“We’re really excited to be back to our roots” - Liverpool Sound City moves back to the city

We’re really excited to be back in the city centre and back to our roots, focusing on unearthing the widest array of emerging artists. We surveyed our audiences from the last ten years after the tenth edition of Sound City last year, and the overwhelming feedback we had was that people loved the discovery elements of Sound City, going from venue to venue and finding new artists, like The 1975, Florence and the Machine, Ed Sheeran we have had as guests in the years before. So we’re really happy to be returning and to really focus on those aspects.

We had a great few years on the North Liverpool Docks, but the move came about because of the changing venue landscape of the city. Just as after 2014 we had to move out of the city centre when our main venues around the Wolstenholme Square area were redeveloped, last year we found out that Everton FC were moving their new ground to the North Liverpool Docks which meant we had to find a new home for Sound City, and this went hand in hand with our customer survey and made it feel like the right time.

The Baltic Triangle takes its name from Liverpool’s Swedish church, the Gustaf Adolfs Kyrka – a remaining link to our history with the old Baltic States. The Nordic sailors went there as their imported timber was loaded into the warehouses that surround the church. It is this connection that the land within the borders of Upper Parliament Street-St James Street-Charloner Street in Liverpool has been named “The Baltic Triangle” to reflect the history of the area. Since Liverpool became Capital of Culture in 2008, it was an affordable place for businesses to move into it, and since then it’s become home to many digital and music start-ups and as city centre venues were redeveloped, many venues moved here too. Our Sound City office is here, Ditto Music and Sentric Music also have office space as well as around other 20 venues. Like many creative quarters, developers are trying to move in, but the community and the area company Baltic Creative CIC work together to keep the ethos of creative community going.

It has been really exciting being able to programme lots of different venues again and to have venues of varying shapes and sizes as part of the festival map, as well as going back to having over 300 artists as part of the programme. The Baltic Triangle is home to lots of great food and drink too so it’s great to have such a variety for everyone. The other side of the coin with artists is how challenging it is to choose the programme, as every year we are inundated with so many amazing artists who want to play and the standard seems to get better every year; but, we can only choose a fraction of those who apply, and having to turn amazing ones down is hard.

I’m really excited about working with 24 Kitchen Street which is an amazing and intimate venue and always has a really cool programme. Around the Cains Brewery area of the Baltic Triangle there are around eight brilliant venues including the Baltic Market is modelled on the fantastic food markets across Europe and has an array of independent food stalls. On Air is styled like a film set and Black Pearl is a Bedouin Bar, Tap and Still has its own gin distillery, it’s all really diverse. There’s definitely a revival of independent venues in Liverpool at the moment, it’s a small city centre and so many are close together, it creates a healthy competition and encourages people to try something new.

A lot of the reason for Liverpool’s appetite for music is its geography. As a port city, in the early 20th century and during the First and Second World Wars, sailors from the Americas came over and brought soul and blues to the UK via Liverpool for the first time, which then led to the Mersey Beat scene, the Beatles and so on. As a port city, Liverpool has always welcomed music from all over the world and it has really diverse influences - for example it’s home to the UK’s largest and longest running festival of African music, Africa Oye, to Brazilica which is the largest and longest running celebration of Brazilian music to Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia.

In terms of the UK, Liverpool is in a bit of an enclave and it’s at the end of a train line, you have to purposefully be going to Liverpool, rather than bigger cities like Manchester which are through destinations to other places. The fact that it is a bit out of the way means that Liverpool has a thriving music scene that has developed and it’s also a small and intimate city so everyone knows each other! All of these reasons are why Liverpool is perfect for Sound City - our focus is to unearth the best new music from the widest sources and to showcase it in the world’s most legendary music city.

Liverpool Sound City takes place from 5th - 6th May and DIY is an official media partner. Tickets are on sale now. Visit diymag.com/presents for more information.

Tags: Liverpool Sound City, News, Festivals