When: 3pm on Sunday 4 May 2014
Where: First Chop Brewing Arm, Unit 3 Trinity Row, Trinity Way, Salford M3 5EN

We’re excited to be hosting a stage at the tenth outing of Salford’s Sounds From The Other City Festival.

This year, we’re working with ‘Salford’s celebration of new art and music’ at First Chop Brewing Arm, an industrial brewing unit situated in a railway arch off Trinity Way, a four-minute walk from Islington Mill. The brewery is fully licensed and will be offering a selection of its own and guest ales, as well as other refreshments. Street food vendors Honest Crust Pizza and The Moocher will both be on hand to meet your foodie needs.

Here’s our line-up for the day…

Championed by the likes of Marc Riley and the Eavis family even before putting out their debut LP, The Travelling Band have long been a favourite of Manchester gig-goers. Living up to their name, they’re responsible for some of the tightest, most enthralling performances around (a result of over 400 shows together) – but this performance will be truly unique. Having long admired the Neil Young album On The Beach, The Travelling Band will be playing their own twist on the classic, which has accompanied and influenced them throughout their career.

Thomas Truax is an American songwriter, performer, and inventor of experimental musical instruments. He first came to prominence as a solo performer in the 1990s in New York as one of a group of musicians and songwriters (including Jeffrey Lewis, Curtis Eller and Beck) who made up the antifolk movement based around the Sidewalk Cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. From these fertile beginnings Truax has developed a long and winding career that has seen him graduate into one of the most unique and individual performers around. We’re delighted to be welcoming him along to SFTOC for the first time.

Yellow Ostrich is the sonic creation of singer/guitarist Alex Schaaf and drummer/percussionist Michael Tapper. The follow-up to their 2012 EP, new record Cosmos was inspired an intensive period of study of astronomers such as Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. While the album thus embodies a sense of both wonder and isolation it also manages to capture a powerful dynamic of raw guitar riffs, lush atmospherics, brain-bending electro effects and and earnest but unsettling lyrics.

Long known as one of the most exciting acts on the Canadian underground scene, Montreal’s Solids are finally breaking out and getting the recognition that they deserve. Signed to seminal indie label Fat Possum (Youth Lagoon, Band of Horses, Bob Log III), 17 February will see the release of their debut LP, Blame Confusion, and this will be among the first set of shows on European shores. Expect to be blown away.

Happyness are a three-piece from South London consisting of Jonny Allan, Benji Compston and Ashley Cooper. Having self-produced their debut EP in Jelly Boy Studios, their loft, the band released a self-titled EP in early January 2014. In the lead up to this lo-fi four-track offering, mixed by Ed Harcourt and mastered by Adam Lasus (Yo La Tengo, Daniel Johnston, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah), Happyness have gathered friends and fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Influences are diverse and broad but bands such as Sparklehorse, Yo La Tengo and Wilco have clearly inspired. Dreamy, hook laden, with a song writing prowess far beyond their tender years – Happyness are the real deal.

From Toronto, the almost ungoogleable Gay have earned recognition for more than their name. Since the release of their debut album – the wonderfully titled Dance Mix 95 – the band have been working on a transition from the C86-tinged jangle-pop of their salad days towards a self-style ‘concert hall prog pop’ sound. Adding strings and horns to their ensemble, the band are currently working with Slim Twig, which will act as a calling card for their new direction.

Babe were formed in the summer of 2010 by ex-Findo Gask members Gerard Black (currently with Francois And The Atlas Mountains) and Michael Marshall, along with Thomas Ogden and Amaury Ranger, Babe have been making music across the channel from their native homes in Glasgow and Bordeaux. Their debut album Volery Flighty – conceived and produced entirely by Gerard and the band, and featuring friends from Glasgow’s indomitable music scene (including Chvches‘ Lauren Mayberry on backing vocals and Ricky Egan from Tangles) – couples the group’s international outlook through Gerard’s chamber pop sensibilities to foster something at times pensive and oblique, at others direct, fun and buoyant. An off-kilter humour and sideways glance at life runs throughout Volery Flighty.

A festival wristband, which includes access to all stages, is available to buy online from Skiddle.

First Chop Brewing Arm photos © Drew Forsyth

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