My guest for episode 4 is guitarist, promoter, and occasional label owner David Birchall. For well over a decade, David has been synonymous with improvised music in Manchester. In addition to being one of the cities most talented and prolific practitioners, David has been a dedicated and selfless facilitator of improvised music concerts in Manchester, booking the likes of Evan Parker, Pat Thomas, Alan Wilkinson and Toshimaru Nakamura in recent years. On this first instalment of the interview, we chronicle David’s recent musical projects which goes a way to illustrate that he is far beyond your regular free improvising musician. We discuss the Minimum Wage Immanence unit, a relatively new trio that melds folk and new music idioms together in mantra like improvisations, his long standing free-rock group Historically Fucked and their recent album and tour of the UK earlier this year and his current live experiments with the prepared banjo, featuring an array of speakers filled with pebbles and pinecones to create earthly, elemental drones. We also go into detail on the making of his solo record Pomona Itineration’s, built mostly from field recordings that act as an audio-graphic survey of an abandoned wharf in north Manchester. Also highlighted is mine and David’s recent work together in a duo project called Fire Nearby which draws on our shared love of a particular type of quiet guitar music that was prevalent in the 90s – and you’ll be able to hear an exclusive track from our forthcoming album at the end of part 2. Amongst this discussion, David shares some extremely valuable and illuminating insights in his approach to the guitar and the concept of ‘embodiment’ and clarifies his own personal politics which underpin and motivate much of his work. We finish off this instalment by delving into his activities with Tubers Music, a experimental music promotion that was born from the scene built around Hotspur Press, an old printing mill in the heart Manchester’s city centre.

Important Links:

https://davidbirchall.bandcamp.com/

https://curiousear.net/

https://davidbirchall.neocities.org/

Helpyourself Manchester Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu67QZvMLqY

https://tombedvisionsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-islington-mill

https://tombedvisionsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-difficult-second-album

Socials:

@curiousearmcr