Name: Cerys Matthews at Blurred Lines - part of the Poetry and Lyrics Festival by Poet in the City
Duration: 8 min 15 s
Description: Melanie Roberts interviews Cerys Matthews at Blurred Lines, the opening event of Poet in the City's Poetry and Lyrics festival

Melanie Roberts interviews Cerys Matthews at Blurred Lines, the opening event of Poet in the City's Poetry and Lyrics festival

Cerys Matthews at Blurred Lines - part of the Poetry and Lyrics Festival

A LoneLady mixtape to accompany  'Daydreaming In The City - a  micro-festival exploring daydreaming and poetic states of mind.' Taking place on 27th November at HOME, Manchester.

Featuring an eclectic programme of spoken word performance, talks, music, film and an immersive audio experience from In the Dark Radio. Presented by Poet in the City in collaboration with Hubbub, a collective of social scientists, artists, researchers and mental health experts in residence at the Wellcome Trust.
http://www.poetinthecity.co.uk/show-event/?pc_event_id=310

@LoneLadyHQ
@Warprecords
www.lonelady.co.uk

Tracklist:

Automotivation 2 - Cabaret Voltaire, Conform To Deform '2-90 The Virgin/EMI Years Archive
Region - Section 25, The Key Of Dreams
The Street Is Your Playground - LoneLady feat. The LRM (unreleased)
Knife Slits Water - A Certain Ratio, Sextet
Someone Was Saying - Infantjoy, Where The Night Goes
What I Wouldn't Give - Pink Industry, New Naked Technology Remasters 2010
Groove It Out (Michigan Remix) - LoneLady, Groove It Out 12''
Battle Stance, How To Kill A Boombox: Underground Cassette Productions
Heaven And Hell - Cabaret Voltaire, Mix-Up
Ye Ye - Daphne, Jiaolong
Cosmic Cars - Cybotron, Clear
Try Again - Isolation Ward, Point Final
Everything Lay Still - Colleen, The Golden Morning Breaks

I read recently ''(The Ghost) is the really permanent citizen of this earth, for mortals, at best, are transients*’.  I get carried away with this…searching for presences, visitations. A haunted space coexists behind the surface. Manchester 's post-industrial landscape lends itself very well to a haunting. All this is my idea of fun.

For a long time I didn't know about psychogeography, or all the movements and practices around it. But when I did find it, I knew this was a way to describe what it was I had been doing all along. I love Iain Sinclair, Laura Oldfield Ford and so on, but its important to not become too  suffused with other peoples' dialogues. I want to develop my own language, continue my strange quests and not always explain them.

Sometimes it is to do with a split. Recluse-behaviour. Dereliction, rubble, anxiety patterns. A retreat into the landscape; I'm not necessarily recommending it. Sometimes these ruinscapes are a reflection of depression and anxiety. There can be dangerous gateways, both in music and in the landscape. Walking or psychogeography is a way to recover, to soothe, to utilise these states. Psychogeography can offer space for the imagination to unfold at its own pace. There's solace in a patch of scrubland or derelict building because it seems to reflect certain mental states and understand; it offers a habitat, a place to belong. There's an oblique but deeply felt connection and communication.  Children are natural psychogeographers; we used to invent magic kingdoms, our days seemed elastic, timeless. I’m always looking for those magic kingdoms. 

This selection is a fragment of the kind of music that seems to bear the atmospheric imprint of its environment, in this instance the cement-coloured, ever-changing moods of Northern English cities. Razorwire Skies seems to deliver me to a place of fleeting sun-bursts and shadows, as if just after a storm.

Julie Campbell 2016

*’Ghost Seers, Detectives and Spiritualists (Cambridge)’

Julie Campbell's Album

Razorwire Skies

Audio adventures and conversations about poetry, from UK arts charity Poet in the City.

Cerys Matthews at Blurred Lines - part of the Poetry and Lyrics Festival

Poet in the City

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