Bido Lito! Magazine

ICYMI We've left you with lots of new features, previews and reviews over on bidolito.co.uk for February-March. You'll now find: 🔥 Experimentation and DIY with @jettagram talking to @lilyhbee 📸 @mrkirks 🎵@katyalexmusic chats to @tayl0rsarah about her new direction(s) 📸 @polyphonicauk 🏳️‍🌈 @felixmufti @koladetladipo and co are Here N' Queer for their photography project 📸 @lukebryantphoto 👑 @kinghannahmusic talk about their exciting new @cityslangrecords album 📸 @ktsilvester 📀 @yungsingh at @24kitchenstreet and more reviewed in the Live section 📸 @danieldelabastide 📅 In the What's On section you'll find interviews with jazz trailblazer @ejthackray and folk legend @peggy.seeger who're visiting Kitchen Street and @liverpool_philharmonic respectively And there's even more! @spinn_band talk new LP, @rawdproject and @dadafest on Merseyside's divergent arts scene, Future Ages Will Wonder at @fact_liverpool , we catch up with @kristrunmusic , @neckin_on and @nailamusic_ , @seatbelter have a chat and @jeffyoung.26 writes about 'the Overcity'. ❕Dig in ⚒️ Links in bio❕

📣 A statement from Bido Lito!

Having been starved of the cultural experience of live music and social dancing, many of us expected a sustained, heightened appreciation of what we’d lost. Immediately following the re-launch of nightlife, the atmosphere at some early celebratory events was considered to be among the best local venues had seen. 24 Kitchen Street and Meraki, two of the city’s most prominent and well-respected dance music venues, both agreed that July and August lived up to the ‘return-to-rave’ bill. 24 Kitchen Street threw parties every night for the first week, and for Meraki, “the first month was great with some big parties …There was definitely the demand once again for everyone to be back out.” Was this the moment we transitioned into something akin to lockdown’s rhetoric of a new roaring twenties? Hardly so. Following the post-lockdown rush to the dancefloor, many of Liverpool’s venues experienced a dearth of ticket sales. Head to the link in bio to find out why. __________ ✏️: Richard Anderson 📸: @lucy_alexandra & @evolving_necessary @24kitchenstreet @merakiliverpool

Jeff Young / 'My compass points were pub, gig, bookshop, record shop, off licence, communist book shop, dole queue, drug dealer, 69A, record shop, bookshop, cinema and pub. 'Liverpool was soot-black and 70s browny-beige, and World War II had only just finished. Apart from the long hot summer of ‘76, I don’t remember sunshine: Liverpool was always in shadow and it seems to me now, looking back, that kids like me were living in the B-side of reality. B-sides are often more interesting anyway – listen to Roxy Music’s ‘The Numberer’ for its strange, secret clues to a more subversive world. I wanted to live there – most of the time I did live there.' Jeff Young's pre-pandemic, post-war Liverpool was a city still trudging through the quagmire wrought by war, suckling on the teets of nostalgia to discover remnants of its identity. 'It felt as if Liverpool was so defeated and lost, so mired in nostalgia for something it couldn’t even bear to remember, that it could no longer imagine its own future. The city was beginning to rake through its own recent history – the docks, the war, Merseybeat – in search of lipstick traces on a cigarette, as if it were grasping some vague notion that if it tarted up the Albert Dock and said ‘The Beatles’ enough times it might regain a touch of its old charisma. It didn’t seem particularly interested in tomorrow or the new.' But that imagined tomorrow, on closer inspection, was already seeing morning light. 'Mathew Street was waking up, thanks to the imagination of the great Peter O’Halligan and his Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream & Pun. Ken Campbell was stalking the warehouses, concocting anarchic magic. The Art School was generating strange energies. My Liverpool was a mash up of Scouse Beat Generation, Andy Warhol’s Factory, remnants of the counterculture, rumours of the future. 'You’d walk down Bold Street – half of which was boarded up – and you were walking through a terminal zone but when you got to Mathew Street you felt as if you had walked into tomorrow.' Head to the link in bio to read Jeff Young's Liverpudlian anamnesis in full. __________ ✏️: @jeffyoung.26 📸: Hugh Weldon

Walter Sickert // details 😍 🌍 Did you know? With 348 drawings, the @walkerartgallery holds the largest collection of Sickert's work in the world! 🇩🇪 🇬🇧 Born in Munich in 1860, Sickert and his family relocated to Britain in 1868 following the German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein. 🖼️ Leaving a distinct mark on the 20th-Century British avant-garde movement - with a career spanning some six decades - Sickert was focused on reflecting life as he knew it, unafraid of offending refined society with his practice. Here's what our reviewer, Georgi Aslanian, had to say following their visit: 'Far from taking a zoomed-in approach, the exhibit strives to contextualise Sickert’s art. 'Emblazoned on the walls are notes on art theory, journal entries and quotes from his letters to friends. “Twenty years of intermittent fidelity is a record!” reads Sickert’s devotion to the Old Bedford theatre, a subtle nod to his various infidelities over the years, which the exhibition tries not to sensationalise.' Sickert: A Life in Art is on display at the Walker Art Gallery until the 27th February. 🔗 Read our full review via link in bio! __________ #liverpool #art #sickert

🌹 @gensdegenerates absolutely bossing the Georgian Quarter in Issue 118 😍 __________ Interview: @glamgigpics Photography: @lucy_alexandra Jewellery: @kintsugilt __________ #liverpool #liverpoolmusic #newmusic

Conscious, Christian, gospel - call it what you will. Operating as @illy1music , Joshua Ilesanmi’s honesty and openness feeds directly through his interview with Christopher Carr in our latest spotlight. Originally from Nigeria, Josh moved to Liverpool aged three and has been in Liverpool almost all his life. “To be fair,” he says, “I can’t really remember much from when I was in Nigeria. So, my influences have just mainly come from growing up really, hearing different things and also being exposed to lots of different types of music." Now aged 22 and armed with fierce creative productivity, Christopher writes, the self-branded conscious rapper reveals a rare moral integrity when it comes to his musical approach. “I’ve noticed that I’m able to help people or speak to people more by just talking about life. Like when I released the track Special, I was talking about doubts, worries and different things that everybody faces day to day." Head to the link in bio to read the full spotlight interview! __________ 📸: @corbyn_john ✏️: Christopher Carr __________ #liverpoolmusic #newmusic #merseyside

Under the pseudonym of LoneLady, Julie Campbell’s creativity pours into an audio-visual amalgam of art pop, post-punk and electronic grooves. After building a steady coterie of fans over the years, the former fine art student can even count New Order and Brian Eno amongst them - the latter gifting her a new synth after jokingly offering to take one from her studio. “A huge package arrived and it was a big heavy synth wrapped in foam," she tells @tayl0rsarah . "It’s a Korg Triton so it’s got a very crisp sound to it. It’s the main piano riff that features on the song Time Time Time”. Embarking on the second leg of her Former Things tour - including a headline show at @24kitchenstreet Kitchen Street on 15th January - the elusive multi-instrumentalist is already thinking about album four. "I think now it’s just a case of alternating between playing live and having little chunks of writing time,” she explains in our preview. "Everything’s a new adventure for me.” Head to the link in bio to read the full preview ahead of @loneladyhq 's show at 24 Kitchen Street next week! __________ #liverpoolmusic #liverpool #liverpoolcity

💿 What was your album of 2021? For our Journal, we invited friends of Bido Lito! to share some of the long players that made their year. 🛍️ Get our premium annual on Liverpool's year in new music and creative culture via link in bio! __________

🌎 Happy Hogmanay! At the end of a year that's brought its fair share of lock-ups and freedom days, it's only right we indulge, if just for a moment, on the weird and wonderful that was the previous 12 months. Just one highlight for us at Bido HQ has been to witness the creaky, awkward and determined resurrection of live music, where, over the summer, we saw our city play a vital role in informing the planning and execution of live events during a pandemic. But our home's natural ability to adapt and bring unrivalled creativity to unprecedented challenges was always here. In their Mapping Creativity short, @harryrobo99 and @iona_fazer_ take us to the venues, spaces and people who've made 2021's transition to live that little bit easier. What's been your highlight(s) of 2021? However - and wherever - you ring in the New Year, we'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy, and pink 2022. - Bido Lito! x __________ 🎥: @harryrobo99 / @iona_fazer_ 🎶 @urbanparcs __________ #liverpool #liverpoolmusic #happynewyear

🎞️ Responding to a resurgence in analogue, dot-art have established a new darkroom in Liverpool City Centre, with provisions to transform black and white film into sharp negatives and monochrome photographs. Under the guidance of professional photographers Clare Bailey and Rachel Brewster-Wright, the brand-new darkroom will also run a series of workshops, giving everyone a chance - from complete beginners to more advanced creatives - to explore the magic of analogue photography. The Queens Avenue-based gallery and artist network will also launch a darkroom membership for those with significant darkroom experience, offering unlimited access and expert guidance. __________ @dotartliverpool 📸: @littlevintagephotography

In a year that's seen us learn the Greek alphabet via new variants - with cheese and wine sales soaring for work meetings - we've been locked-down and locked-in to DJ sets, gigs and events aplenty. A picture tells a thousand words, and with each new issue of the pink pages, our on-assignment snappers have been there to document our year in new music and creative culture. From test events to costumed flamboyance, here are just some of our photography faves to be featured this year. __________ 📸: @john.johno , @mrkirks , @danieldelabastide , @robinclewleyphotography , @lucy_alexandra , @lens_of_a_wool