FUTURESONIC

For over a decade, Futuresonic has been bringing the latest in exciting, innovative new music to Manchester, and more recently has expanded to include art and a forward-thinking conference.

Now returning for its 14th year, Manchester’s “urban festival of art, music and ideas” is set to take over the city from 13 – 16 May with an array of live music, talks, workshops and a huge assortment of art projects across a multitude of venues.

PULP spoke to Steve Gravener to find out more…

Steve, could you tell us a bit about your involvement in Futuresonic?

I look after the music programme. That’s our main music events, but it also includes the separate EVNTS strand that we do, for people who want to get involved with the festival from within local communities. So you might get an artist who wants to perform, or a group of promoters who want to promote their own night. Or you might even get a poet that’s created a poetry session whilst the festival’s running.

Can you tell us a bit about the history of Futuresonic and how it has evolved?

In terms of history, it was started by Drew Hemment fourteen years ago as a showcase for cutting-edge music. Since then the whole vibe of the festival has grown from just being a music festival. As we stand now, in 2009, we’ve got an Art strand to the festival, the Music strand, the EVNTS strand, and we’ve got the conference running. And each strand is as important as the other in its own right.

How do you compile such diverse arts and music programmes?

The music programme is very diverse because of how we work as an organisation. Obviously we’re tuned into the whole community, and as a festival, we wouldn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into just doing a specific type of music.

In terms of how the programme is put together, we’ve got three dedicated managers now. Where I look after all the music side of it, we’ve got Dennis Hopkins who looks after all the art programme management, and we’ve got Julian Tait who looks after the conference. Drew is our artistic director, so everything is initially run past him, but because we’re so specialist in what we do, we can just work on our own – as long as it’s all agreed by Drew.

When Futuresonic started fourteen years ago, technology played a smaller part in people’s everyday lives than it does now. Do you think that as technology has developed, Futuresonic has grown in the same way?

I do, yeah. I think that as technology grows, we do too. But you’ve got to think back to fourteen years ago – the technology that was around was probably relevant to the festival at the time. I think we’ve just grown quite steadily along with technology.

In terms of music, we obviously look at those who are really experimenting with technology. Like this year, we’ve got a guy called Tim Exile playing who’s just been signed to Warp, whose live shows are really sort of technically-heavy. But also it’s about looking at the pioneers. For example, we’ve got Philip Glass playing this year, who’s a minimalist contemporary classical pioneer. Someone who, way back when, was pushing a new sound, and we want to embrace that side of it as well.

It’s not just a case of looking at things and thinking, “right, who’s doing the most technically out there stuff.” Again, it’s just about appealing to the community.

What does Futuresonic do to help support new artists?

I think it’s always good to support new artists coming through, and especially ones that really, really deserve the push. One initiative that we’ve got this year is looking at people within our own community.

We’ve got a guy called Denis Jones who’s like a folktronica musician. He’s a really, really talented guy and we feel that, as a festival, we should support these people – help bring them through, give them a gig in the main music programme, or by selling their expertise to other festivals.

We read that next year the Futuresonic ‘brand’ is changing to Future Everything – is that indicative of a new direction?

We’ve been around for fourteen years now as Futuresonic, and the reason why it was originally called Futuresonic was because it was primarily a music festival. But as we’ve grown, and as the other strands – the art and the conference – have grown with us, it’s more sort of future… everything, if you know what I mean!

It just encompasses a bit more about what we do. And as a statement to someone who might just come across the festival and who wonders what it’s about, it could be quite misleading to call it Futuresonic. So Future Everything just kind of ties in with what we’re all about, basically.

It sounds a bit Monty Python, but I think it kind of works!

Thanks Steve.

For more information about this year’s festival visit: www.futuresonic.com

PULP’s looking forward to catching as many Futuresonic events as we can. We’ll be posting coverage of the event on the website, so stay tuned.

Paul Capewell