I performed with a live band for the first time

…and it was batshit brilliant

It’s the Saturday night of Halloween weekend, and the pavements are clogged with clusters of shifty figures in dark hoodies, trackies and masks. I’m driving in circles around a Salford industrial estate in a cold fuzz of rain, the sat nav telling me to turn through a locked gate into an abandoned scrapyard. There’s another week to go ‘til Bonfire Night, but red sparks are detonating across the darkening sky. After navigating a labyrinth of missed turns and dead ends in the shadow of Strangeways prison, I slink down the back of a building, past locked metal shutters with pounding, sinister music coming from behind them, finally finding my destination. 

There’s a full moon rising, there’s a lunar eclipse coming, and Samhain is only days away. And I’m in a venue the size of a garage, its walls and ceiling hung with tinsel curtains, fairylights, branches from my friend’s garden, creepily beautiful artwork and an assortment of other strange objects. At one end of the room is a makeshift stage: a spaghetti tangle of cables and musical instruments and my mates midway through their soundcheck. 

backofthebrain formed earlier this year, a self-proclaimed ‘experimental witchcraft sound art band’, ‘sonic formation of four’ and ‘holistic collaborative movement’, and last week was their first live performance. For their debut event, they invited some of their closest kin to share the stage, and I was honoured to be among them. But… 

I’m no longer sharing my writing on Substack, but you can read the rest over on my website.