Chamber Music and Manchester's Ailing Nightlife Scene

Manchester's nightlife scene continues to nose-dive with the closure of both Neighbourhood (due to fucking gangland stabbings and equally violent doormen) and Coyote Ugly, due to water damage. Issues aside, I liked both of them. With Artisan long gone- the Spinningfields bar opposite Neighbourhood- the Avenue looks set to be a ghostly alleyway for people making their way round to Alchemist and Oast House.

What a shite state of affairs.

Anyway, I wrote back in November about a Waterstones book signing with Will Ashon, author of Chamber Music: About the Wu Tang.

I've recently finished the book, an incredibly well-researched analysis of 36 Chambers, the debut album from hip hop collective The Wu-Tang Clan. The book begins by tracing the origins of hip hop, and the black jazz musicians that laid the foundations for one of the most successful groups in hip hop history, before looking into the Wu's collective talents and how their individual verses are tailored to make them, as rappers, stand out from the eight other performers in the group. It takes in 1970s Brooklyn upbringings, their home city of New York through the ages, the lengthy number of martial arts movies many of the group idolised (and later sampled during production) and the technology (and occasional lack thereof) during production. It's fascinatingly detailed and addictively written- making you want to stick on 36 Chambers for another listen, in every chapter.

The Big Issue's Jane Graham extols the book's virtues better than I could.