BUTTER BRIDGE IS HAPPENING!

by 4Q on 22.06.11

Saturday 9th July
16.00 til Past your bedtime
KRAAK Galleries,
Stevenson Square,
Northern Quarter,
Manchester
Tickets: £5 or £3 from www.skiddle.com

www.facebook.com/butterbridgeishappening
www.facebook.com/theanimalsofbutterbridge

Butter Bridge is a family incorporating comedy, music and art. On July 9th Butter Bridge is Happening will be hosted by Butter Bridge Records, and will include a number of different performances in a variety of media, including comedy from their sister group The Animals of Butter Bridge and music from artists on their roster.

However, this will differ from the average showcase – Butter Bridge intend to create an immersive, consuming experience that takes their audience away from ‘the real world’ to some strange place resting on a knife edge between the dreamlike and the absurd.

Escaping from the conventions of lights-up lights-down, static-audience events, Butter Bridge is Happening will drift between performances, interludes and installation ensuring that those assembled will surprised, enchanted and perhaps even challenged throughout. Providing a thread to the evening will be Manchester’s premier surrealists, The Animals of Butter Bridge.

This group are a five piece alternative comedy collective who met whilst studying at Bretton Hall Arts College in 2007 and have been writing and performing ever since. Their ethos of offering a unique, bizarre and uncompromising style of comedy to an often unchallenged British public perfectly complements our ambitions for the event.

Butter Bridge Records was formed in 2009 to release thought-provoking, poetic and lyrical music that might otherwise fall under the radar in interesting ways and they look forward to bringing some of the best musical talent from around the area and the country to KRAAK Gallery for a long strange summer day.

We also look forward to forging a connection to KRAAK, an independent not-for-profit venue in the heart of the artistic Northern Quarter that share the same passion for sound and live art as us.

Inspiration/Influence –

Butter Bridge is Happening will draw heavy inspiration from the ‘happenings’ of the late 60s, from Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable to the UFO Club of London and creator Joe Boyd’s ethos of bringing “freaks out of the woodwork”. Their combination of sound and performance under one roof to engulf the audience for a prolonged period and present surprises at every turn is what we’re striving to achieve. The comedy famously draws inspiration from some of the less mined themes such as children’s illustrations, occult, counter-culture, nightmares and English villages dressed in bunting and . Musical performances will draw inspiration from Bob Dylan, Love, Syd Barrett and The Beatles to modern music poets like The National and Anticon, and bringing these sounds to a future we’re all scared of. Only joking, it’ll be fun!

Line-up: As well as comedy from The Animals of Butter Bridge and a guest slot from London based sketch group Oyster Eyes, the day will be sound tracked by some of the areas most exciting underground bands such as; Politburo., Proud Proud People, Swim Into Scarlet and Casimir Effect. Plus stalls, performance artists, and a whole host of other surprises.

Butter Bridge is Happening will include performances and artwork from an array of talented people. All those involved in Butter Bridge Records and The Animals of Butter Bridge met at Bretton Hall Arts Campus in West Yorkshire around 2005 and have been engaged in alternative artistic ventures amid the creative landscape of Bretton Hall, then to wider audiences in Leeds and since then have established footholds in a number of northern cities including Newcastle, Sheffield and now Manchester. Though we currently live throughout the country, Manchester has proved to be something of a spiritual home and draws us together frequently for performances throughout the city.

Not Part Of: The event will be take place as the centerpiece of a healthy Butter Bridge presence at this year’s Not Part Of Festival. Butter Bridge are thoroughly inspired by the community and non-commercial nature of Not Part Of and its intention to disperse art of all forms across Manchester for both the willing and the unsuspecting. We strongly support their efforts to develop this great city’s creative identity and their own support for those behind it.

www.notpartof.org