Lineup revealed for new inner city warehouse festival Summer of Love
Taking place this August, Summer of Love is Manchester’s newest festival to hit the scene - and is one of the first in the world to accept payments in bitcoin.
The people behind Manchester label and esteemed party makers, Animal Crossing, have been teasing us with their latest venture for the past week. But today they’ve revealed the lineup for their new festival Summer of Love – and what a weekend it’s set to be.
Known for putting on parties in the most obscure places, the Animal Crossing team are quite the creative bunch when choosing their location. They’ve hosted in lofts, rooftops, railways arches and even a disused car showroom. So, don’t expect Summer of Love to be any different.
This time around, they’ll make use of an abandoned warehouse in a secret location within the centre of Manchester. They’re remaining tight-lipped on its whereabouts. But what we do know is that Manchester’s newest festival is set to deliver the best talent in underground music in real Animal Crossing style.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQTJ8PGBlVB/
On 21-22 August, a full 12 hours programme of music, arts and mindfulness will run from 11am until 11pm with stages hosted by a wide variety of people, with plenty of minimal house and techno on the agenda, and a particular focus on that Romanian style of deep groove.
The likes of Romanian pair Raresh and Praslea – a.k.a. Praslesh – are confirmed to play, alongside Apollonia’s Dyed Soundorom across the weekend. Plus, there’ll be a world exclusive b2b from Traumer and fellow Apollonia member Shonky to complete the headliners bill.
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Saturday will see a takeover from Wales’ Gottwood Festival who will look after proceedings at the ‘Love Factory’ stage by welcoming fellow Romanian DJs SIT, Priku, Sepp and Nu Zau to the occasion, whilst Turkish selector Onur Ozer will headline ‘The Second Stage’.
On the Sunday, the ARPIAR trio of Raresh, Petre Insperecsi and Rhadoo will welcome a fourth member, Dreamrec, who will provide some unreal visuals to accompany the set, to create the ultimate 360-degree experience.
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Manchester’s own Josh Baker and French selector Charlotte will set the pace at ‘The Second Stage’ on Sunday.
If you have the stamina, after parties will be running at The Loft until 5am too.
But it’s not just music.
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As passionate mental health advocates, Animal Crossing spent much of their time in lockdown raising money for Mind Manchester with a fundraising livestream. Now, a dedicated wellness area will be constructed at the festival, hosted by Mind Manchester themselves and complete with yoga classes from Blok.
Some of Manchester’s best independent food vendors will also be on hand to line your stomachs. A selection of hand-picked pop-ups curated by Eat MCR will give you the chance to grab a giant pizza slice from Nell’s Pizza, some fully-loaded fries from FryBy or some lighter options courtesy of The Green Lab, plus more.
The festival’s record fair, featuring local outlets Basement Wax, Vinyl Pimp, Wax Material, will be there if you fancy some crate digging. But more importantly, Summer Of Love will be one of the first festivals in the world to accept bitcoin as payment.
And finally, a dedicated art corner hosted by Smolensky Gallery will invite a load of the city’s painters, designers, photographers and graffiti artists to come together and create some live art. Meanwhile, the man behind Animal Crossing’s iconic illustrations, Matthew Alker, will host a deep dive into what goes into creating this visual feast for the eyes.
Phew.
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The two days are set to be absolutely packed with music, art and culture making this one hell of a weekend not to be missed.
The announcement comes at a good time following Boris Johnson’s bombshell lockdown announcement. Let’s hope this restores some hope of a festival summer actually going ahead this year!
Summer of Love organisers said: “This is our moment to reunite, rejoice and celebrate the reopening of the world we love and have missed so dearly.
“The Summer of Love Festival represents our freedom, our connection, our artistic expression in an environment that has been created bespoke for the two-day music, arts and mindful experience. There is always a positive, always a light to shine brighter. It’s all about the love.
“We can’t wait to see you in August, let’s dance like we mean it.”
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Those who register online will gain access to pre-sale tickets at 10am on Thursday 24 June, before general sale begins at 10am on Friday 25 June.
All that’s left to do is book the Monday off work, of course.
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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.
Hannah Starkie -
23rd June 2021 
