Singsongs.com - A world wide creative business, born on the Wirral.

Singsongs.com is a simple idea. A vast library of original backing tracks made easily available for anyone to download and create their own distinctive versions of great songs. Such projects are normally led by labels or other music industry interests but singsongs.com has been nurtured in a domestic house in Port Sunlight on the Wirral. 

‘I’m just that lazy, no-good-for-nothin’, long haired, four-eyed son who wrecks it all,’ is how former Tramp Attack front man Matt Barton describes himself in his song ‘Short back and sides’.

I meet him in the Lago bar early on a Saturday afternoon, he chose here because ‘you get a cheap pint’. This is a fact not lost on the various drunken men already holding confused conversations around the bar, despite it being only 1.30.

With Liverpool’s musical landscape now colonised by drainpipe wearing fashionistas, Barton cuts a humble figure in his lived-in parka coat and blue jeans.

“Is it all finished for the band now? Yeah, pretty much. I wanted to do one last gig but none of the others wanted to do it,” says Matt.

"I stumbled into the world of music despite myself"

Half Man Half Bicuit's Nigel has for twenty years filled in the gaps between the miserable romantics and the cocky wannabe scallies in North West's rich pop legacy. Presenting the band as a throwaway novelty act he has got away with some of the wittiest and sharpest documentations of British culture and lack of, that has been set to a beat. What we really want to know is how much of his unique vision is down to the band's background in Birkenhead, a very different cultural existence from the city close by as Nigel explains.

It seems quite appropriate that Bill Drummond has proposed a day of no music. He ceased his considerably active participation in music in the late 1990's to concentrate on less high profile and artistic projects. His management of Echo and the Bunnymen had helped them to become one of post-punk's more intriguing and atmospheric bands, and with KLF he helped spread revolutionary mayhem in the world of pop for a good few years. Always one for a provocative idea, Mr Drummond proposed the No music day, which he set for 21st of November. The concept came from his ever increasing discontent with how music works and is presented in our society. In 1994 he invented for himself a way of listening to music in a different way. He created a lottery system, which was basically putting the letters of the alphabet in a bag and picking one out for each year. In that year he would only be able to listen to musicians and bands beginning with the letter picked out. And once the year is over he can't consciously listen to anything beginning with that letter again until after he has gone through the whole of the alphabet. This year he is on the letter G. I spoke to Bill on the phone to find out what he was really trying get at.

Understanding who the Acid Mothers Temple are takes a little bit of research. They are not a band in the normal sense. They are a collective of musicians from Japan who form into different projects, such as Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno, Acid Mothers Gong and Acid Mothers SWR. They have released many records on almost as many different record labels around the world. Each collaboration plays it's own version of space rock cum ambient and each has the talents of AMT leader Kawabata Makoto within it. The incarnation on tour at present, Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. , played the Cult Cargo Launch Party very recently, and along with DJ Roger Hill From radio Merseyside I spoke to kawabata about all things Acid Mothers. Fortunately for us translator Minako Ueda was also there to help the interview along.

Lovers of Hip Hop are in for a treat with the launch of a special event planned to raise the curtain on Liverpool Sound City.

The legendary American photographer and author of hip hop culture Ernie Paniccioli is to take part in an exclusive ‘In Conversation’ style event with the godfather of hip hop, Afrika Bambaataa, they will talk about the evolution of hip hop, it’s current place in the world, the portrayal of it through the decades and also their friendship.

This years sound city music conference promises to be better than ever with a barnd new venue - the Hilton Hotel 19th-20th May, with Seymour Stein and Ian McCulloch

Friday 24^th July to Sat 1^st August.

mjf 2009 is bigger and better than ever, with 9 Days, 60 gigs, 300 musicians and hours of live music. Also planned is a full array of special events and activities, indoors and out, on stage, on screen and online... such as the Discovering Jazz evening, a mini-season of classic jazz films at the Cornerhouse, and Afoxe, a Brazilian parade and performance throughout Manchester city centre.

Abandon ye Normal Devices and brake out the abaci

23-27 September 2009 & 2011 Liverpool
April 2010, 2011, 2012 Cumbria & Lancashire
September 2010 & 2012 Manchester & Cheshire

Monday 18th May-

Can he do it? Obama and the movement for change

Tuesday 19th May

Palestine: Outsiders in their Homelands