Photo: Ged Camera.

Sam Hawley at Hard Rock Café.

Described as "one-woman electronic avalanche" (bbc.co.uk) and more than once dubbed as the "british Bjork" (Splendid e-zine, NY) the slightly bonkers galaxy of this hardware poetess who is hard to define and confine to category. She shines live at clubs and arts events that dare to be rare. Relatively recently landed in Manchester from Berlin and Newcastle upon Tyne, she is also a studio engineer and provocateuse of Rare as a Green Dog events - random electronic extravaganzas that recur randomly thru'out the planet.

Self produced debut album and feature film soundtracks more releases too numerous to bore u with now are available...

Mat writes:

Hedge has become about the only club I go to regularly these days- infact it's pretty much the only club i go to unless it's a special event! must be my age! Hedge is a night run by Danny and JoJo of Cortina Deluxx and is a folky (witha bit of electronica), friendly night held in The Carlton Club, a working men's club on Carlton Rd, Whalley Range. Great place for bearded men and women... beer's about £1.80 a pint and spirits are as cheap. Hedge had a break for a couple of months recently, the first one on its return selling out befor 8.30! That's how popular it's become. We are in the midst of a 'folk revival' however.

This particular night was as excellent as usual. Most of the acts had just played at 'What tha Folk?' at Cornerhouse the week before... this was almost a replay! When we arrived about 9ish Jenny McCormick was already on, followed by Tom Barnes, both played respectable acoustic sets. But most were probably there to see the next three acts... Liz Green has that odd 'karen Dalton-ish' warbly style voice and a quirky way with rhythm and lyrics. She holds a lot of stage presence and really is pretty unique! Cortina Deluxx were excellent as usual... the band includes John Thorne on double bass who used to play with Lamb. The last on the night was Denis Jones who plays a set of elctronica-folk which build and builds. He kind of reminded me of a male Juana Molina in the way he uses samples and triggers to build up big soundscapes in his songs. a great night!

Mat writes:

a doodlebug day in london town!

the top pic shows everyone who got on the coach, 8am sunday morning outside contact theatre to venture to the biig chill house in london for a day of 'doodlebug niceness'.

the middle pic shows Tracy Elizabeth, who closed the show.

and below is the bus heading off back to mcr at midnight... (i stayed down for a day).

lots of artists and performers here- not just musical but comedy, poetry and prose...

great performances and a very cosy atmosphere helped the day to be very enjoyable and very interesting... more to come.

Another great Roisin gig, this time at MDH. Roisin studied at Manchester University and cites the city as a major influence on he music.

Calvin Party play Cologne's Blue Shell Club, 2008
Dave Thom, Kerry, John Donaldson, Dan Hadley, Cathy Brooks

Great line-up for Jayne Compton's Club Brenda night.

Photo: Rebecca Miller

This is a promo picture of Lonelady (Julie Campbell). After cutting her teeth on the Manchester unsigned scene for a few years, she signed to Warp in '09 and put out an ultra-limited seven inch called 'Immaterial'. There's a bit of Kristin Hersh and Polly Harvey in there. Worth a listen.

Happy Mondays. Fuji Rock Festival. Loose Fit. Julie E Gordon Vocals. Shaun Ryder Vocals.

Storm in a teacup writes:

This was a really lovely gig.... busy as anything, with mellow sets from NANCY and KALBAKKEN in the shadow of Paddy's huge stage set, before the great launch event itself....not a UFO launch, but it easilly could have been to that soundtrack.

Photo: Emma Gibbs

The Answering Machine: Martin Colclough, Ben Perry, Gemma Evans and Pat Fogarty at the BBC Club in the former New Broadcasting House building on Oxford Road, Manchester. The band were taking part in Marc Riley's annual Christmas Carol Concert which was broadcast live during his programme on 6Music for a number of years.

DJ Elisabaeth rocks the arse of the after-hours tent at this year's That Amazing Thing camping trip. The camping trip is an annual riot in Brampton, near Appleby, and a proper Manchester institution.

(Photographer unknown)

The Sisters Of Transistors are a Combo Organ Quartet and Ladies Social Club. They play a selection of fully working exhibition organs with an emphasis on the Italian models from the early 1970s accompanied on drums by museum curator Prof Vernon World. Repertoire includes a mixture of originals in the style of baroque disco prog and classics from the golden age of Horror OST. They have a heavily amplified sound known as “The Wall of Cheese”, using restored British and Soviet amplification systems from the vaults of the museum.

Photo: Phil King

Hotpants Romance at Cafe Saki, Manchester.

Stretch Local - a quality disco/house/eclectic/leftfield shindig at Night & Day Cafe with residents Dan Soulsmith and Abigail Ward. Other great DJs included Julie Wills and Andrea trout.

Photo: Emma Gibbs

Josephine Oniyama playing a solo set at BBC North in MediaCity.

Photo: Bob Eccles

Factory Acts, featuring the amazing Susan O’Shea on synth torture.

LIINES (Zoe Mcveigh, Leila O'Sullivan and Tamsin Middleton) are a three-piece with a lot of heart. Hailing from Manchester, UK - the home of some of the best music both past and present - LIINES head out on their biggest ever European tour to promote debut EP Cold.

When you see LIINES live you'll find raw energy and pounding beats - you'll be watching three people and it'll sound like ten! You can see and feel their passion as every beat and note goes by.

When they were hooker, they were hailed as one of Manchester's most engaging and powerful live acts and played with Interpol, Television, The Slits, Le Tigre, 50 Foot Wave (Kristin Hersh, Throwing Muses) and toured with Gossip and Katastrophy Wife. LIINES will carry on this mantle with comparisons from Joy Division, PJ Harvey, Queens of the Stone Age to Sleater Kinney.

Simply, LIINES are emotive, dirty and beautiful.

@weareliines

King Prawn Records. Produced Paul Wilkinson. Composition/Vocals Julie E Gordon. Love Power.

After reforming in December 2012 to produce and promote their compilation album 'Another Time, 1989 - 1994' The Rainkings decided to stay together and set about writing a bunch of new songs.

Stephen Holt (Inspiral Carpets), Dave Swift (ex- Inspiral Carpets) and John Rowland (ex- The Bodines) have been joined on bass by Cathy Brooks (ex- Dub Sex and Dumb) and Chris Hutchinson on keyboards & guitar, and have recently recorded 3 of these new songs.

Nothing's Set in Stone, In From the Rain and By My Side were recorded at Big Mushroom studios in November 2013 with Jim Spencer, engineer, who has previously worked with The Charlatans amongst many others

Emma writes:

Album artwork for Manchester based singer songwriter Sara Lowes 2015 'Joy of Waiting' album by artist Stanley Chow. The print is signed by Chow on the back and was bought at his 2014 Takeaway exhibition which was held in the Centre For Chinese Contemporary Art in the Northern Quarter. When the exhibition finished its run, all the pictures from the show were sold for the price of a takeaway on a first come, first served basis with buyers being able to literally pull the the images off the walls and take them away immediately. Everyone was limited to three prints and the queue outside the CFCCA was massive but fortunately my husband had got the time of the sale wrong and turned up an hour early so was really near the front of the queue. This was the print I picked up first because having visited the exhibition earlier in the month I had decided I would really like to buy it because I loved the artwork and am also a big fan of Sara's music.

Photographer unknown.

Text taken from MEN piece by Rhian Lubin.

Tributes have poured in for Inner City Life singer Diane Charlemagne, who passed away on Wednesday after losing a battle with lung cancer.

The Urban Cookie Collective singer, from Moss Side , had a string of top ten hits in the nineties including The Key The Secret.

Blue Soap Music PR posted a statement on Wednesday evening confirming the sad news.

They said: “We’re very sad to announce that Diane Charlemagne lost her brave battle with cancer today. The last track she recorded, ‘It’s In Your Eyes’, featuring Andy Rourke and Simon Wolstencroft, will be released on 20th November and all proceeds from the sale of the track will be donated to her family.

“Diane leaves a huge body of work through her collaborations with the likes of Moby and Goldie, she was the vocalist on his huge hit ‘Inner City Life’, and it’s through this work that her spirit will live on.”

Goldie led tributes to the talented singer on Twitter and posted on Wednesday: “So she went into the early morning... God rest her soul #diane what a gifted voice.

Monkeys in Love write:

Yacht rock theme for a music video for 'Graphene Is Making The Scene'. Graphene is the wonder material first produced at Manchester University.