Bands to play Sounds From The Other City via Skype

Multi-instrumentalist Paddy Steer will appear live from his home studio

Salford's Sounds From The Other City festival has become something of an institution amongst the area's music fans.

For almost a decade, it has been bringing cutting-edge musicians to the city to play a plethora of bars, meeting rooms and churches.

For the most part, that will continue at this year's event, with Philadelphia songsmith and ex-boxer BC Camplight, Scouse psych-folk trio Stealing Sheep and Oregon experimental popsters Parenthetical Girls among the highlights.

However, things will be a little different for the audience in the downstairs gallery of Islington Mill, the arts space that acts as the festival's hub.

That is because while the audience will be there, the acts they will be watching will be somewhere else completely.

'Fingers crossed'

The SceneSkype stage will see a handful of acts appear from a variety of locations across the globe via the internet phone service Skype.

For Sam Alder, one of the Manchester Scenewipe team running the stage, the question is not whether the audience will like the idea, but whether it will even work.

"We're going to have a couple of projectors linked up to Skype on our computer and we will simply be linking up with the artists wherever they may be," he said.

"They'll have some good mics linked up their end, which will provide some good audio, and we'll be pumping it out through a PA.

"Fingers crossed the internet won't crash, though it probably will."

He said the idea for the virtual stage came from festival organiser Mark Carlin, who approached the Scenewipe team after making the link between their name and that of the communications company at a gig.

"I think he was in the gents at a bar where we run a live night, saw our name on a poster and thought the two names rhymed.

"He approached us a while after and we thought it sounded fun - sometimes a name is all it takes to make something worth doing."

'Interesting experiment'

The stage will see performances from artists in "various parts of America, Brazil, London and, of course, Manchester", which Sam said "should be pretty interesting for people".

American band Lavoy will have to perform early in the day in Alaska due to the time difference

"I think the concept is interesting - a lot of the places we are streaming from, like Alaska, have never done anything like this, before so it's pretty cool to see that happening."

He also said it has allowed them to access artists they could not have invited to perform at the festival otherwise because of cost or other commitments.

However, he said that the diversity of locations does present one issue.

"The time difference in various places has meant a lot of the performances from across the pond are going to be happening pretty early in the morning for them.

"But that just means we'll all be drinking while they're eating breakfast."

The stage will offer something different to the festival and for Sam, it gives the audience a glimpse of something that may well become part of all music events in the future.

"I guess this is just an interesting experiment at the moment, but who knows?

"I don't think this could ever replace face-to-face performance but I think what will make it work is the element of installation, so it's not just a gig, but also a kind of art project.

"I think that's what makes it really interesting."

Sounds From The Other City takes place at various venues in Salford on Sunday 5 May