Audio

90s Baby to throw summer festival at Manchester City Airport, featuring Five, 911, and Gareth Gates

The throwbacks keep coming.

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 21st February 2023

90s Baby will be taking us back to the golden age of pop music once again this summer, with a one-day festival at Manchester City Airport.

Headliners will include Five, 911, Liberty X, Phats & Small and Gareth Gates, plus loads more artists who dominated the charts in the 1990s.

The 90s Baby Festival will take over the fields at the local airport, turning them in to a ’90s paradise’ with ‘next level light and sound’.

The open-air festival will have live music and DJ sets spread across three arenas, plus a fairground, a food village, glitter stalls, gin bars, rum bars and merch stands.

The line-up is packed with boyband stars, chart-topping dance acts, and much-loved pop favourites from yesteryear.

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Manchester City Airport. Credit: Supplied

It will have capacity for around 5000 music-lovers, ready to see a line-up that also includes B*Witched, Sonqiue, Ultra Nate, N-Trance, Baby D, Rozalla, Livin’ Joy, Ultrabeat, Julie McKnight and more.

90s Baby is also set to take over the AO Arena this October, with another nostalgic line-up of Blue, Peter Andre and Five.

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90s Baby is promising a day of ‘beaming smiles as you forget your woes and head back to the worry free days of your youth’.

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They say there’ll be ‘sing-a-longs, catchy choruses and earworm melodies’ all day.

The 90s Baby Festival will take place at Manchester City Airport on 16 July 2023.

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Find out more and look out for tickets at jbmmusic.com.

Featured image: Publicity picture

Audio

Tame Impala at Co-op Live, Manchester – lasers, lights, and a bit of a hangover

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson Tame Impala at Co-op Live, Manchester

The coolest man in the southern hemisphere has finally made his way back up north, for his first Manchester gig in a decade.

That cool man in question is Tame Impala, the music project of what-the-hell-can’t-he-play multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker.

Sure, last year’s single release ‘Dracula’, and then its remix re-release with K-pop megastar Jennie, may have propelled Tame Impala up towards the top of the UK singles chart for the first time, but he’s got almost two decades-worth of music to dig through beyond that too.

It’s a hefty discography and it leads to a setlist that seems to almost peak about six times.

‘How could it possibly get better than this?’ we seem to ask as he plays The Moment, Elephant, Dracula, and Let It Happen pretty early on – but better it does indeed get.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether he’s up on the main space-ship-esque stage surrounded by lasers and lights, or sat on the floor of the B Stage playing around with a keyboard, Tame Impala has an irresistible, enchanting charisma. A lot more charisma that you’d expect from a man called Kevin.

Early on, he confesses that he’s quite severely hungover from last night’s show, where he had Dua Lipa (he wrote and produced her Radical Optimism album) as a surprise guest.

But you can see the hangover clear from his eyes in real time as 23,500 Mancs scream in his face. Which might not sound like a likely hangover cure, but who am I to argue with the evidence in front of me?

Although Kevin writes, produces, and records his music solo, he’s got half a dozen musicians up on the main stage with him, which looks like a convoluted space ship that fires confetti out of its thrusters (FOUR TIMES!).

With revolving lights, dancing lasers, and a metal grid base spewing out dry ice, it’s really one hell of a production.

It’s a light show designed to give us all a glimpse of his synesthesia (meaning he sees colours when he hears music (Billie Eilish has it too)) – essentially, if you couldn’t hear a thing and could only see the stage, you can still tell exactly what song is playing.

Still, when he saunters straight through the crowd to his smaller stage to mix tracks solo – no lasers, just a few lamps – flopping down onto a tangle of wires like a mad magpie building himself a nest, it’s a chance to remember this guy’s composing prowess.

A lot of the songs performed tonight are almost orchestral in their complexity, so that the whole show merges into one thundering, bewitching night of dancing and being blasted in the face by confetti.

It’s genius.

So can you not leave it another decade before you come back, Kevin?

Tame Impala setlist – Manchester

  • Apocalypse Dreams
  • The Moment
  • Borderline
  • Loser
  • Breathe Deeper
  • Gossip
  • Elephant
  • Afterthought
  • Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
  • Dracula
  • No Reply
  • Ethereal Connection
  • Not My World
  • Let It Happen
  • Nangs
  • List of People (To Try and Forget About)
  • Alter Ego
  • Yes I’m Changing
  • Eventually
  • New Person, Same Old Mistakes
  • My Old Ways
  • The Less I Know the Better
  • End of Summer

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Featured image: The Manc Group

Audio

Kahiki Soundhouse – the new Mint Lounge site is living up to the old name and its live music legacy

Danny Jones Danny Jones Kahiki Soundhouse MCR new Mint Lounge

If you went out in town back in the day (pretty much any time from the late 90s to the 2010s), or indeed have sampled a Funkdemia over the past couple of decades, chances are you tried or at least heard of Mint Lounge – but did you know it’s been replaced by a new kid on the block, Kahiki?

Kahiki Soundhouse, to give it its full name, is the new live music venue bar that has opened up the old basement space on Oldham Street in the Northern Quarter.

In truth, it’s now more of a classic lounge than ever before.

The large open-plan floor, which used to be filled with people standing/two-stepping inside a fairly barebones club room with no air conditioning, has now been traded up for a stylish space lined with plush padded seats, classy low-lit tables perfect to share a glass or two over, and lots of new features.

kahiki live music nights
kahiki bar

Perhaps the biggest change is that the old soundbooth/stage area that used to be way at the back has now been swapped for a central 360° podium that changes up each night.

It really is the star of the all-week-round Kahiki show, if you ask us.

This also means that no matter where you are in the main venue (there are other rooms, but we’ll get to that), be it tucked in a booth to the side, at the bar, or even ‘behind’ whoever’s playing, you’ll have a virtually unobstructed view of what’s happening from noon until night.

Seriously, thanks to their already jam-packed schedule, the reviews aren’t just off to a great start only a few days in, but people have been turning up in the early evening and staying well into the early hours of the next day.

They’ve got duelling pianos, live bandaoke, acoustic nights and straightforward DJ sets for those who still fancy a taste of the previous vibe.

Kahiki’s maiden Manchester city centre venue definitely harks back to the good times had in the Mint Lounge days, but the team, who possess decades of experience between them, have combined a retro feel almost more akin to 1960s speakeasies, cocktails and evening venues.

It’s no secret that clubbing and the UK nightlife scene have changed quite a bit since the pandemic, but these guys look to have found that perfect blend of more relaxed seating, along with plenty of room to get up and boogie; there’s even a raised mini-stage/dance cage for your main character moments.

Better still, if you do want something a little bit away from the crowds of punters that are continuing to make this one of the liveliest new additions to NQ, they also have adjustable karaoke rooms where bi-folding doors can make room for up to 50 of you and your lot to party in privacy.

Let’s just say the spirit of the Lounge is alive and well in the Soundhouse.

cocktail bars mcr
Just one corner of Kahiki
dancing stages manchester
Your podium awaits
karaoke roooms manchester
One of the smaller karaoke rooms

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Featured Images — The Manc Group/Audio North

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