited to be visited by the Muse, forsaken.
Washed my feet in rivers
I have found molten rock on hot paths.
I have delivered hair clippers across miles of Moorland.
Visited stones.
I've laid my hand upon Her and woken Dragons. I've looked into the eyes of my love and turned her words into music. As she spoke, curdling the milk.
I have walked down this darkened squirrel infested path towards the Fallowfield Loop over and over , burning away impurities. Perhaps seeing who I am now, which is the land, which is the Peak Hoot, which is the Grail, which is itself only a movement along the path. The path has no destination. The path is the destination.
I've seen ghosts walking in ranks and clusters and chaos gangs and read books I never thought I would read. I brushed the coyly reserved gills of fungal blooms.
I've cried tears of guilt.
Have wept more times than I can count.
Trying to find the path.
Not ever realising I sought a verb.
Churn Milk Joan
We said that we hoped to open on September the 4th and of course, we're several days beyond that now.
There are a number of vital upgrades that had to be made to the Peach Hot, namely the central heating and water. Honestly, we're so, so close. Honest guvna! Our new date, looks like September 18, though if we can make it happen earlier, then we're going to do that.
But as I opened this weird, can of worms blog post, the psychology of how to progress meaningfully has been an omnipresent weight. Has the world indeed, turned without us?
On the Loop, leaves golden brown, ochre, phantasmagorical crocodile, mildewed black. Lincoln Green. Pea snap nettle. Melted blue plastic.
Droplets Of crystal
Arching Across every bow.
We're nearly at the Finish Line or I think, we're approaching the start of something previously unimagined. Blind and mysterious. If only it was as simple as socially distanced drinking measures. If only it was as simple as carving a holy place into an engineer's Fantasia.
Musicians and artists are starting to send us more of their music...this is comfortably familiar. But we find ourselves becoming harsher in our assessments.
There can be no room for that which does not sufficiently quench The Thirst. Compassion now only for those who are compassionate.
We need only those who need only to give what they have to heal.
The rain picks up again tries to soak me, is soaking me.
It's funny to observe how the elaborate Palaces that I built to house my words early in the lockdown experience, have given way not even to crooked manses, but to the uncaring, inhospitable moorland.
We cannot confidently voice our thoughts, without fear of judgement. But we must keep asking questions. To question Purity. Question virtue. Question everything continuously. This is the process, the circle of re-enchantment.
So yes, we're going to soon complete our wee construction upgrade. We will throw open our doors. And then you may speak if you like.
(I step over a discarded face mask.
The sky is the colour of slate.
No donkeys bray in the sanctuary)
Somebody Is On Holiday In The Distance (Ashton)
We can learn to listen to 'place'. Consider this: a human body is not merely a single living organism. In fact, it is made up of millions of bacteria microbes and viruses. Likeiwse, a place like the Fallowfield Loop, is made up of many different species of tree, plant and grass. Not to mention the road I walk along (not alive I hear you cry---but is a virus alive?) the pigeons, the crows, the magpies, the beetles, the worms, the rain and yes, the air.
The stories.
And us.
(Good afternoon. Mr. Magpie. How is Mrs. Magpie today?)
We speak now without language. Language is for human beings. A path speaks only in its passing.
Left Behind.
We ought to try and enlighten you as to what the general mode of thoughts is here in Manchester on the music scene. Although live gigs are technically legal (or at least will be very soon), there is a discouragement... a sense that one of us might get it wrong and ruin it for the others.
But who can live like that, bound in that fashion? This the very basis of the life we've made for ourselves...what makes sense from a human perspective. I've heard people say, "well life is compromise". But the true compromise we make is with our own mortality. We accept it in order to remain human.
The conquerors are falling
We have everything hopefully set up as well as is reasonably possible... but it's going to be a learning experience because here is where the music happens, where the experience is had, where the tunnels are explored, where the map is drawn.
We will learn. What is right, what is troubling, what is best practice and what paths lead to suffering. You're a part of that. This place is as much yours as it is ours (as I have surely said before).
But let's just SPELL IT OUT:
If we thought that the world was merely crude matter and nothing but, then we wouldn't do this.
We can say otherwise. There is magic. And there are monsters to be met. The monsters of our age, are nebulous, are not the same to each person that beholds them. They are doppelgangers. Mercurial they shift and twist.
But we must be kind to one another as we return, as we listen. We'll listen to what each of us says--those who wish to convince will have their moment. Things are so and so and so. BUT what we will instead profit from, is the acceptance of our own blindness.
This music venue blog says this: There is fascism at work.
The old evil has reared its head Der Volk sings it's siren song, but through a Hall of Mirrors.
New satellites Blaze the circumference of the sphere we call Earth.
Fear more than anything to be trapped deathless.
Death is a gift of the universe to us.
It strengthens our purpose
It sweetens life...life sweetens life.
Everything hums. Everything vibrates. Nothing is still.
Now we are in the Wasteland truly.
The plain before us is vast and wide.
Beyond the plain, a mountain. Beneath the mountain, a tunnel..
The tunnel leads beneath the mountain.
This tunnel is the Great Conjunction, Saturn and Jupiter passing close to each other, as they do every 20 years. But this time will be the closest they have passed in 200 years: marking the end of the age of Earth, and beginning the new age of air and revealing a whole new bunch of problems, excitement and strangeness.
Poetry.
This will occur during the Winter Solstice...funny how these things line up neatly.
We must use everything that we have to emerge unscathed, or if not unscathed, at least seeing as clear as we can and listening. And listening above all. If you listen hard enough, you'll find yourself asking questions, and that's probably the best anybody can hope for.
It's going to be a sweet thing to kiss goodbye to this fucking terrible time we've been living through. But the opportunity has been there to change change change.
Change, they say 'be it'. We say 'Let It Be'.
Someday soon, we'll start to talk about music again, but the terms of its relationship with us have necessarily to change and have indeed, already changed. It's no longer a case of recreation, but of re-creation.
We believe that there's going to be a whole new scene and slew of musicians and artists who reflect our very real needs...but it's difficult to talk about because we currently stand on the narrow threshold of this new time. You're going to see the wrapping up of some things and ideas, to which you've grown incredibly comfortable... which you never thought would end. You're going to see the end of rock n' roll.
Who would have thought that?
And what in it's place?
Simply put, it is our responsibility to make it directly lived and part of a process not an end result. Nor an imagined. and romanticised dystopia. The heartless automaton composed of
serial killer cutout photographs - three dimensional collage of expectations undone and unrealised dreaming
Clearly it's a very exciting time to be involved in music and art.
There may be trouble ahead ,but as The Man From Another Place says:
"Where I come from, there is always music in the air."
Some of the things which I have noticed.
Joy Division lyrics on the platforms at train stations. Sometimes, amusingly, one is right there, say when waiting at Gorton.
Farmers who string electric wire fences across public rights-of-way , something that has made me angry repeatedly. An erroneous entitlement to what belongs to no human being.
The way the squirrels balance upon and dash across the steel girders; electric lines - high above the railway tracks, they freeze in place when the train comes.
I always wondered if they were live, but now I know the answer.
ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, I'LL SHUT UP! What else is going on daddy o?
Back In Time, Twice
Here's Ian with not one, but TWO episodes of Flowing Backwards...that this one is a double bill, is a result of my gross slowness.
The second Peer Hat album, of course, also delayed, just needs us to write up the artist details. Once that's done, we'll put it out there a bit and then release into the wild. In the meantime, here's the last one in case you haven't noticed it around.
And Last But Not Least....
To our huge relief, we were awarded a grant that will help to keep us going until at least Spring (assuming no change of affairs). We're obviously very grateful for whomever at the Arts Council looked kindly upon what we're doing. Added to your amazing kindness, we can have a real punt at exploring this bizarre apocalypse. That said, Aatma failed in it's bid to secure vital funds. Considering everything started with Kraak on the Square, it could definitely use your support in the times to come.
Let's keep our chins up however...the grant for The Peer Hat was amazing news. Let's see where our community travels over the next few months and 2021.
The time between entries has increased. I've made sure to be out everyday, to feel the wind on my face and to explore this weird region of ours in as much detail as I can, peeling back something satisfying and forbidden, committing it to my memory for reasons as yet uncertain. Still, everything is delicious, by which, I mean the experience of the common place. Wandering the back ways of our city feels positively Joycean: it is an urban labyrinth, abundant, alive, filth encrusted, beautiful. That many are now even more woefully disconnected from the wormy, dead bird and pebble sod, is a side effect of the death grip this virus, or rather the idea of this virus (far more powerful) has had on the West. Out there, on the abstract, broken planes, where briefly bird song roared louder than the voice of human industry, there lies the key towards a fuller, more satisfying, more urgently alive reality.
Above is Debdale Park, which I find myself passing through most days. I have met a wonderful man who plays the saxophone and another fellow who hangs books upon lines, for people to buy for any sum they choose. They huddle close, creating a kind of forlorn, yet enchanted fairground overlooking Gorton Lower Reservoir. I purchased a book about the Lake District. Either way, both men have an ebullience that is hard to ignore...these are connections formed out of the atmosphere of alienation and the whiplash response by many, myself included, to make new and sudden friendships at any cost. Find the others, find the others.
I don't want to waste too much of your time with this entry. I was going to post a few more photos of my journeys, but honestly, the above will do, the grey skies of July swollen with sorrows yet to be unleashed. But we will find a way, as a community (our mantra). There's no other choice.
As they say in Hookland, Re-Enchantment Is Resistance.
So When Is The Peer Hat Opening, You Wandering Fool?
The success of the crowdfunder, meant that we didn't have to take the frankly appalling risk of opening through the grimness of July. We considered the possibility, but we chose to wait for a variety of reasons, rational and instinctual. You can ask us all about them when we re-open, which will be, at the latest SEPTEMBER 4TH. August looks pretty empty gig wise, and since the live music ban is lifting at the beginning of the month and our raison d'etre starts and ends with that, AND Abatoir Blues are running a gig on the 4th, it seemed like a good fit. We might yet open earlier, but September 4th seems realistic. We can't help but notice the virus spikes and such taking place around Europe, but, with our eyes fixed firmly on a terrain view of health, we will set our sails to weather the storm. The space weather suggests a peak around December for viral troubles, so buckle in. We may be relying on the baldly abstract ways, in which the upper elites of Britain seem to be given, when it comes to regarding the welfare, of the greater section of the population. EDIT 03/08/2020 (Yep, I was right about that...where do we go from here? It's an endurance race my friends.)
Our prepared and measured response, would not have been possible without your help.
Oh yes, there was this also: a little interview we did with the Manchester Evening News:
It was interesting to pour out my thoughts and I have to say, I think our concerns were fairly well represented here. So that was a relief.
What About Our Damn T-Shirts?
Bear with us, or email me and I'll arrange a grab session. We've had so many things to do to get the place compliant with guidelines..they're all there and will come your way soon. So yeah, if you want, email me on nick@thepeerhat.com and I'll sort you out personally (if you need that shirt now motherfucker....and you have every right).
(MORE TIME PASSES)
And Now It Is Lamas And We Don't Know Again
Following the commencement of this post, it was revealed to the people, that we would no longer be permitted to see one another indoors...except it seems, in places like the Peer Hat, so long as we prevent the members of different households from meeting. How this is accomplished, is of course, left to the imagination of the proprietor. It's something that is essentially unenforceable and I personally believe, will lead to a more fulsome lockdown scenario. How to contain despair. How to give a voice to the gasping, dry choke of plans dashed and unheard? We at The Peer Hat, can say to you: "Yes, we will open on September 4th" but of course that is now within the lap of the stars. And the Stars Are Not Yet Right. We can only wait and see. Still, the words churn and boil forth and the hot taste of anger and hurt at those closest and dearest to us, continues to rise and do it's damage, to wound and slow. We must reconcile between ourselves, recognise that we are legitimate human beings with legitimate fears, reasoning and intuition, that can only serve us as we allow. We must forgive. We must be compassionate. If our communities fail because we cannot show contrition, and show mercy in return...if we gloat at the failings and weakness of others...
What would be the point of The Peer Hat? Who would wish to go there, but enemies from a fallen reality?
Lamas
Lugh's face is as bright as the sun. He is mostly forgotten now, only whispered of during The Wakes...but deep within the mythosphere, he strides still, a hero beyond measure, forever the plaything of the Goddess. But a hero he remains and if we look deep within and catch a glimpse of that shining countenance, we might recognise it as our own and move forth---towards and through--- the invincible shadow.
The Second Peer Hat Album
We've been a little delayed with this as you might imagine, but we have all the tracks now and think it will be a real treat for the ears. It's a little longer in running time than the previous offering, but no less enticing, representing those that camp within our walls for a little time and then moving on. We are at a pivotal point in history. Dead Machine versus the awe and horror of a reality that is whole. Do we want musicians and artists passing through our lives and sharing of themselves? If so, we must ask what we are prepared to sacrifice. If not, then we must make peace with a new world, one where the only musicians are in your bedroom and in the history books.
We have no way of making that choice for you.
Streaming & Such
It's funding season and we need grants to remain viable. This means that we have to invest in streaming as a priority. Whatever your opinion of streamed gigs as a viable way of experiencing the magnificent, awe inspiring power of live music....that is the reality of our situation. Prepare for that and think about how we can make it more palatable. Please feel free to mail on nick@thepeerhat.com with any ideas you might have.
Not many people read this blog. A lot less than enjoy The Peer Hat. But you do and we care about your opinions.
Let's See What's Happening, As A Friend Of Mine Used To Say...
Ian is back...I want to thank him for being such a warm and caring person. His perspective has been invaluable. In the meantime, check out these.two linked episodes of Ian's digital memoir...
Johnny Dreamguns is also back...the mercurial one has a track entitled Washed Up At The Shore for you to drown in and upon. The lo-fi nature of these tracks, allied to a wicked sense of humour, belies a certain (and somewhat surprising) streak of pain and darkness. Still completely standing on it's own (on the shore, amidst the flotsam and jetsam).
We expect to receive more exciting tidbits as time progresses. I think that the early outpourings of music and art, came from a sense of novelty and from the opening of a weird fleeting portal. Magic came forth and we bathed in it for those few frozen weeks, before the caustic light of our current reality reasserted itself (with added awfulness). Confusion and chaos rule. But we were always that.
Enough time has passed since our last blog, to bury an entire cemetery of unrecorded events. I can wander around, lost in the mists of this graveyard, stumbling at each mound in turn, furrowing my brow in an effort to decipher the scratchings upon the headstones. Sometimes there are words and names that I can almost elucidate, but those triggered thoughts remain suspended amidst the dust of memory, ultimately pristine, never to be disturbed.
Since the last paragraph, I've spent about 35 minutes hunting for an email somebody sent me about something, which I felt would be absolutely ideal for a blog post. Naturally and in the theme of this entry, I AM COMPLETELY UNABLE TO REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT IT. I clumsily hit caps there, but as Bob Ross said "there are no mistakes here, only happy accidents".
Yes, the space between the headstones really is at a premium.
What a labyrinth life has become, negotiating a very real if non-physical maze. I'd go into that analogy more, but I used it several blog entries prior. It seems as if being uncertain about things that happen, has become a luxury. Critical thinking? WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT. No, we have instead a digital chorus and an increasing demand for a kind of theological orthodoxy. The Peer Hat is a place where we can express ourselves and be whomever we desire, without fear of our best intentions being weaponised and utilised for nefarious purposes. This is the great issue of our holographic moment and why it's difficult to voice opinions on corporate platforms that are explicitly being used against us, in open, with apathetic consent. Here's what we will say, quoting the great Argentinean writer, Jorge Luis Borges:
"In Paradise [he discovered] that in the eyes of the unfathomable deity...the orthodox and the heretic, the abominator and the abominated, the accuser and the victim...were a single person"'
Enough for thee? Quite enough. We feel that it's important to say this much also: if you actually have the power to make a difference in this indescribably cruel and unfair world--- and intend to do so, shut the fuck up and get on with it. These are heavy, dangerous times. Or at least it feels that way. Let's make certain that our actions speak for themselves.
Yes a heavy time.We at The Peer Hat have been devoting man hours to the survival of our temple to inclusion, proposing ideas, rejecting ideas....some seeing the light, others regrettably banished to the cutting room floor. At times it feels futile...are we battling the shift towards a new social order? One in which people don't go out, don't go to music venues? Are we representatives of an old order that spells death for the immuno-compromised? These are questions we will be forced to ask over and over, as will you, our dear friends, family, fans, customers and artists. We gain nothing by nailing our colours to the mast, as I hope I have already demonstrated. But whatever the motive, an attack has been made on every single bulwark of life---friendship, family, sex, mourning and celebration. We here hope to offer a taste of honey. We built ourselves on a foundation of community. Thus we wait. And our survival depends upon that community valuing the idea of itself and of freedom, more than it values the safety offered in isolation.
We cannot make that decision for you, but we will be waiting. Our decision in that respect is made.
On the side of the less dramatic, there are some potential avenues of light which may yet make the notion of spending time with us, something less than a game of psychic Russian Roulette.
In the first place, the recent spate of government relaxations, has made opening up on July 4th, a legal possibility. The light here, is that this represents something akin to a swift step towards the usual menu of social pleasures. The downsides are, unfortunately, considerable. Table service, no live music, no dancing---apart from loyalty to the idea of The Peer Hat, what joy would there be to glean from such a scenario? It's close to the equivalent of sneaking a can of Special Brew into the doctor's waiting room. Staggered closing (imagine calling a competing bar and asking them to shut 15 minutes before yourself), slot booking (table B , come in, your time is up) and potential data collection exercises, further write home that this current Wetherspoon's friendly, great re-opening, is a smoke screen behind which venues like ours, cannot function and cannot be seen.
Secondly, plans are afoot to pedestrianise Stevenson Square and surrounding streets. Hurray for the Save Our Summer Six (sorry, who?)! We can envisage a fairly interesting scenario that sees people enjoying the famous Mancunian outdoors, mingling (at a distance!!!!!!)....perhaps even a near festival vibe. The downsides, are threefold. Firstly, this looks set to happen in perhaps 3 months time..making this something of an Autumn of Love. Secondly, the large numbers might give cause for the authorities to blanch and shut the whole thing down in a welter of panic. Thirdly, the Great British Weather might have it's own ideas.
Indeed, it is raining as I write. Having just endured four days of increasingly Mediterranean heat, I must say I'm quite glad of the thunder---right here and now, within this instance. Such squalls might spell disaster for any outdoor schemes, but here, this second, I am at peace. It is becoming increasingly useful to locate ourselves in moments--- the greater the fear and uncertainty becomes. Though there is a sense of cessation elsewhere (if not perhaps a firm conviction that the barbarians are not at the gate), for those within the music industry, times are reaching a bleak nadir. Quietly, we face a great vanishing, independent venues and independent artists alike...
What will culture look like a year from now?
How many venues will be standing?
Could we take the pressure of change?
What will our mental health look like?
What about those left behind? Those in the grip of fear? Those that are ill?
Can we come to terms with our mortality?
Can we come to terms with our immortality?
What form does rebellion take when oppression is consensus?
On each of the fronts mentioned previous (friendship, family, sex, mourning, celebration), we are forced to find ways of creative expression that circumvent the presented difficulties. Art is our ally. As is the landscape, if we inhabit it fully. As Conner Habib wrote, it's both possible to be highly suspicious of the authoritarian measures which have shut down our lives AND conscientious regarding the health risks. The two are not mutually exclusive and sadly, this is a failing we see over and again---and not just regarding the virus, but repeatedly in life. Nuance is everything---without it, there would be no life worth living and to ignore it, is to negate life itself.
I've spoken before about the artist approaching the moment when they transcend the music industry, the silly parade of radio voices and radio heads, the pennies for streaming, embarrassing PR photographs, pay to play, shovel-ware and the culture wars of youth, relevance and fashion. I thought it would happen slowly, a transition to localism happening a step at a time. But it seems the change has been forced upon us. The artist, the poet and the musician, have been placed in a state of, paradoxically, hyper relevance. Denied the usual means of expression, we look anew, find them wanting and arrive at a fresh vision of the future..
What does a music venue look like when it's community has been forced to split, when it's raison d'etre seems to have evaporated? Separated, flashing signals at one another, dare I say, "touching from a distance"? Might it starts to resemble a model of the human brain? Or the universe itself? Connections firing between it's members in ways that might even be considered on the quantum scale? Our thoughts, feelings, ideas and actions entangled? You think perhaps love is not a force as strong as gravity? Only one that works within the blinding glare of consciousness , equivalent maybe to the beginning of all creation? Forced ever smaller, we can say (to roughly quote Pete Carroll) , that whilst miracles are very rare on the macro scale, on the Planck scale, they're surprisingly common...
In scaling down and discovering why we're doing this at all, we find the hidden connections and indeed, the hidden miracles.
With that said let's talk about the crowd-funder...
HOW DOES 102% SOUND? LIKE SOMETHING ALAN SHEARER WOULD SAY? WELL LOOK BENEATH!
YOU DID THIS AND YES, IT IS ACCOMPLISHED...WHATEVER HAPPENS NEXT, THIS WAS DONE AND REPEATEDLY I FIND MYSELF WRITING IN CAPS AND SAYING "WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, EXCEPT THANK YOU".
To write yet another weeping note of gratitude, would be doing you all a disservice. If there is anything of our musical culture remaining after all this, the results of your charity and fondness for The Peer Hat, means it has a far better chance of being a part of what is to come. Either way, you will figure out a way through this. I've said this repeatedly...whatever one calls it...and right now it's called The Peer Hat, Manchester needs a place like this. We won't be kept down.
THERE'S MORE TO BE SAID...LET'S TALK ABOUT BLACK STAGE, THE PEER HAT COMPILATION ALBUM!
As the crowd-funder has drawn to it's triumphant conclusion, we've searched for another means of bringing home much needed revenue. Finally, we've settled upon a musical release. There will be two Peer Hat compilation albums called Black Stage, one featuring largely local artists and the other, featuring the work of touring musicians who have stopped by to perform with us. The first album will be released on....the 3rd of July. We're thinking £12 is an adequate sum, since we don't want to devalue the amazing contributions of the artists involved. The second album will be released hopefully in mid to late July... we're still collecting a few remaining submissions.
ALL OF THE ARTISTS INVOLVED, DONATED A SONG OR PIECE OF MUSIC, FOR FREE, FROM THE FONT OF THEIR OWN GENEROSITY. WHENEVER YOU SEE THEIR NAMES IN THE FUTURE, SUPPORT THEM, SEE THEIR GIGS, HELP THEM KEEP GOING!
I'll post the track list before Friday to whip up some vibrations.
To finish we want to cast your minds back to November.
Wandering Mexican spirit music duo, Ritual Maya, took residence in our venue for a couple of weeks. I'm sure many of you recall their presence, there was a palpable sense of magic that trailed in their wake, seeming refugees from another time and place, caught adrift on the flow, to find themselves within our most humble venue.
The mystic vibrations were soon to intensify. Who else but Akin could somehow raise the magic to even greater levels? This video is absolutely mesmerising, capturing the act of creation happening in two forms simultaneously. Although the art produced is of course beautiful, the value in this film, is in seeing how there is very little difference between the medium and the message. Something to bear in mind as we plough on through these darkest of days.
A couple of weeks back now, Julie Campbell AKA Lonelady, sent me a request to delve once again beneath the trembling surface skin of Mancunian unconscious memory. Scrub Transmissions, essentially amounts to a treasure hunt: in this case, the treasure to be found, is a Lonelady poem & song, playing on a permanent loop (or for at least as long as the battery on the MP3 player endures). Embedded into concrete, only a discreet input jack showing itself, this is a what I might describe as a camouflaged dissidence, a paradoxical means of promotion, since all onus is upon the listener to seek and find the sound thus hidden. I wrote about her last ScrubTransmission here. Allow me to quote myself:
"....The re-assertion of magic came with [Manchester's] death as an industrial force. Suddenly...not a factory any longer..[but] a graveyard...a peculiarly angular Pere La Chaise. And more (or less)...it became a ruin....the importance of the ruin on the British psyche cannot be under-estimated...the Romantics clashed against the arrival of the modern, by venerating the ruin. A ruin invites the Wild Adversary back to the table...negotiation is now taking place between the urban and the rural..and consequently, the human and the non-human (in terms on consciousness, in terms of agency). Here we can venture and linger. Here, the danger is older and purer...but it is a place of communion. Lonelady expressed this comunion by cementing her art into the landscape. This, the very definition of intrinsic meaning...where there is nothing, one creates. And yet, as I re-traced Julie's footsteps, I became yet more convinced, that there was an extrinsic meaning here...and that solitary, now dead transmission, represented the terms of dialogue with an environment, that was at once newly born, and threatened with inevitable extinction."
If you've been following this blog, some of this will already be striking notes of familiarity. My feelings on the matter remain unchanged. Julie is not fond of the term 'psycho-geography', used as a lazy shorthand by journalists attempting to grab and tame her muse. Yet, the impact upon my own consciousness, ushered by this hyper weird plague walk, cannot be over-emphasised. I feel perhaps even more radically inclined to place my cards upon the table and say that----yes, there is an entire ecology of information happening between our perceptions and apparently non living objects, things, places and ideas. Like as to the wind that sways the grasses on the wasteland, the throb between the bodies upon the dance floor or the courage of the poet to mythologise their place, bearing out a love that, quite frankly, might be described by those from fairer climes, as positively deluded.
At any rate, I'm waxing right up my own arse. The Peer Hat asked for people to send us whatever they were doing during their period of isolation. So of course, I leapt at the chance to get some words down for the blog. And sure enough they came, or at least I assume they are about to come...(EDITORS NOTE: they came)
Here were my instructions. Reasonably simple, but since I began my journey in Audenshaw (which, in a synchronistic aside, is from whence Julie hails), I had at least 4 good miles to cover. I resolved to make those miles as revealing as possible and representative, not just of my experience, or even of Julie's intent as an artist, but of the shades that have passed, akin to holograms through and over this land. Furthermore, to capture a sense of belonging that would not feel out of place within the walls of The Peer Hat as it is now, a dream. Hopefully there is something of the universal in this transcript.
Delta Hill
Steps to the top of Delta Hill. You can see a remarkable amount of Pennine beauty from up here
As a child, Delta Hill was something like notorious. Nearby, what was known as the Paddy Walk, passing by a coal yard and some allotments. Those allotments are the source of a hazy summer memory, spent with my friend Ben, somebody whom I have since lost touch with. But that coal yard was thought to be the haunt of an evil killer, Jimmy Greenteeth. I have memories of something like a nightmare, (or was it the tale told to me by another childhood friend?)...being pursued by the malevolent Greenteeth, frenzied, door to door. Interestingly, I later became aware of a Tameside faerie by the name of Nan Greenteeth, a kind of bog or pond spirit, naturally fond of the taste of child flesh. Could there have been a connection? Delta Hill itself, I convinced myself was sometimes in alignment with Delta Cephei and that the vague, almost certainly artificial mound, was in fact an ancient hillock, sacred to the early Britons. Regardless, beyond the mirage of childhood convictions, I have never been able to find a satisfactory reason for it's existence.
The Paddy Walk. I didn't name it.
A den of sorts.
Door to childhood.
Red Hall Chapel
A little further along the route and I'm forced to trade the intriguing back-ways of Audenshaw for the dull, vaguely pleasing sameness of Audenshaw road. There's still a long way to tread.
Orange Country Encounter
What grieving there must have been when the Chapel was drowned beneath the reservoir, lamentations for an age in passing. Were there graves beneath the calm, cold surface? Were there places that people loved? Places once thought of as valuable, something to be fought over? When the chapel, built in 1783 was demolished, Audenshaw was thought of as a pleasant rural hamlet... but it would soon be changed forever by sweeping industrialisation. Pseudo-Tectonic transformations, saw the place rise a little, before stumbling into the decrepitude of British ignominy. More history, a little further below now:
"Red Hall and the Red Hall Methodist Chapel were among those buildings drowned by the reservoirs. Red Hall was built in 1672. The estate, which included a large part of the hamlet of Audenshaw, had been given to Captain Ralph Stopford, a captain in Cromwell's army, by Cromwell himself. The Hall passed into the Hobson family. Edward Hobson started a day school in 1740 and, until recently, his charities were used for educational purposes. After his death in 1764, Red Hall passed into the possession of Robert Thornley who built a small factory on the side for furriers and skin dressers. The Thornley brothers were strongly interested in the Methodist revival, and were involved in the building of Red Hall Chapel which was opened on April 21, 1783, near the Hall. It was part of the Stockport Weslyan Circuit, and on April 6, 1786, John Wesley took services at Red Hall when he was 83."
So this place had born witness to Wesley's preaching, now calmly drowned. Lest it be forgotten, Wesley made a journey to the Americas in an effort to convert the 'poor savages' that were native to the place. However:
'It was on the voyage to the colonies that the Wesleys first came into contact with Moravian settlers. Wesley was influenced by their deep faith and spirituality rooted in pietism. At one point in the voyage a storm came up and broke the mast off the ship. While the English panicked, the Moravians calmly sang hymns and prayed. This experience led Wesley to believe that the Moravians possessed an inner strength which he lacked. The deeply personal religion that the Moravian pietists practised heavily influenced Wesley's theology of Methodism'
Curiously, there exists a Moravian settlement not 10 minutes walk from the Red Hall Stone. It seems that something of Wesley had brushed off on the place...now a vague memory long since banished by the waters I sometimes swam in as a child. I cast myself back to then, imagining the vertiginous years beneath my kicking feet, watched by ghosts that see the sun forever from a distance, a rippling white host.
The Blue Pig, also built in the 1700s. Abandoned since 2013, put to death by the motorway.
Fairfield Train Station
Here comes the train.
I stopped here for a piss and also to mark the boundary, where Audenshaw would give over to a different kind of wasteland. We sat for a while, my partner and I, watching the empty trains rumble past. When I was a child, I imagined there was a mythical Fairfield, that was exactly what it said on the tin. A Summerland of sorts, or a Happy Hunting Ground. Like Flowery Fields two stations away, it was a case of false advertising. Later, I would become aware of Fairfield Girls School, which as an adolescent, provided the fuel for further fantasies. Such is youth.
Carrying bio-matter. Time to move on.
Fallowfield Loop
The Passage To Mancunia.
Glorious artery connecting me to the promised land, a superb highway filed with sights, experience and horror. I cherish the thought of the Loop, how it runs without prejudice between Audenshaw and Chorlton. It feels arbitrary and I like it that way...I am honoured that my home sits close to it's humble beginning. In fact, so humble as to be almost invisible. A housing estate attempts to nullify the entrance and very nearly succeeds...I suppose it must come as a surprise to all that discover it for the first time. Follow the passage way and one emerges into another world, Manchester's shirt ripped from it's back , or a car bonnet flung open and the workings of the engine made apparent.
It's easy to think of the Loop as a holdover from an earlier epoch. And yet...until 1990, it was merely a freight line, certainly not the strange pathway we've come to know today. It's birth, remains a testament to the fact, that we're still very much capable of creating magic and fully capable of rolling out 'ruins to order'. In some senses, the Loop recalls the Project for the Rational Improvement of Paris (1955), the section in question:
"The rooftops of Paris should be opened to pedestrian traffic by means of modifications to fire escape ladders and construction of catwalks where necessary."
Realities are there to be created, repurposed and rethought. There is the flash of Solar Punk to this programme and latterly, of the clandestine, the secret and furtive....something all too rare in our society, but exponentially occurring at this radical plague instance. What measures of rebellion can we fathom within apparently consensual authoritarianism? When conspiracy with peers in refuge bars and music venues is deemed a crime, to whom or what must we look for guidance? The answer relies upon rejecting the perceptual prejudice of a materialist, rationalist society: for it is to the landscape that we must turn and whisper and listen.
We at The Peer Hat are enthused by the Loop, it acts as a means of fast, non road travel and communication between variously connected individuals. I admit that we had this in mind when considering The Peer Hat Post, certainly as one arm of it's potentially psycho-geographical (sorry Julie) meanderings. To me, it feels like a secret passage. There are crossroads a plenty along the way and in this sense, it is fair to say that it belongs to the Devil. Traversing it at night, is not something I can recommend: there are stories I can tell which would have you hurriedly agreeing.
There is much more to be said about the Loop, it deserves mythologising, it's place has not yet set (to my knowledge), by the bards of Manchester. My route this day meant that I would stay on it (Her? Him? Them?) not for very long, but I will say this: sometimes we need to take the Devil's road.
Irritatingly, there's a diversion; something is being hidden. Also, this sign was pointing the wrong way.
Abbey Hey & Gorton
A bullethole, blood and memory.
After leaving behind The Fallowfield Loop, we emerge blinking into Abbey Hey, residential Gorton and another town pulsating with a kind of low key strangeness that belies initial impressions. There are many poppies around, perhaps leftovers from the recently passed and supra-spectral 75th VE Day. They watch, bloody eyes, windows to infinite battlefields and symbols that have over time, gathered more meaning than perhaps was intended. There is an obstinance to their arrangement that is not easily shaken. They are exit wounds on a landscape that can at times, appear cadaverous.
A ruin, the fence is the greater eyesore.
Gorton, some say it gained it's name from a battle fought long ago between the Saxons and the Danes. I imagine the night before the conflict, there would have been fires burning that one could have seen from Delta Hill, where soothsayers and poets picked out the victors from the array of celestial bodies. That the battle was bloody, there can be no doubt, the fields drenched red with the life blood of the fallen, the ground now a mountain range in miniature, though these slopes are viscera and bone, plucked at finally by crows that had waited patient for the ring of iron to cease it's echo. Naturally, historians, in their closeted manner, declared that such a battle was mere fancy. In fact Gorton meant 'dirty farmstead' and that the brook that courses through it, was perhaps the source, discoloured as it was. And yet the signs are here...the blood still marked on walls and in windows.
This is a battle fought at this very moment within the dream chambers of sleeping Gorton. Woe to the historian that dismisses myth as the distorted message of a surmounted past, or even as mere religious instruction. Be surprised instead to learn, that myths are yet another super-imposition upon what we consider reality... they never happened. They are happening.
Silence here, was total.
Plague screeds, unseen, untended, the post office a sepulchre.
There are a great many cages in Gorton, as there are a great many ruins. To keep the good folk from an untimely end, must surely be their stated purpose, and their instalment, surely seen as temporary. Instead, they remain a fixture, and have the effect of inducing an unpleasant sensation of imprisonment. Or rather we are in a zoo, but in the place of animals, we observe shards of condemned structures, a broken past that we are forbidden to touch.
Caged angel, adjacent to The Angel Pub.
All windows sealed
The picture is the same, it repeats.
The Buzz was an exclusion unit, a place for permanently expelled children. It was located in the Peacock Centre, which, despite the grandiose sign, exists no longer, The sign seems like a vain testament to a fallen Utopia..and yet, in an amusing turn of aesthetic, seems to now indicate a place where the brilliant hued bird might be seen by passing pilgrims such as myself. My partner, comments, that it seems as though something is waiting to happen. This is her childhood turf and to her, it is as if somebody pressed PAUSE. I can see it as I'm sure you will be able to also.
The white sign is brilliantly scrubbed.
The steel works and associated tavern presents itself soon enough. Another childhood friend's father worked here for many years. I remember him returning home wearing an eyepatch after a shard of metal nearly took his sight. He recovered fully. The memory for me, however, remains fresh. My friend's father wad called Tom and, once upon a time, there was a bakery on my street (unimaginable now). He worked there and I thought it the most glamorous job a man could turn his hand to...I was always delighted whenever I saw him leave work, head to toe, covered in flour. When I thought of the black machines and the molten metal screeching through voids of invaded space...it always seemed a terrible shame that the old bakery had shut and that he was forced to endure labour within the bowels of hell. At any rate, it was not hell, it was Gorton. And he was not my father.
I sometimes wonder what the tavern is like just after the factory closes.
The Monastery, is the undoubted jewel of Gorton, the Franciscan's efforts tunnelling through history to the present. The red brick monk's gate, is the segment that attracts my attentions on this particular day. You might accuse me of churlishness, ignoring the beautiful building to which it provides egress. But as we pass by, I can see trails of cassocked friars, enduring the drizzle of a Monday morning, to enter via this modest aperture. To me, it seems like the holiest place of all and, unabashedly Mancunian. I feel a little sorry for the monks; what a hard life it must have been..and consider that they built the place with their own hands!.And yet, unlike Red Hall Chapel, this place endures and it's ghosts are free to continue in their obediences.
Monk's Entrance
Once past the Monastery, I knew that we were on the final stretch. Considering how close we were to the city and the ever present roar of Ashton-Old-Road, the atmosphere was quite still. There were people around to be sure, but they seemed to move within bubbles. We would pass and occasionally smile or whisper "hello", just like they did in the countryside. As we pass by a very DIY home stead, I experience a vision of this place as it once was, not so very long ago. I can hear the river.
Rural Gorton Shack
The Approach
Soon were are the only people we could see. Gorton Road calcifies into still humming machinery. This might be the only place left in Manchester, where the Industrial Revolution is still happening, my a partner remarked. But these aren't cotton mills, or churning engines that power the Empire. Everything, is in fact, re-purposed, smaller, making less noise, employing less people. A sense of emptiness settled over me, as if I'd stumbled through gossamer. I walk and I feel as if I am at meditation.
A Church 2020
Beneath a tunnel, lichen crawls up the benighted walls, forming brilliant patterns. It's an incongruity. I find it difficult to believe that unsentimental council directives, would allow for life like this to flourish in such abundance. That is unless, it has forgotten. Yes, there is a sense that this long stretch of industrial development, has fallen from the consciousness of the city.
Spread over the walls of the tunnel, the lichen strives to feed itself.
I know we are quite close now. I feel a vibration of deja vu, recalling my first appointment with Lonelady's Scrub Transmission. We pass by a section of fenced off waste ground. Though there is the possibility for egress, the stalwart explorer would be forced to navigate a small hillock of rubbish, For a moment, I consider wading through the filth and nastiness to access the tantalisingly grassy area beyond, but something holds me back. Perhaps it is superstition, but there is something decidedly unnerving about the geography of this moment, as it struggles to fit into place within my mind. We pass on, choosing not to linger. Nevertheless, I find myself silently thrilled by this brush with the irrational.
Here Be Monsters
The sun has made no decisions today, but Helios shows it's face long enough for me to commemorate our imminent arrival. It's strange how the the line of history flattens out, throughout the rest of my journey, there had been a gaggle of voices, shapes... depth. But here, it is as if the waveform has stilled. It occurs to me that we are the ghosts now and in some odd sense, we are carrying the weight of all history, a hidden yet significant action taking place upon a backdrop of heat-death.
Stainforth Street
DEMON
There's a certain sadness in the air as I arrive but only in the sense that my adventure is coming to it's conclusion. I wonder who wrote this word and why. Was the artist a seer, an oracle? Did they forsee Julie's secretive mission and, if you'll indulge me a moment longer, a true act of free masonry? I don't remember seeing it before. Briefly I consider whether or not Lonelady herself carefully drew the letters, defining her territory. I decide not, and settle finally on this: DEMON is a honeytrap, it draws the eye of those that know and of those that want to know. Just a little way from Ashton Old Road, yet still hidden by that strange sense of obscure nothingness I mentioned on the approach. I spend a little time searching for the input jack and, sure enough, I find it. However, before I plug in, I peer into the space beyond, a fracture above my discovery. All I see, is the bare stone of a building that has seen no material purpose for years. A ruin then. A haunted place. Meticulously chosen.
Finally I turn my attention to the input. My partner plugs in headphones, listens and then finally hands them over to me. I place them over my ears and hear Julie's voice. And I close my eyes.
Other Things We Know, We Haven't Forogtten
So turning our eye back upon the worthy works of the weary warriors, this week we have:
Elyssa Iona, my good friend and bridge between The Peer Hat and the mighty Islington Mill, has been extremely hard at work during this almost interminable period of teeth grinding. A dabbler in all things analogue, her vapourised aesthetic, it's worn magnificence and crumbling splendour can be seen on many a Peer Hat design, from posters, to fonts to artworks and photographs. Did I mention she does drone also (I think one does drone, don't quote me on the verb)? This however, is something else again. From the website...
"DIYD is an artist-led darkroom with a real emphasis on community and experimentation.
The facilities are available for hire to the general public, with rates including an on-call supervisor and discounts for Islington Mill studio holders, students and the unwaged.
In addition to this there will also be tutored sessions available for beginners or users in need of additional guidance & a range of affordable process/scan/capture services available if you would rather have a technician do it for you!"
Islington Mill keeps surprising, maintaining it's commitment to DIY culture. And that's down to the hard work of people like Elyssa, who keep finding ways to make things happen. Website link is above beneath the picture and if you fancy checking out Elyssa's other work, I suggest you go HERE.
What is Ian doing now?
Come June 5, Four Candles will be releasing their song, Doughnuts. All proceeds will go to The Peer Hat, which is a truly kind gesture from one of our scene's most active members. Naturally, the new EP, called Alternative Golf will be available on bandcamp and on German Shepherd Records. Check out the video below! We think it's a really slick sounding record from the band...there's really nobody else like them around.
Aaaaaaand Hannah!
Six days late, but not a moment too soon, comes our coverage of Not Bad For A Girl Collective's first birthday! Hannah from Psychopomp provides the tunes for you all to get with, and in case you're unfamiliar with NBFAG, here's what they have to say about themselves:
Not Bad For A Girl is a home-grown ethically-sourced collective of women who just want to have fun. Born from a shared love of music/events and hatred of gender inequality, we’re all about equal opportunity, equal pay and equal parts spirit and mixer.
With 8 different DJ’s playing everything from jungle to northern soul we’ve covered alllll the bases. Look out for the signature pink balaclava + catch us on lineups across the UK.
Get your tracks out love x
WHO WE ARE TO US:
Bookings email marthamarthalc@gmail.com. We do CLUB NIGHTS/FREE PARTIES/RAVES/HOUSE PARTIES/HEN DOS/NORMAL TUESDAY EVENINGS. House party package: £100 for speakers, lights, decorations, lineup, bouncers + damage control for the council (boo).
ThtGrl - ThtGrl has a solid collection of genres mastered under her belt when it comes to DJing. From DnB to Disco and Acid to House, she’s played in venues such as Ministry Of Sound and around the country in most major cities. She’s supported the likes of My Nu Leng and Darkzy and has been booked all over Europe. Whatever vibe you’re after, you can have no doubt you’ll be hit with a style of mixing that’ll have you hooked. https://soundcloud.com/tht_grl
Kiana - Iranian-born Manchester-based DJ with a wide taste in music ranging from techno,breaks and bass to ambient and experimental. She has performed at venues such as Soup Kitchen, Partisan collective, Cotton, and Stage and Radio as well as festivals such as Westival and The Folk Forest. A familiar name on airwaves, Kiana has her own show on NTS Radio, Tehran Amplified, where she showcases contemporary sounds from underground Iran. She co-hosts a weekly vinyl only show on Fuse FM and appears regulary on Limbo Radio. Her other radio appearanes include Reform Radio, Melodic Distraction and MCR Live. As well as DJing, Kiana is currently combining her passion for electronic sounds and engineering by exploring the psycho-acoustic effects of audio signal processing academically at University of Manchester's Electrical and Electronic Engineering department. https://www.mixcloud.com/SoodxKiana/
DaiSu - New to the scene but still a queen, DaiSu specialises in house, disco and a lil bit of tech. Catch her sipping VKs behind the decks. https://soundcloud.com/dai-su
Maracuya - Currently smashing the scene, Maracuya wows crowds at events all the way from B.L.O.O.M. residents parties to illegal raves. Her free party-influenced frenetic sets always get the crowd pumping, with anything from breaksy electro to 170bpm old school Jungle. https://www.mixcloud.com/maracuyasoundsystem/
Velmz - Fresh off sets from brands like Hit&Run and Fuse Presents, Warrington born DJ Velmz is killing the Manchester DnB scene. Velmz serves selections from minimal to liquid that prove there's nothing wrong with a bit of 'girly' DnB. https://soundcloud.com/velmz
Moll - You can count on Moll to bring the bouncy bassline to get the room hyper. Expect wubs and wobbles and everything inbetween, including garage stompers even your nan would get down to. She’s a resident on Vandelay Radio and has made her way from bonny Burnley into Manchester for events like Fuse Presents and MisogynyIsHate. Old school bangers every time. https://soundcloud.com/mollycronshaw
Egg On Toast - Fresh off the Tokyo track, Egg On Toast brings mind scrambling tunes. Expect disco, house, afro, techno, electro, poached, fried, over easy - all that nasty jazz. https://soundcloud.com/eggontoast1
(Applications closed for now x)
FEMALE CREATIVES HIT US UP WE LOVE AND NEED YOU
Yep, sounds pretty cool. Here's Psychopomp to see you out. Hope you enjoyed reading this one.
