Sounds In Undecided Spaces (volume 1), Featuring Karl D'Silva

A brick, does not have to be a brick when it's home to a ghost. An alleyway, doesn't have to be an alley way, if it's home to a spirit that will eat your children (although if you're polite, you can reckon on things going your way when you're in this part of town...only please be kind). A building is a building, only if we deny it's rightful place as a member of our family and forget that it, like you, has needs that must be met. A canal is also an artery and life  bustles and crowds alongside it.The life alongside it, is in turn, an ecosystem in the same way that a park in Longsight can breathe and notice you, if you notice it back. The air is thick with forces that are in partnership with us, if we grant them the dignity we grant to our own (or ought to grant).

If you call a river mother, then you should not murder her. If you call a forest brother, then you should not cut him down. Every single thing in this reality is linked in an astonishing fashion. Even now, we cower in our homes, hiding from an invisible connection that we dread with every fibre of our being. Suddenly the game looks exactly like a game (and the rules are undergoing a hard reboot whilst we do our bit and do, well,  nothing). We've been fed this materialist thing for years,

 and wherever we sit politically, left or right, our position of 'enlightenment' permits nothing we can't see in front of our own faces..that cannot be touched or heard. Perhaps it would behoove us to recognise and seek these connections for our own mutual benefit.

Easier said than done, so you might say. But I vehemently disagree. This is where we are all artists, all have a responsibility to tell a story about the people and places we love. When we're in somewhere like The Peer Hat or The White Hotel or The Golden Lion, we must contribute to the tales within the walls. We are literally the ecosystem, the neural clusters, the nervous system, the very heart and soul of the place. The health of the system is in the wealth of the tales we tell. Every aspect is waiting for you to uplift it...like the difference between sipping from a glass of wine and making a toast to the party.

We strongly suspect that it is the role of the artist, within these communities, these living systems, to act as the mirror, to summon up the fantasies of context and make them real within people's imagining. This word imagination, is what we thrive on. It's all in your head, but then....what isn't?

Karl D'Silva

Karl is the focus of today's examination of the populating forces within The Peer Hat. He's a musician we've had the pleasure of hosting on at least three separate occasions, his audience slowly but surely building. If we like somebody, we bring them back, mainly because they're contributing to the site vibration. Karl's music is an otherworldly, gate warp into a kind of science-fiction/gnostic megacity, just at the edge of a dream or nightmare. At the same time, his music is punishingly honest and heartfelt and sports monster hooks. Whenever I see him perform, I get to witness somebody re-imagining the pop star, within a localised context. In fact, the stuff we'll be featuring here, is overwhelmingly that (if not the pop star part, definitely the bit about context).




All these ideas that Karl brings to The Black Stage remain and form something of it's spiritual self. It's a realm within a realm, a memory that paints the air of the imaginal. I talk with him here, for about an hour and a half. You'll forgive the clumsiness of my questioning, my blocked nose and also the sheer eagerness I display when it comes to talking about something that excites me. These are electric times and this was a deep dive into Karl's world. He remains an excellent human being and an exceedingly unusual thinker. I hope that comes across in the following interview...a sound in an undecided space.




PS

Keep sending your ideas to nick@thepeerhat.com and we will attempt to realise them. That's why we're here. We've got a massive job on our collective hands. Hit the 'follow' button on the blog also.

Pretty soon you're going to get it: the community is everything... literally.

The Artist In The Corner

Plague art to start...

Chances are good, that if you've spent any amount of time around Manchester's alternative spaces (code for 'not shit'), you'll have noticed a watchful presence, the shadow of a man, hunched over a table, eyes fixed on yours (shining from the darkness), frantically drawing, scraping his pen or brush across paper in a fashion that might initially alarm. You might react in any number of ways, but ultimately, if you remain still, if you're a good sport, then the man will rise and hand you a drawing. What is revealed, is nearly always something you did not think could be seen, something you imagined was between you and your most private discernment...that aspect of yourself that you didn't really believe had substance, that you laughed off as a rogue---perhaps even paranoid---fancy.

You don't want to be without electricity and relying on electric shutters....

But no, there it is, on the paper. The man has seen it. He'll smile softly, before wandering elsewhere, leaving you clutching the strangely revealing portrait. If you pay attention, you'll see that he does exactly the same, all over again, but with a fresh subject. He might follow this course all night long. But then...what else would you expect from an artist, other than to create art? You've just met Akinyemi Oludele, sometimes called Akin for short. It's a meeting you will remember.

You know it's coming.

The first time I met Akin, he drew forth from me, a kind of dreadful, winsome hill giant...I was appalled, not because the likeness was inaccurate (sometimes he practices a mode of painting without caring to look at the paper; his pictures almost resemble Japanese calligraphy), but because of the smile he discovered living within me... and a warm Cancerian motherliness, which I had hoped fervently, did not exist. Truth be told, I liked to consider myself a cool wandering gunfighter figure, this picture depicted otherwise and I knew that there was a heaping of truth to it.

Another riddle

Slowly we became familiar and when we opened The Peer Hat, he became a regular figure, practising his art, depicting anyone and everything.

Sweet really.

He is a man of few words, though he will talk about art and the power of art for as long as you have the time. He describes himself as an artist, when most would shrink, bashful at the prospect. Not Akin. What intrigues, is the fact that he is clearly not boasting. It's just a fact and when one witnesses how prodigious his output truly is, one that would be foolish to argue.

Look, just keep your coat on.

More time passes and it soon becomes apparent that Akinyemi Oludele is not limited to pub based likenesses. Indeed, his Onashile Art Gallery displays numerous bold excursions into ancestral wormholes of vivid colour, shocking angularity and stark post modernity. It stands apart. Almost outside, but winningly knowing, satirical, warning, impartial. Please take a look...

From Akin's recent exhibition at HOME.

But my thoughts always return to those pub sketches, for after a time, they became less fixated on the individual (although his sense of the inner self of others, was reaching fascinating heights) but instead, more fluidly expressive of context and moment. Snatches of conversations began to emerge, cartoons, many akin to visual fables and often with a moral. These sketches, I kept and I began to pin up and keep as many as I could. For to me there was no denying, that this ragged gallery, scribbled upon whatever came to hand, were an actual history, and an accurate one at that. Like some intense Akashic Record, one could look to a moment (each a trigger for vivid, thought forgotten memory) and discern some wisdom from it... could learn from the mistakes depicted and made.

'Nick Cleaning His Demons'   Yes, that's me.

I had never devoted much thought towards art's capacity to act as mirror, as conscience, but Akin's work brought this capacity into revelation. No doubt he's sitting at home as I write this, creating, documenting. I feel certain that something will emerge from the chrysalis of our shared experience...a chrysalis that Akinyemi has formed from his astute observations. How far he sees, time will yet tell. But his work haunts my dreams and urges me towards a goal I cannot yet fully conceive.

PS

Make sure to follow the blog by hitting the brand new 'follow' button, or stick your email in the box. Plague isolation is a curious thing, but whatever I feel at my lowest, my highest is pure inspiration. I know I'm far from alone. As scared as I am, I find myself more excited at weird possibilities, once so far fetched, now appearing sharply in focus...perhaps something wholly new. Maybe Akin's work holds part of the key? More very soon!

A First Contribution...'Rat Alley Presents - Quarantine: Artwork for the Apocalypse Exhibition'

Pandora's Box, John William Waterhouse

Good evening one and all, I do hope you've kept yourselves reasonably active this past 24 hours or so. I thought the days were passing with exceeding slowness, but now it seems, night falls whenever I'm not looking...so here I am, once again, the early morning scrivener. Speaking of which, we at The Peer Hat, don't cleave to the modern clock---as far as we're concerned, night belongs to the day which birthed it....there's something beautiful (and fucking truthful) about a day beginning only at the first ray of dawn. This 'one in the morning' business...maybe that's another artefact of a world that's slipped or is slipping away. I'm certainly in the game for defining our own rules. Why limit ourselves to the boring shit when we could be figuring out new ways of reckoning our position in time and space? It's almost a Situationist's wet dream. Almost.

At any rate, I've managed to make myself busy; the flow of art heading my way is currently a mere trickle, but as I've seen from a glance at my inbox, the stream is picking up pace. Let's start with the first thing to fall into my lap and wax a little, about Laney Xup...

WHAT IS A LANEY XUP?

Laney is something of a terrifying, apocalyptic figure in the legends of The Peer Hat (we're all writing them)...a whirlwind of energy, her work ethic as concerns her own music is, frankly, something many of us artists wallowing in pits of 'have they noticed', 'will they notice' and 'it's just not right', could do well to emulate. Dedicating oneself to the dubious altar of rock n roll, without expectation of reward, is like spitting in the face of Satan...but being able to threaten nothing but material disaster,the lord of Hell is rendered flaccidly impotent . That's where she stands, an archetype of the driven rock queen, shorn of the trappings of recognition and success and yet marching on regardless. Her back catalogue is formidable and, at some point amidst this chaos, should demand your attention.

Here's a sweet number of her's called Nothing.

What captures my imagination, is the 'rock star' (the term is insufficient) as community oracle. The reward is the telling of the story, the voice in the dark that echoes. Out music belongs to us and tells our story in ways that would seem unimaginable to those first elevated baby boomer blimps. The shaman leads the participants of the rite though the fantasy of their own perceptions...an infinitely deeper and more crucial role, than that of distantly admired object of desire and frustration. Best not to think too much about it; for some it's like explaining the joke.

And yet, I'm looking around me and seeing no dearth of exciting talent and warrior spirit. Our artists are pissed off...they sense what's happening (what's happening? Something weird). Quasi-fortunately, they've been drawn back to the source by the implosion of the world. It was happening already, it's only now being underlined. 

Rat Alley fanzine, another product of Laney's inexhaustible font of creativity and enthusiasm, makes me happy whenever I catch sight of it. It keys in to other territories, other liminal weirdness happening in our city and centring (at times) in our humble establishment. "Living The Dream, Despite Life", the words of battered musician poet, Charlie Potatoes, emblazoned upon the cover, seeming to gain in resonance. That's another rabbit hole and a riddle I'll be revisiting repeatedly (just you watch and keep count). At any rate, under the Rat Alley banner, Laney is pushing the first project in our weird, new and temporary reality. Check it out (in her own words).



PS If you read this and think...'I haven't a fucking clue what he's talking about', I invite you to force me to write about you. This is ethnography, anthropology sitting with the tribe, lifting the lid on the ineffable. Pandora's Box awaits thee.

Rat Alley presents - Quarantine: Artwork for the Apocalypse exhibition

The idea for the ‘Quarantine: Artwork for the Apocalypse’ exhibition came about as a result of The Peer Hat having to temporarily close due to Covid-19. All of a sudden it hit me that all over the country (and indeed the world) spaces that were hubs and homes to artists, writers and musicians would remain shut for the next few months and I wanted to hold on to a sense of community. 

As we’re having to self isolate, the exhibition will be a virtual one and digital images, photographs or scans of the artwork will be uploaded. The exhibition will launch on 19 April at 7pm and it will include a slide show to feature the artists involved, along with a short biography for each of the artists. To make it even more inclusive, we are also taking submissions from musicians, to be included in a Spotify playlist that will run alongside the exhibition. Writers and poets can also submit their work.

Those who would like their work featured should pop us a message via the Rat Alley facebook page for more information:

www.facebook.com/ratalleymanchester

There will be more of these events over the coming months.

Wherein We Discuss 'The Beginnings Of Things' (And Other Divers Movements Of Ye Entrails)

Two Thirty AM on a Tuesday, the Tuesday following the house arrest of most of the British population. We'd been meaning to get this blog out there by Saturday night, but events being as they were, we found ourselves distinctly lacking in the right stuff so to speak.

By 'we', I of course refer to the coterie of individuals behind The Peer Hat, I, Messr. Nick Kenyon, sometimes known as Nick Alexander, having taking it upon myself to write and represent the energies that make our place what it is.

We've had our fair share of ups and downs, skimming the edge of disaster on more than one occasion. The simple fact remains, that this venue is a temple to older and more resilient forces than we have come to take for granted in our modern lives. We are drawn here, patron and innkeeper alike (can I call us an inn? I'm calling us an inn), not because anybody has a master plan, a perfect business model, or an overwhelming urge towards self annihilation, but because we have no choice. The shadowy patron, behind the blossoming that took place here in the late 70s, 80's and 90s would have it so. We are the people of the ruin. This city which dies repeatedly, only to be born again in the collective will of the vagrants and assorted ne'er do wells which make up it's musical and cultural underground and heritage.

I'm beating about the bush, as well I might. Nobody wants to give it...'her' a name. Not Curtis, not Wilson, not Smith. But we feel it...an irresistible siren call towards a party half heard in the darkness, not obscured in the wood, but instead, somewhere between the red brick alleyways, the tenements, the estates, the strips of 'waste ground', railway bridges, disused lots and towering glass and steel follies to an age that seemingly never had the chance to be born. We are the people that hear her song and it is beautiful.

I will not call her Manchester. This city has always been unkind, has churned it's population through it's belly and shit them out, over and over, like a filth smudged elder beast, stirring only occasionally, to ensure that it's poor are being fucked over to feed it's sluggish appetites. Instead, She has come from outside, into the city and dwells untouched and untouchable by this megalithic archon... in the place without physical coherence, though is no less real for it. She is the queen of the poet and the forger of iron will.

She is all the pictures in your head, of the Manchester that you imagined, whether a native or an outsider...that day it came alive for you. That place you couldn't find no matter how hard you looked. She is Sally Cinnamon, She's Lost Control, She is your Mother-Sister. She is happening away from that past, which was once an electric now, captured and perverted for the sake of magazines and property developers. We love our mythology, it's there for a very good reason...but mythology is not, and I repeat is not history. Mythology is right, fucking now. A poet should have a store of verse...but the sacrifices and exertions of the past are in fact, reflections of our own efforts, happening every-time we go to a gig and every-time we set foot on the stage.

"Are we there yet?" Listen gallery peanut poppers, you might find this all a bit sub-Morley, but how else can we set the stage, the Black Stage for the time to come? How else might we introduce ourselves to each other, but in a blaze of ideas and imaginings? We owe ourselves a grand entrance. Those of us that gather to enact the weird movements of gods and monsters in the bowels of a red brick slave labour metropolis. The time for the casual and the blase is passed.

Here are we, now locked in a strange and terrible moment. But we will make the best of it. Indeed, we will surprise and confound those that would look to make us in their image when we at last return, blinking into the sunlight of a world which seems to have spat us out like yesterday's paper theatre. The Peer Hat and it's musical bowels, the Black Stage, are simply the chosen map co-ordinates, for us all to enact the powerful and indeed, world changing mystic dramas, that this city has become famous for. We are the children of the 9 Fold Muse and let me tell you, she's not in the best of moods. I reckon you sense that already.

I will say this in bold for those of you skim reading: this blog will serve as the place where the community and culture of The Peer Hat, may express itself freely and without judgement. Contact me at nick@thepeerhat.com and we will post your videos, your writings, links to the things you're doing (make a blog if you can, you should)  or just your comments and words to one another.

Naturally, I'll also be expressing myself as often as possible, with a view to illuminating our current situation and ensuring that this community has enough to chew over during this weird and scary time. 'Do not be afraid', is the motto...we're going to find ways and means of drawing closer, even as we're torn apart. Things are going to get fucking hairy, but I know we can count on each other not to be cunts...well, not super cunts.

A gmail account would be helpful for identifying yourselves in a way that makes communication meaningful, but it's not 100% necessary.  For those of you who have never been to The Peer Hat, then hopefully this blog should serve to inspire. It's my hope, that there will be writings and artefacts here, that convince you that actual, honest to goodness, fucking magic is living and breathing, right here in Manchester 2020, not mouldering in a dog eared copy of the NME circa 1990. I've no idea how long it will take to start for the blog to popping, but with any luck, not too long.

OK, I think that will do for now. Say anything you want to say in the comments beneath. I'll still be using Facebook for this and that, but to be honest, the whole thing makes me sick, even more so now. Surely we're well on the way towards accepting that social media is a toxic wormhole with absolutely nothing to recommend it? One day, perhaps we can figure out a way to do away with Facebook, whilst enjoying the extra footfall generated by event pages and the like (but in some alternate, decentralised...even Mancunian space). Right now, it may not seem like it, but organic and analogue is where it's at. There will be scars to heal, as we relearn how to touch one another, be with each other, share physical things with one another. We cannot, must not let that fundamental part of being human, be scrapped or sidelined.

Oh yeah...this is definitely a WIP...I'll be figuring out ways to make this place look better and function better as the days and weeks stretch on. The only thing left to be said is OMNIA SUB PETASUM!