Manchester multi-instrumentalist Paddy Steer brings his gloriously unpredictable live show to the Record Room at The Commercial on Friday June 12 with support from Twitcher and tunes by Niall Woof.
A Zelig-like figure in Manchester’s musical story, Steer is a shape-shifter whose talents have encompassed bass, drums, Hawaiian guitar and considerably more — often simultaneously. His long-running Homelife project produced six albums of intricate, wonder-filled music, brewed in his attic and performed live as a small, ever-evolving orchestra.
Quietly obsessive in his craft, Steer builds instruments as readily as he plays them. His recordings carry a cartoon-like density — homemade textures, vivid colours and oddball inventions stacked together like a cuckoo clock rebuilt from egg boxes and cosmic circuitry.
Live, he firmly rejects clean reproduction in favour of glorious chaos: singing through vocoders, battering xylophones and launching funk-driven, technicolour storms of sound from behind a tangle of self-made gear. Part space-programme pantomime, part punk Arkestra, he is a one-man cosmos — unpredictable, joyous and entirely his own.
Support comes from Twitcher, the solo lo-fi project of Lisa O’Grady, whose sound draws on Casio organs, nostalgic synths, folky wanderings and soft vocal melodies. Her music has been described as “feudal folk” and “Enya meets The Wicker Man” — a quietly beguiling opening to an evening that promises anything but quiet.
Niall Woof provides DJ sets across the night, spanning kosmische, post-punk and new wave.
Doors at the Record Room, The Commercial, are at 8.30pm. Tickets on Eventbrite