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. On this second instalment of episode 4, we continue to discuss David’s activities as a promoter, this time turning our attention to his current long running concert series Curious Ear and some of the incredible players he’s hosted over the years. We also take a well needed look at David’s earliest musical projects, which include Stuckometer, My Beautiful Ridiculous Plan and The Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra, providing a fascinating snapshot of how the wider DIY Punk and independent music scenes operated at this time in both Manchester and the wider UK. David has been fortunate enough to play is some pretty ‘exotic’ and farflung locations over the years and we talk about his experiences performing in Palestine, Japan, Russia and in small beer shops around Europe. We round the show off with the quick-fire pop quiz, which although a bit gimmicky, continues to produce some very interesting answers and David’s are no different. You’ll also be able to hear an exclusive track from mine and David new duo project, Fire Nearby, at the end of the show, which is taken from our forthcoming album out very soon on Tombed Visions.

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