When: 7.30pm on Friday 2 March 2012
Where: International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester M1 5BY

For our second outing at the Burgess Foundation, we’re proud to present the Manchester debut of Momus.

Momus is the artist name of Nick Currie, a Scotsman currently living in Japan. For over twenty years he’s been releasing albums of weird and poignant songs in a dizzying array of styles on independent labels like 4AD, el and Creation. He is one of underground music’s most controversial and influential provocateurs: from his early days with the Happy Family in the 1980s through his digital troubadour incarnations of the 2000s, Currie has lent his style to Pulp, Beck, the Divine Comedy, and others while remaining fiercely political and uncompromising in his artistic vision.

‘Nick Currie’s musical career now looks like a long detour on his way to his destiny as discreetly subversive international Man Of Letters’ – Uncut

‘It’s a 21st century lounge music, which draws all manner of material into its studied insouciance: 1980s electronica (Sylvian & Sakamoto’s 1982 masterpiece Bamboo Music is referenced on Bubble Music); post-punk (the album includes a cover of Josef K‘s Adoration); Everything Stops For Tea-style pre-war skit-pop (as used on Is There Sex In Marriage?). The highlight is Datapanik, a sardonically tender meditation on how a computer crash now means the loss of irretrievable memory objects’ – Mark Fisher, The Wire

Momus also performs as ‘the unreliable tour guide‘, giving absurdist tours of museums around the world. He’s published three books, a novel told entirely through jokes and two books imagining parallel futures for Scotland and Japan. His live shows are vaudevillian and unmissable.

We’re excited to have the Montgolfier Brothers supporting. The trio, who are one of our favourite Manchester bands, will make an extremely rare live appearance – only their second in two years. Since 1997, Roger Quigley (aka At Swim Two Birds), Mark Tranmer (Gnac) and Otto Smart (The Otto Show) have released their own recordings as well as three Montgolfier Brothers albums: Seventeen Stars, The World Is Flat, and All My Bad Thoughts. In 1999 Alan McGee signed them to his Poptones label and has since said of them, ‘sometimes the best bands feel like a well-kept secret’. It’s true.

This show takes place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, a charity that encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess, the late novelist (best known for A Clockwork Orange), poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The foundation, situated just off Oxford Road, features a fully licensed cafe-bar and an engine room, which will host this concert.

Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk, Ticketweb.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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