Thank you to everyone who came and listened to Manchester’s queer sonic geographies at the sold out Intangible Sounds event as part of Manchester Histories at HOME in collaboration with the School of Digital Arts (SODA with other performances from Katie Chatburn, The Wyrding Module, Susan O’Shea and Bon Holloway who also took this photograph.

Thank you Gary Fisher for organising Electric Sandwich at The Carlton Club as part of Chorlton Arts Festival and shout out to Goëtia, Quick Drop and PHIA SKY for their exciting and inspiring performances. The whole evening felt quite punk, from helping each other set up and improvising when things go wrong to the energy that was in the room.

Thank you Factory International for funding Norrisette and me to continue FLUFF.

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Norrisette is an art-pop artist whose work encompasses composition, classical piano, music production, DJing, performance and visual design. She has recently formed her own band to explore new creative and collaborative landscapes, with Ashley Garrod on bass and Matthew Hill on drums, and has also performed as a featured vocalist across Europe.

Industries is an electronic music project by Markus Hetheier. His music explores and subverts musical structures ranging from field recordings and distorted sounds to harmonic melodies and large beats. He is an electronic music producer, DJ, sound artist, workshop facilitator and practice-based PhD researcher at the School of Digital Arts (SODA).

Together, Norrisette and Industries set up FLUFF – a regular queer electronica night in Manchester. FLUFF aims to provide a platform for queer electronic music producers to perform and test out original music to a live audience, as opposed to being a club night, and has kickstarted the careers of many!

‘We are so happy to be a part of this recent artistic venture for Manchester. It will be amazing to meet local innovators and to receive mentorship for our work promoting and supporting the music of upcoming LGBTQ+ artists through FLUFF. We hope that being part of this year’s Factory Sounds cohort will provide us with a platform for our work as performers, music producers and promoters and that we will be able to connect with like-minded musicians for future collaborations both in the studio and on stage.’

Thank you Sacoya x Jade, Voxish, Nøelle and Kaoti for your wonderful perfomances. Thanks to Norrisette for curating this iteration of FLUFF, Jake for taking care of the sound and Fuel Cafe Bar for providing the space and of course thank you to the audience for turning up and celebrating with us.

Thank you Kiss Me Again for inviting FLUFF to play SOUP — it was a dream! Shout out to PHIA SKY who was up for representing FLUFF with me and to Norrisette who brought FLUFF to life with me. 

If you don’t know about FLUFF, here’s how Kiss Me Again described us: “Our friends at FLUFF have been putting on groundbreaking queer electronica events in the legendary Withington space FUEL for a couple of years now, providing a more live performance focussed platform for electronic musicians from Manchester and beyond. If you haven’t managed to make it down before, you really should! Industries and Phia Sky will be representing them at KMA and we’re overjoyed to have them in the basement”. 

It was a pleasure to support the great Mary Ocher at The Peer Hat with GC Holmes — thank you Siân Williams and Susan O’ Shea for the pictures. I did more live mixing of my stems than usual and used the wobbulator by Delia Derbyshire Day to be more playful with music when playing live and it was a lot of fun.

Thank you Danny H., Snuggle Ninja, Renee Stormz and The Silver Field for bringing so much joy and inspiration. Special thanks to Alex Booth and Fuel Cafe Bar and of course thank you to the audience.