Transition EP – Now Streaming
The original Transition EP is now available on streaming. Click the embed below or here to listen.
Cath Aubergine from the legendary ManchesterMusic.co.uk has written a few words reflecting on the release, far better than we could.
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Turn of the century Manchester: a music scene left bruised and battered by its long nineties hangover blinks, rubs its eyes. Time to wake up. There are pockets of life, here and there, in the basements and upstairs rooms. Branded nights – just a couple, at first – where you know the acts have been selected, you can trust them. Akoustik Anarkhy, Chairsmissing. Then there are more. Blowout, High Voltage. Something is happening here. By 2004 you can go out pretty much any night of the week and see three or four new acts, at least half of them local. Suddenly everyone seems to be in a band and you come home from a night out with CDRs in your pockets and cheaply photocopied flyers for the next gig. Sometimes the venue is someone’s house. Whose house? No idea, someone who knows someone, but everyone is welcome.
That summer, Castlefield Bowl belongs to the new breed. Blowout packs the D:Percussion main stage with the best of them, and suddenly the name that’s been whispered in back rooms from the Northern Quarter to Chorlton goes overground. The arena fills up as The Longcut hit the stage. This is the moment we have been waiting for, that Manchester has been waiting for. Something new and young and exciting, a jumping mass of cool kids who give not one fuck for the behemoths of the last century. Faces among the faceless, voices among the voiceless. The mutant post-rock disco punk drum machine beat is relentless, then the singer steps away from the microphone, takes up position behind a real drumkit, and it all explodes.
56 seconds. That’s all it takes to know Manchester has a new favourite band. The gigs are wild now, people hanging off the walls. Weeks later Night and Day is packed to the edges and the music press are on their way up the M6. Yet still no official releases. How the hell is anyone going to capture this? But somehow they do. “Transition” hits the shops in November and copies are like hens’ teeth within days. The future has arrived.
How was all that twenty years ago? Manchester is barely recognisable now, all shiny tower blocks, and the wild kids grew up as every generation must. But press play and the years evaporate, you’re not sitting in the office any more, you’re waking up in a bus shelter in south Manchester with a mysterious bruise and a half drunk bottle of Smirnoff Ice and it’s nearly time to go out again.