This City Is Ours at Sways Bunker in Salford review

Image: Ed Sprake

This City is Ours are heroes of Manchester’s small but long-standing electronica scene. Alongside releasing the best of the local scene through their label, they have been putting on consistently excellent and interesting nights. Tonight they have come together once again to showcase their wares.

The SWAYS Bunker is a small workshop, tucked away in an industrial estate just outside the city centre. DIY in a literal sense, you are greeted by a cage-like stage made from stud wall partitions covered in a thin mesh. A projector and all of the lights are contained within the cage beaming out, leaving the performers to become silhouettes in a strange visual collage, with only the bright-grey apples from the obligatory laptops shining through with any clarity.

Jecht Rye & Dujat are two producers who have been working together to produce a live show over the past year. Opening with wonderfully soft choral textures, the set progressed into a surprisingly melodic instrumental hip-hop set. Soft Rhodes chords mixed with ever evolving finger-drumming and an undercurrent of hidden tension provided by subliminal atmospherics. It managed to walk the line between tonality and momentum, softness and heft.

WorriedAboutSatan - previously Ghosting Season - are a pair that returned in 2015 after a couple of year’s hiatus with a well received album. Significantly louder, their set started with the same ethereal vibe, but developed into a much heavier, slow motion techno.

In the interim between albums Gavin Miller had been resident at Sankeys (as Winter Son), and some of the lessons learnt there were brought to bear on this entirely different environment. There was always one element in the sparse productions taking centre stage, with extended builds and delayed release used to great effect. 

Guitarist Tom Ragsdale provided ethereal moments of calm bursting through at key moments, and guitar washes heavily processed and thrown under the mix. The minimal aesthetic struggled to keep the attention of some whilst captivating others, but ending on an Amen break they won the entire room over by the end.

After a period of quiet form the group, From The Kites Of San Quentin are setting up for a full summer of shows in anticipation of their first full album release. Bringing a small project studio’s worth of gear to the stage, they started with a drone intro blending into a surprise cover of Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’. It worked brilliantly with Alison Carney’s voice, lifting glass-like above the rumble of the guitar and Moog.

Their own material followed, with the vocals floating above skittering beats and washes of electronics. The vocals were distinctively “hippie”, putting me in mind of Natasha Khan in her SEXWITCH guise, or Lamb’s Lou Rhodes, but cut together with tougher, forward-thinking electronics. Diced Lamb, if you will.

The sound system had become significantly louder again (visibly pushing the crowd back at times) and the visuals had gotten more involved with snippets of movies, news recordings and 90’s style wormhole graphics. As the set progressed trap beats poked through and the guitar became more upfront, as the set made its move from the ethereal to the maximalist.

At the end of their set FTKOSQ thanked everyone for bringing so much to the scene over the years. But as promoters, label heads and a band themselves they deserve the thanks for their efforts, and making tonight feel like a proper family event.

Worriedaboutsatan support Braids at Soup Kitchen on Saturday 18th June - tickets available via the box below

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Words: @tacetmusic

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