Sound City: The coolest city centre festival

The Maccabees head to Liverpool 22nd May; YouTube: Paloma Faith plays the Philharmonic May 19th

With music festivals sprouting up from every bit of spare land, JMU Journalism caught up with Liverpool Sound City director, and general music-heavyweight, Dave Pichilngi, to talk about Merseyside’s festival with a difference.

Three years ago, the Sound City Team paid £100 for Florence to bring her Machine to Liverpool for one of her first ever festival appearances. This year will see Stone Cold Sober songstress Paloma Faith and Delphic play 19 May , The Maccabees appear 22nd May and nearly 400 other bands heading to the city for four days of live, new music.

“The big, distinguishing factor is that we’re giving artists the chance to change their lives. 1000 music delegates are coming from all over the world, with budgets that could really take the bands somewhere,” says Pichilingi with a smile on his face.

“We’re really busy at the moment. We’ve just done our
party at South By South West, this amazing music and
film festival in Texas, where we took six bands out. But
in terms of Sound City, we’re way ahead of ourselves... it’s
really exciting.

"The whole thing is organically growing, I
guess. Our aim is to be the coolest, not necessarily the
biggest, but certainly the coolest metropolitan music festival
in the UK.”

Sound City's closest rival is The Great Escape festival in
Brighton, but that doesn't include film or panel debates on
the industry's key issues.

Seymour Stein, the man who discovered Madonna, The
Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie and signed The Smiths to Sire Records, is also arriving in Liverpool to take part in Sound City’s music conference, where the audience and bands can talk to people in the music industry.

“Seymour is a real coup for us because it’s the first time he’s ever been to anything like this,” says Dave, “It’s fantastic that he’s going to be here for the full five days, not just taking part in the conference, but being out in the street meeting young bands and maybe even looking to sign some talent.”

It seems Sound City’s mission statement is simple... bring the bands to the crowds and the industry-types to the bands in one fun, and ultimately, cool four days.

“I don’t like it when bands do something just for the sake of doing it. We get loads of bands who just want to play this festival just for the sake of playing the festival but we like to work with people who've got something worth saying or at least something new to say.”

Sound City begins 19 May and finishes 22 May, promising to be an elightening few days of new music.

Dave is busy as he prepares for the third Liverpool Sound City music festival