We had the pleasure of going along to see Hello Cosmos play a special one-off show at none other than St Mary’s Church in Stockport town centre on Friday night, just the gig the building has ever seen and given how incredible an experience it was, we hope there’ll be many more.
Picture the scene: it’s a frosty Foodie Friday night in Stockport with people wearing beer jackets and sharing hot street food to keep warm as the tunes ring around the marketplace; then you spot some light off in the background and notice the windows of the old town centre church glowing.
Not only was that our signal to get a move on, finish our scran and head over to the intimate gig, but it was also a beacon of light for other punters to go and check out as they looked for any excuse to come in from the cold.
And that’s pretty much how it happened. Our three-man party was full of SK natives who wanted to see what it would be like to have a church we grew up with turned into a gig venue, so we were always on board, but plenty of other locals had the pleasure of simply stumbling upon tickets at the door.
We don’t think we’d be putting words in their mouths to say they will have been glad they did, as within a few seconds of walking into the oldest parish church in Stockport, we had never seen the already ornate and historical site look so stunning.
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This wasn’t just a case of plonking some speakers and some drums near the altar like some half-arsed church fête, the roof, windows, pillars and various arches were all lit up by various multi-coloured projectors and strobes and it all felt pretty surreal.
If you’ve ever watched any kind of performance at Manchester Cathedral or a similar venue, you’ll know this kind of set-up is nothing new per se, but it did feel like something different for Stockport, especially when one of our party’s last memories was standing at the pulpit to read the Christmas story.
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Then the music kicked off and we have to start by saying we were pretty impressed by the two support acts, Fondabath — fellow Stopfordians who were probably just as surprised to be in St Mary’s as we were — and Big Society, also local lads, both of which gave plenty of reason to go away and listen to more.
Then came the main event, Hello Cosmos, spearheaded by frontman and bass player Ben Robinson, who along with his jumpsuited bandmates wasted no time in transporting the crowd to what felt like a little pocket of space in some alternate reality.
Having had a few drinks and being given kaleidoscope glasses on arrival certainly helped, but it really was a truly audio-visual experience, from the various coloured jumpsuits and neon hula-hooping to the truly mesmerising light show that lit up the church throughout the set.
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It all felt rather fittingly though when you take into account that Robinson is not just a musician but the founder of both Kendal Calling and bluedot Festival — I mean, even their sophomore album Golden Dirt has a glowing spaceman walking through a sea of sunflowers.
If you’ve never heard them before, think post-punk spoken word and almost Yard Act vibes, only if Christopher Ecclestone was on vocals instead. But their sound is truly sprawling, with ‘Fuse’ from their debut record giving the harder-hitting sounds and ‘Loud is Beautiful’ showing how they best intertwine electronics, keys and those oh-so-good horns from sax player Elara.
Be it jumping up and down in unison as the electric violinist played or Ben dropping to his knees to scream his head off, hopping off stage to walk around the crowd with a megaphone or releasing a sea of balloons from above for the big finish, this ‘Live at St Mary’s’ one-off special had a bit of everything.
It went from a little gig on a random winter evening in Stockport to an unforgettable one that SK-born gig-goers like us never thought we’d see in this particular borough of Greater Manchester whose culture and music scene are clearly thriving.
We really hope this is among the first of many — Hello Cosmos helped make it a success and we can seriously see the Live at St Mary’s series taking off if it continues to get the backing.
Posters around Manchester city centre spark serious rumours Charli XCX is set to headline Parklife 2025
Danny Jones
Some pretty big, green posters are popping up around town and, not to get ahead of ourselves, but it looks like they’re hinting at Charli XCX headlining Parklife 2025…
Feel free to lose your bratting minds.
A number of tall, let’s call it ‘apple’ green posters have been sighted in various places across Manchester city centre this Friday, 22 November and the last time we saw this slightly low-resolution, plain black Arial font and colour combo we got a reworked version of Charli XCX’s brat album.
Listen, all we can tell you is that this is almost exactly the same marketing and the letters on the poster simply read, “PL25”. Come on… you do the math(s).
Spotting at least two of the posters for ourselves around both Newton and Thomas Street in and around the Northern Quarter, plenty of people have been double-taking at the simple but bold and undeniably eye-catching portrait posters.
Trust us, we weren’t the only ones stopping to take a picture and frantically send them to half of our phonebook either.
Charli herself hasn’t given us any other clues on social media thus far – to be fair, this one feels fairly obvious to us – but it’s well worth keeping your eyes peeled on her stories as she did plenty of teasing before dropping Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat.
Still can’t get over that actually being the title, by the way.
It’s also worth noting that Parklife themselves recently confirmed that festival fans can expect to find out their headliners and the full 2025 lineup very soon. Check out that colour…
Oh, who are we kidding? That’s not apple green it’s straight-up BRAT green, b*tch. We’re fully getting carried away and you’ll just have to deal with it.
Even if it somehow turns out she’s not headlining it’s certainly looking like she’s going to be there and it wouldn’t be the first time.
Better yet, fans of the pop sensation won’t have to wait too long to see her right here in Greater Manchester because Charli is bringing her already smash-hit tour to Co-op Live next Wednesday, 27 November and in case you couldn’t tell by all the shouting in capitals, we’re very excited.
Roll on ‘PL25’. Other than Charli XCX, who else would you like to see as your Parklife headliners next summer?
Bez and Shaun Ryder are starring in a new gangster movie – nope, not kidding
Danny Jones
No, you didn’t misread the headline and you’re not on acid: Manchester music legends Bez and Shaun Ryder are set to feature in a brand-new gangster film.
Yes, the ones from the Happy Mondays – why are you having such trouble processing this?
Seriously though, we did a little double-take ourselves when we came across this news, but the familiar Manc faces look to be among the ensemble of a brand-new gangster movie by Irish writer, actor, producer and filmmaker, Ciaron Davies.
And this is just a little leak or rumour that may have been blown out of proportion: you can take it from the horse’s mouth as Happy Mondays frontman, Ryder, recently shared the news on social media.
As you can see, the new film is called Geezers and is billed as a “British crime caper” written and directed by Davies, featuring Shaun as hard-man Robbie and Bez as ‘Monk’. If you saw Ryder shaking off that snake biting his hand like it was nothing then you already know he’s hard as nails.
Although it’s not strictly listed as a comedy per se, ‘caper’ would suggest plenty of humour and light-heartedness, so we’re thinking more like The Gentleman, Italian Job, or maybe even Four Lions, rather than a serious crime thriller.
Now, while we’ve seen both of the Salfordians on screen before not only in the likes of music videos, interviews, panel shows and even as two of the funniest guests to ever go on Celebrity Gogglebox, this latest venture will serve as their respective acting debuts.
According to the IMDb page, the synopsis of the film is as follows: “Crime caper about a stolen bag of money. Caught in the crossfire are ‘The Geezers’ a bunch of wannabe criminals who have bitten off more than they can chew. With 24 hours to grab the cash, London may just go up in smoke tonight.”
Shame it’s not set on the mean streets of Manchester, or better yet Salford, but you’ve still very much caught our interest.
You can see the first promotional poster for the film down below.
As for Davies, he has been involved with a number of small-budget TV film projects, as well as appearing in shorts and even video games, so it’s fair to say that getting 62-year-old Ryder and his ever-energetic hype man, 60, involved is quite the coup for his movie-making career.
Although the film has no release date just yet, we know that filming locations having included parts of Warrington and Pinewood Studios, will be produced by Loose Gripp Films and distributed by publishers High Fliers.
Given the high-octane nature of Geezers and its genre, the feature will involve lots of action, stunts, violence and even martial arts – though how much kung-fu these two will have learned for the project remains to be seen…
All we know is that the film is supposedly “coming soon” and if you don’t want to see Bez and Shaun Ryder doing their best impression of a Guy Ritchie gangster movie then you’re lying to yourself. Praying for a Rowetta cameo to put the cherry on top.
Danny Jones -
24th February 2024 
