Can music satisfy both in terms of credibility and comedy? It’s rare, alright. But, says Mike Pinnington, Berlin-based Anna Erhard carries it off with aplomb…

Swiss-born Berliner Anna Erhard’s third album, Botanical Garden (2024), has been on pretty regular rotation for me so far this year. It’s an album of wry observations and anecdotes drawing on the many absurdities, petty chicanery and microaggressions we face practically daily in this frequently less than wonderful world.

It is that rarest of things for a genre than frequently risks taking itself so seriously as to be po-faced: an indie-pop record that is both joyously catchy and funny – both resolutely ‘haha’ and, just occasionally, ‘peculiar’. Across the album’s nine tracks, Erhard – mostly gently – disarms, teases and occasionally disparages, almost to the extent that you begin to wonder whether a Netflix stand-up special awaits.

On the archly pedantic 170 we find a protagonist playfully insisting that their friend (or partner – the relationship is never made clear) is not “the same height as me” and that, in fact, they’re “about half a head shorter than me”. Here she makes winning a nothing argument a fine art. The candid Hot Family (who are, apparently, not simply hot, but “super smoking”), meanwhile, finds Erhard undertake some light stalking. And, with a caustic (entirely justified I might add) apathy for the Blue Man Group (B.M.G. Academy), her finely-tuned wit affirms what we knew all along – their brand of gimmicky spectacle isn’t worth leaving the house for, not even with a free ticket going spare: “Please bless me with a good excuse, I don’t wanna see the Blue Man Group!”

With a running time coming in at around the thirty minute mark, Botanical Garden never risks outstaying its welcome; just as, we’re sure, will be the case when Erhard – an indie-pop artist capable of weaving vivid vignettes of the day-to-day – rocks up primed for lols and more at Liverpool’s Art House Loft later this week.

Mike Pinnington

Find a tour date near you

From the jangle-pop of their early years, via indie-rock, folk and noise-pop, over four decades, Yo La Tengo have staked out and defined their own territory…  

Where to start with Yo La Tengo? It’s an apt question for those reading this piece maybe coming fresh to the three-piece formed (by couple Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley) in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1984; they are, after all, a band whose longevity seems to know no bounds.

They first graced my eardrums when I was hungrily cherry picking new favourite artists from their label, Matador Records’, 1997 compilation album, What’s Up Matador? In fact, their song, Tom Courtenay (below) – a strange, mournful tribute to the movies and stars of yesteryear – was track one, side one. Perhaps it was because what followed included the likes of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cat Power, Guided by Voices, Liz Phair, Superchunk – I could go on – that YLT somehow got lost in the mix. Or it could have been because, as beautiful as their contributions to the comp were (side two included Don’t Say a Word), I was far too young at that time, and far too interested in the shoutier end of the scale to fully appreciate and explore their oeuvre.

Tom Courtenay and Don’t Say a Word were lifted from 1995′s – what I now know to be iconic – Electr-O-Pura. But it would take me almost another decade before I immersed myself more fully into Yo La Tengo’s deep waters, when I picked up another compilation released by Matador, Prisoners of Love. Subtitled A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs: 1985–2003, it was one dedicated solely to the band’s long career up to the early noughts, and saved me the YLT detective work I’d failed to do to that point.

It was a lovely find, one I’m super grateful for today; it gently pulled me right up close to what I understand, from today’s vantage point and now advancing years, is so recognisably their sound. When I bought Prisoners of Love, they’d already been active for two decades, which astonishingly makes it a nice round 40 years as I write. More astonishing is that their output, while obviously experimenting occasionally with genre and sound, branching out, retracing their steps and evolving, has so steadfastly maintained its quality. Re-listening to Prisoners of Love recently, it occurred to me that that quality is clearly the connective tissue of this remarkable band.

Yo La Tengo (still on Matador) have since released a further seven studio albums; not the most prolific, a new long player has materialised roughly every other year since their 1986 debut, Ride the Tiger. Bringing things up-to-date, in 2020 came a 25th anniversary reissue of Electr-O-Pura, what Matador called “a thrilling document of one of America’s most beloved bands hitting their creative stride.” PR hyperbole aside, they weren’t wrong. Last year, I bought the re-release and their latest, This Stupid World (2023), within a few weeks of each other. (Pictchfork called the latter “their liveliest album in at least a decade.”) Listening to them back-to-back they read as a glorious supersized standalone that just happens to straddle more than a quarter of a century.

Radio friendly bangers are rare (though hardly non-existent in their richly textured back-catalogue); theirs is a sound that grows into itself. As a listener it creeps up slowly, so that, before you know it, you’re engrossed, then entirely submerged in the binaural sonic wash. Writing in the liner notes for Prisoners of Love, the band’s tour manager, Joe Puleo remarks that: “The great thing about music is its ability to return you to a different time and place…” He might as well be describing Yo La Tengo –  a band of subtle, often mournful brilliance, who do this to a tee.

From the jangle-pop stylings of the early years, via indie-rock, a smidgen of folk and noise-pop, they have staked out and defined their own territory so that, in today’s digital landfill wastes, they persist. And in some style. So: Where to start with Yo La Tengo? My advice? If you haven’t already, just start.

Mike Pinnington

Yo La Tengo play Content, Liverpool, 30 August

Image credit: Cheryl Dunn

With Record Store Day 2024 closing in, we catch up with Jacaranda Records’ Mina Koroma, to chat about the shop’s recent move, instore performances and, of course, what’s on the current playlist…  

The Double Negative: What’s the Jacaranda Records story, why and when did you start up?

Mina Koroma: Jacaranda Records was dreamt up by my boss Graham Stanley after he’d received a record player as a Christmas gift, and the cogs in his head started turning. We’d been friends for years and I’d DJ’d for him in a couple of clubs that he’d previously ran. He brought myself and two other local DJs onboard to help him put together his vision, and in June of 2015 we opened our doors for the first time!

Given your exciting recent move, where can we find you?

You can find us at our original shop above The Jacaranda pub on Slater Street. We also recently opened up a new store in the Baltic Triangle! It’s located in the courtyard of Punch Tarmeys, Cains Brewery, and to make it easier for you to find us we’ve got a massive blue sign on the wall outside.

You have a lot of signed vinyl! Tell us a bit more about your selection for the shop, and relationship with the downstairs venue, Jacaranda Baltic?

Live music has always been a huge part of all things Jacaranda so we’ve always looked for ways to incorporate live music in to what goes on in the shop. With our move to the Baltic we’ve been able to bag ourselves a pretty sweet gig room which is twice the size of our previous venue on Seel Street. Since January we’ve hosted some amazing instore shows, from acts such as The Libertines, Declan McKenna and the Kaiser Chiefs. The acts are always nice enough to sign a few copies of their albums for our shop, too, so even if you’re not able to make it to the show there’s still a chance to get your hands on a signed record.

We mostly stock brand new albums and reissues, and our Slater Street shop has a small selection of curated second-hand vinyl. I try to make sure that the shops are filled with musical essentials and some harder to find cuts across most genres, so you could pick up a copy of Taylor Swift’s latest and also grab yourself a reissue of one of Fela Kuti’s earliest releases.

What’s on your playlist today?

Today we’re listening to some our faves :

Jockstrap, I Love You Jennifer B
Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy
Nia Archives, Silence Is Loud
Pavement, Crooked Rain
Say She She, Silver

Tell us something we don’t know about JR…

If you were to hop in a time machine in our Slater Street store with the dial set to 1959, you’d find yourself in a record shop! Syd’s Disk Den was a record shop specialising in jazz. It felt really good to know that we were able to carry on this legacy in the same room!

As told to Laura Robertson

Find the brand new Jacaranda Records and Jacaranda Baltic at Cains Brewery Village, Stanhope Street, Liverpool L8 5XJ. Google Maps here, what3words ///slide.update.palms

The Jacaranda pub, 21-23 Slater St, Liverpool L1 4BW. Google Maps, what3words ///chop.teach.badge

Buy online at jacarandarecordstore.com

RECORD STORE DAY, Saturday 20 April 2024. Kyle Falconer of The View plays a special acoustic show at Jacaranda Baltic in celebration of Record Store Day 2024. 7pm, £17: events page here

#RSD #RSD24

Lovingly ran by musicians, and specialising in super-rare pressings from the USA and Japan, Dig Vinyl have for ten years served the people of Merseyside. Ahead of this weekend’s Record Store Day, Manager Yvonne Page shows us round her city centre and West Kirby shops…

The Double Negative: What’s the Dig story, why and when did you start up?

Yvonne Page: Dig Vinyl opened back in March 2014 with a few wooden crates of records in the back corner of a basement shop on Bold Street. Our founders, Anthony and Carl, had both been in the industry for decades at that point, dealing records, running shops and record labels, making music, DJing, and managing bands, so opening up a record shop together in Liverpool was a natural meeting point. Their goal was to cultivate a knowledgeable and friendly shop atmosphere centred around their love for Liverpool and the music that it was built on.

Over a decade on, Dig Vinyl has seen three expansions, one big move down Bold Street, a pop-up on the Albert Dock and a second location on the Wirral, and although we’ve come a long way from those original few crates, we continue to create a bustling and welcoming atmosphere for music lovers and celebrate Merseyside’s music scene.

Where can we find you?

Our Liverpool shop is located at 27 Bold Street, on the 1st floor of Resurrection. Our new West Kirby shop is located just off of the bustling Banks Road and a short walk from the waterfront at 156B Banks Road, with the entrance via Alexandra Road. [map links below]

You’re into finding ultra-rare stock. Tell us a bit more about your approach and what you specialise in?

We love vinyl! We’re all collectors, DJs and musicians ourselves, so we really put our dedication and joy into digging out the best and most interesting records for our customers. We have specialist buyers for each genre that travel all across the UK and Europe to source stock for our ever expanding racks. We also source specialist stock from the USA and Japan, so you never know what you might find on a visit to Dig!

Recent stock highlights include: super-rare USA original pressings of Jazz, Funk and Soul including original Blue Notes and Motown rarities; lovely condition Japanese pressings of Beatles classics with OBI strips; Death Metal, Hardcore, Grind, Black Metal rarities; unmissable selections of USA punk, 60s, psych and garage rarities; some of the best 90s hip hop we’ve ever seen, UK and USA originals of all the classics, in addition to huge drops in our house, techno, rave and trance sections; and additions to our global sections including deep selections of Bossanova, Latin, Bollywood, and Afrobeat.

What’s on your playlist today?

The Pale Fountains, Pacific Street  
Rail Band, Rail Band
Dommengang, Love Jail
Daniel Avery, Wonderland / Running
Strange Collective, Super Touchy
Kool & The Gang, Wild And Peaceful
ESG, Come Away With ESG
Azymuth, Light As A Feather
Yellow Magic Orchestra, テクノポリス = Technopolis
The Fall, This Nation’s Saving Grace
Batu, For Spirits
Les McCann, Talk To The People  
Aaliyah, I Care 4 U

Tell us something we don’t know about Dig…

On our opening day back in 2014, there was a power cut on Bold Street and we sold records by candlelight… we’re that dedicated to what we do! Our industry is always adapting and changing, and so are we. But we’ll still always go above and beyond to seek out the best records for our customers and make sure they get the tunes they need, even if it means doing so in the dark!

As told to Laura Robertson

Find Dig Vinyl at 1st Floor, 27 Bold St, Resurrection L1 4DN, Google Map here and what3words ///even.soft.shares. Open Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-5

156B Banks Rd, Alexandra Rd, West Kirby, Wirral CH48 0QB, Google Maps here, and what3words ///guesswork.shell.torch. Open Tues-Sun 11-5

Buy online at digvinyl.co.uk

RECORD STORE DAY, Saturday 20 April 2024: only Dig’s West Kirby store is participating in Record Store Day this weekend (their Bold Street store will not be stocking any RSD releases, but there will be 10% off all secondhand stock). Open from 8am; neighbours Hectors are doing a £5 Queue Deal with a breakfast bap and hot drink, so get down early to get your fill and be first in the door!

#RSD #RSD24

Where in Liverpool can you find the best vinyl? What’s their story and – of course! – what’s on their playlist? The latest addition to the city’s indie music offer, Dead Air Records, give us the grand tour…

The Double Negative: What is Dead Air Records? Where can we find you?

Jess Fairclough and Marc Walker: We are an independent family-owned record shop on Suffolk Street in Liverpool, just a few minutes walk from Bold Street, the Baltic Triangle and Liverpool One (we’re kind of sandwiched between all three neighbourhoods of the city). We’re fairly new to Liverpool’s record shop map having only opened in June 2023. [map links below]

The green and black branding is sensational… What was the vision behind it?

The neon green was inspired by the flash sale zig-zag stickers you usually find at markets, car boots and corner shops. When we started Dead Air Records, the main thing we wanted to do is keep record collecting affordable and welcoming, so we riffed off the green sale stickers and created a monochromatic brand that we think is fun and friendly.

The Dead Air shop comes across as a mixtape of your own favourite music and recommendations, which we really appreciate. Tell us a bit more about your approach and what you specialise in?

About 80% of what we have in the shop is second hand (ranging from rarities of the past to near mint newer releases) and then the other 20% is brand new records that we curate based on what we’ve discovered, and more importantly, what our visitors have recommended. In the shop you can expect to find a wide mix of records including classic albums for less, first pressings for the keen collectors, and a range of essential albums across all genres. We try to keep the stock fresh so we add new things every day to give everyone an enjoyable record-digging experience.

Rumour has it that you’re planning to install a small coffee/cafe area, and also live events?

We are! One thing we’ve learnt from our first year is that people love to hangout at the shop and there’s a community that is forming around us. It’s something we really value and put a lot of care into so having somewhere people can chill out or watch live music is important to us in the next steps of the shop’s journey.

What’s on the store playlist today?

We’re writing this on a sunny day in the shop so we’ve we’re keeping the mood light and bright with:

Air, Moon Safari

James Holden, Imagine This Is A High Dimension Space of Possibilities

Ezra Collective, Where I’m Meant To Be

Avalanches, We Will Always Love You

Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma

Tell us something we don’t know about Dead Air…

The first time we sold anything in person was at a car boot! We were literally selling records out the back of our car. It was just a couple of boxes made up of albums from our own collection and a few bits we’d picked up over the years. Bit by bit, we’ve steadily grown as a small business thanks to the support of Liverpool’s music community – we honestly believe that we wouldn’t have been able to do that in any other city.

As told to Laura Robertson 

Find Dead Air Records at 17 Suffolk St, Liverpool L1 5HS, on Google Maps here, or at what3words ///track.belly.reform

Open Tues-Sat 11am-6pm

Shop online at deadairvinyl.co.uk

“If these songs were released today, they would surely be referred to as bangers!” Confirmed Stereolab fan Mike Pinnington on the band’s recent triumphant Liverpool gig…

I’ve always tended to try and catch support bands. When I was young, this was largely about pure enthusiasm – and arriving early enough to guarantee a good spot at or near the front for the headliners. As I’ve got older it’s been more to do with showing respect to those further down the bill. And you never know, you might just get in on the groundfloor of an amazing, as yet unknown, act.

Those with similar instincts will have been rewarded this past Wednesday at Liverpool’s Content (a recent, very welcome addition to Liverpool’s gig venue offer). If not exactly an unknown quantity, Verity Susman and Matthew Simms’ – late of Electrelane and Wire respectively – Memorials were certainly worth braving the November night for.

Susman’s Electrelane were always identifiably in the orbit of Stereolab, and that lineage is clear in this current project. Their sound: a barrage of jazzy drone experimentation comprising off-kilter vocal stylings and eclectic instrumentation (and much tape-looping – to great effect), gets the early crowd in the mood. With an album and a pair of film soundtracks under their belts, there’s no shortage of material to delve into if this is your bag. For those who missed Memorials on this occasion, they play Birkenhead’s Future Yard in December.

It’s been a long journey back to Liverpool for Stereolab – and for me back to them, in a live context at least. I last saw them in 1999, at Liverpool’s Royal Court (in support of Pavement). In the intervening years, a bit of mythologising of the band has taken place on my part, and in the days leading up to the gig I’d begun to wonder: could they possibly live up to nearly a quarter of a century’s worth of the adulation? An answer wasn’t long in coming.

The band arrived on stage to warmly expectant applause, whoops, and good natured, albeit bad efforts at French, directed at chanteuse Lætitia Sadier (a co-founder and leader of the band along with Tim Gane). Taking a few seconds to soak it all in, they dipped a toe rather than launch headlong into their set, easing gently into mellifluous waters; 1999’s Come And Play In The Milky Night and Eye of the Volcano (lifted from 2006 album Fab Four Suture) emblematic of a down- and mid-tempo start to proceedings.

Devotees in the crowd – and there were many – knew this was just a prelude to what would follow, however. Quickly shifting through the gears and undulating rhythms, Stereolab wasted little time in demonstrating what can reasonably be termed an embarrassment of riches of a back catalogue. From near perfect 1997 album Dots and Loops, Refractions in the Plastic Pulse came next; after which, a personal fave of mine: Lo Boob Oscillator, whose droning crescendo of a second half always comes as a surprise following such gentle beginnings.

The set continued apace as tracks which, if they were released today would surely be referred to as bangers(!), kept coming. Miss Modular, Mountain, The Flower Called Nowhere. I could go on. And so could they have. Midweek curfews said otherwise. Closing the set, they returned almost to the very beginning with 1992’s gloriously propulsive Super-Electric – a song which, said Sadier, who pointedly clasped her hands, “is about unity.”

Visibly revelling in the affection radiating from the audience she then said, with a ‘curfew be damned’ twinkle in her eye, “this is the last song on the list… but we don’t believe in lists…” Nevertheless, at the song’s close, the band – hoovering up rapturous applause – exited stage left.  Entirely predictably they re-emerged soon after to a cacophony of calls for “one more song.” In the event, they responded with two, as all timer French Disko merged seamlessly into Simple Headphone Mind.

Stereolab, outstanding throughout, had taken the place by storm. From the moment they’d shimmied, roughly a third of the way into their set, with Lo Boob Oscillator, the audience had been practically euphoric. Aficionados old enough to have been there the first time giddily rolled back the years; but there were also much younger fans present, who danced and punched the air alongside them. Rarely can what we’ll politely call a heritage band have commanded so effusive a response – and it was joyous.

Mike Pinnington  

Images © John Johnson

Coming soon to Content: Craig Charles Funk & Soul House Party – 26 December; The Vaccines – 13 January; The Cheap Thrills – 2 March; Bill-Ryder Jones – 21 March

Ladytron recently remarked (via their Twitter account) that, with Liverpool having been awarded Eurovision hosting duties next year, they were ready to enter 2023’s song contest. I can’t tell whether or not they were being serious – but why not? On the strength of new single City of Angels – their first new music since 2019 – the band only emphasises their appeal to many different tastes.

Respected and critically acclaimed by those in the know, they also have their fair share of floor fillers – aware or not, you will have danced along to something from their impressive back catalogue. Recently celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their 2002 LP Light&Magic, Ladytron are enjoying a bit of a moment: last year saw the brilliant Seventeen occupy top 10s globally (thanks to going viral on short-form video platform, TikTok), reminding us why we fell in love with the band all those years ago.

Hearing City of Angels – featuring Ladytron’s classic driving, icy rhythms – serves to whet appetites. And fans can look forward with confidence to the January 2023 release of new album, Time’s Arrow which, we’re told, addresses themes of: “Beauty, disposability and fragility of the culture that surrounds us, and the exhilaration of freeing yourself from those structures.” Bring it on.

Dates for Your Diary:

Time’s Arrow will be released 10 January, 2023, by Cooking Vinyl Limited

UK Tour

March 10th, 2023 – Glasgow, SWG3

March 11th, 2023 – Liverpool, Camp & Furnace

March 12th, 2023 – London, Koko

Mike Pinnington

Ladytron Time’s Arrow – Photo Credit Wendy Redfern

“An artistic record of threatened environments.” Mike Pinnington gives his forecast on Manchester Collective’s new experimental orchestral show WEATHER…

Music is elemental. Its properties, in the right hands, can electrify, rouse and inspire, be the portal to contemplation; it can soothe on even the darkest nights of the soul, when the only accompaniment is the howling wind and rain lashing against the window. Like the elements, music can both shape and mark us, affecting us in ways few other things can.

A quarter of a century ago composer Michael Gordon sought to capture such forces with Weather, his piece for amplified string orchestra. In his programme notes from the time, he wrote: “Inspired by the chaotic scheme of weather patterns, I wondered how these might transfer musically, as if the past several hundred years of musical ideas were swirling around, and I could just grab things I liked and build on them.”

Now, Manchester Collective, intent on bringing music to more diverse audiences, have announced WEATHER (note the upper case to differentiate) as the first in a new season of concerts. Speaking to me in 2020, their co-founder Adam Szabo noted: “we felt there was so much amazing new and old music out there that we simply weren’t getting a chance to perform… after years and years of looking out from concert platforms and seeing overwhelmingly whiter, older, and more affluent faces, we were a bit fed up. We wanted to perform different music, and to give different people a chance to hear that music.”

Gordon himself seems acutely aware of such problems. Writing in the New York Times in 2007, he said that he had “always felt uncomfortable with the word ‘classical’. It sends an instant message to most people that you are involved in something other. And, vainly, I am very aware that classical music has the squarest image on the planet.” Anyone who has experienced a Manchester Collective show, however, will know that such expectations are quickly turned on their head – from introducing pop lyrics into their repertoire to collaborating with visual artists, audiences can expect the unexpected: very little is off limits.

Typically, then, they’re not simply reviving and repeating what has gone before with their fresh take on Weather – September’s dates will not be straight-forward renditions, or even remixes. Building on Gordon’s piece, additional ingredients have been added to the pot to address urgent contemporary concerns. These come in the form of sound artist Chris Watson (late of Cabaret Voltaire), and Spanish filmmaker Carlos Casas who, respectively, will be providing immersive real-world sound and film.

Watson, who has worked on shows such as Frozen Planet and The Life of Birds, has dug into his extensive archive for WEATHER. “This project has given me the opportunity to work with these sounds to create an ambient, multi-channel installation that places the audience where my microphones were when I made the original recordings. Every sound you will hear has come from the places I have visited – the voices of those habitats speak to the future generations, who [owing to climate change] might not be able to experience them for themselves.”

WEATHER, say Manchester Collective, is “an artistic record of threatened environments”. It is sure to leave its mark.

Mike Pinnington

See Manchester Collective’s WEATHER on 23 September in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music, and 24 September at the Southbank Centre, London

Image: Film still from Carlos Casas

“If music is a time machine, the clubs, bars, and many other dives we frequented in our youth, are cathedrals of memory.” Mike Pinnington reflects on the haunting power of songs encountered in our formative years…

Earlier in the year, I saw that somebody had ‘built’ Liverpool rite-of-passage club, The Krazy House, in Minecraft and posted it to YouTube. Comments posted below include: “Make the floors stickier and get some blue WKD bottles and you’ve nailed it”; “This the BEST thing I’ve seen during lockdown. Bravo”; “Absolutely amazing! So much nostalgia for me… and sadness that it’s gone”. If you’ve ever stepped through the K’s hallowed doors and rocked up those stairs, you should pay it a virtual visit – former patrons who happen to be fans of Papa Roach will be particularly pleased. This peculiar little discovery came as no surprise to me. In fact, it was just the latest in an ever-lengthening line of connected serendipities too frequent to be coincidences, hitting me about the head and launching me back through time to the places, people and songs of my youth. It was bordering on the uncanny. As such, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of nostalgia recently.

It’s not been a universally gentle experience; nostalgia’s closely related cousins, wistfulness, longing, and loss, have torn indiscriminately through the fabric of the present, becoming palpable. Echoes of my past came invariably via music: songs that meant something to me in my formative years, and, therefore, still do, were playing with uncommon frequency in coffee shops and bars, in newsagents and on the radio. While it was great to hear the likes of Teenage Fanclub for what felt like (and probably was) the first time in years, it was also almost too much. I was being haunted by a younger, thinner, prettier me, a doppelganger in Dorian Grey clothes. If I was receptive to these songs on first hearing, today I am vulnerable to their seductive pull. They stand, monolithic, as symbols of dreams and futures that once lay ahead. Today, of course, such futures are less likely. Certain possibilities have narrowed or disappeared altogether. I will never be in a Brit Pop band (small mercies).

Something clearly had to be done. Ultimately, not so much exorcising the ghost as rushing to it with open arms, in April I wrote about these visitations and made a playlist. I included on it some repeat offenders that kept arriving out of the ether to put time out of joint: songs as spectres of the past. As many have said before, music is a time machine. People also say, erroneously I’d argue in this case, that you should never go back, and it seems to me that these two truisms overlap neatly here. Indulgently listening to my playlist as I write this, Weezer’s The Sweater Song whisks me back to my 17 year-old self, to the sixth form common room where I first heard it on tape, played by friends who brought it in to school. Kung Fu takes me – pogo-ing – to that Ash gig at the Lomax on Cumberland Street, and Pulp’s Do You Remember the First Time to the Mardi Gras, up a dingy alleyway on Bold Street.

Some songs inevitably become bound to people and place and situate us very specifically and vividly in time; ineffably, they summon our former selves as well as those around us, like well-preserved revenants. Let nostalgia do its work: smell the sweetness of the billowing smoke machine; taste the surprisingly palatable £1 bottle of Löwenbräu; see the impossibly beautiful faces of your friends, eyes closed as they dance away, jostling as one amid fellow revellers. Next day, our clothes carry on them the night before: glitter, sweat, the smell of second-hand cigarette smoke and spilt booze. Delicious. If music is a time machine (and I think we’ve pretty much established the facts of this), the clubs, bars, and many other dives we frequented in our youth, are also cathedrals of memory. These places, now extant or otherwise, are repositories of all our futures – lost or otherwise. In hauntological (and, in many cases, literal) terms, they are no longer. They remain, however, in our minds and our memories. They’re full to the brim with stories and lives lived urgently and in the moment; the kind of lives that only the heady mix of music, cheap alcohol, volatile emotions and nascent yet potent sexualities can produce.

It is fair to think of such places as nothing less than totems, then – albeit ones with sticky floors and scuzzy toilets, but totems, nonetheless. A club I spent too many great Saturday nights in to recall is now a vegetarian restaurant. But, even having enjoyed meals there, in my mind’s eye it will always be Le Bateau, home to friends dancing wildly, laughing, kissing and crying; to Le Tigre’s Decpetacon, a bunch of songs by The Strokes, Such Great Heights by The Postal Service, The Rat by The Walkmen, something misremembered by Fischerspooner, Justice vs. Simian’s We Are Your Friends and countless others besides. With coronavirus (along with its frenemy, social distancing) and subsequent lockdowns added into the mix, there is an added frisson to all of this nostalgia. Other bars and venues have since been forced to call it a day (many of you, I’m sure, will have fond memories of Sound Food and Drink, and the Zanzibar to name but two).

Music endures, though, and it helps us to endure too. During these months of uncertainty, it has been a balm. The extra time and – on good days, extra headspace – has allowed me to revisit music more meaningfully, to see it as a tool to contend with the good and the bad. A reliable companion. It unites us, even at a distance (see Tim Burgess’ Twitter Listening Party) and is the portal through which we can visit old friends and old selves. Just as importantly, though, it is a pathway to joy, discovery, and more – the not yet of futures still to be written.

Mike Pinnington

This essay was commissioned by Dorothy for Isolation Nation, an online exhibition calling for creative responses to lockdown. MUSIC IS A TIME MACHINE is an ongoing project by Dorothy mapping some of the often connected venues, bands and artists of Liverpool.

This weekend Tate Liverpool plays host to Alien Sound, a symposium exploring ambient noise and music. We spoke to organiser Jon Davies about something we might typically associate with relaxation, its development, and “the limits of the human”… 

The Double Negative: For the uninitiated, what is ambient?

Ambient is the background, or a particular atmosphere which is generally conceived as congruent to its environment. So, with music it’s about creating such an atmosphere, usually soothing or drifting, emphasising texture over more concrete musical qualities. There’s a sense of stillness, more often than not, and you would usually have people like Brian Eno, John Hassell, even Aphex Twin populate the genre. I guess it follows from the “furniture music” of French composer Erik Satie and is adjacent to New Age and Meditation music, however to me the latter has a specific quality that is different to ambient.

How is it changing? What is ‘disturbing ambience’ and when did it come about?

Ambient music, to me, displays a sense of neutrality, calming and a resonating texture to the world around it. Incidentally, this posits a rather universal objectivity to the world as we sense it, or at least maps the world of sound from a particular perspective. Disturbing the ambient can happen in different ways, from quietly inviting incongruent textures, noises and sound sources into the sonic spectrum, or by contextualising the ambient differently, from exposing its occidental (western) perspectives, to understanding why ambient music is popular aesthetically and as a ubiquitous audio.

Can you tell us a little about how it has been used in the commercial world, and to what end?

Ambient music has always had a relationship with the commercial world, from soothing the shopping centre to creating fantasies of exotic lands. In the 21st Century ambient is turning towards private and virtual spaces thanks to streaming platforms such as Spotify. Writers such as Liz Pelly and Paul Rekret (who is part of the symposium) have recently been writing on streaming music, labour and the music market, not only how Spotify is changing our listening habits towards passivity, but also how it is coercing music into homogenous moods rather than specific communities and genres, as well as feeding on the precarious lives of listeners.

Does ambient, then, need to be recuperated, or reclaimed, to some extent?

It doesn’t have to be, in many ways I’d rather it withered away as a genre! But in the face of ambient emerging as ever more popular, I think it’s time to ask questions about ambient’s relationship with our daily lives. What is ambient for, what’s the role of non-ambient music in our times, is it the soundtrack to our emotional and mental fatigue? I’m particularly interested in artists who use the term ambient to subvert its claims of consonance, from Chino Amobi’s Airport Music For Black Folk holding up a mirror to the white privilege of artists imagining neutrality into a space, to music which uses ambient textures to haunt rather than soothe (such as Felicia Atkinson, Indignant Senility).

Do technological developments affect the way we create and interact with music and sound art?

Absolutely, extending from Pelly’s work on critiquing Spotify, we can also look at the ways in which ambient tends to ‘preserve’ found sounds of far-away spaces, much like bringing a souvenir back from your travels. Also, the emergence of ASMR composition, which has begun populating YouTube and creating more accessible ambient therapy.

What form will the symposium take, and who is speaking?

The symposium will mostly consist of talks, plus three performances from House of Rosen, Annalaura Alifuoco and Silvia Battista, and Steve Davismoon. We’ve attempted to focus on the social and political implications of ambient, including how we can conceive of a black ambient (Dhanveer Singh Brar) and how ambient is deployed to speculate on the effect of the womb (Marie Thompson).

Tell us a little about the playlist you’ve made for us.

The playlist is a mix of artists reimagining the notion of ambience through opening the field of experience and foregrounding the unconscious thought, as well as a few choice picks from ‘chill’, ‘study’ and ‘sleep’ picks online.

Mike Pinnington

Alien Sound: Ambient Music and the Limits of the Human, Saturday, from 10.30am, Tate Liverpool – £5/£3