Right To Roam is a new two-day festival around a number of venues in Bolton town centre, part of an ambition plan of local music lovers and venues to inject some life into scene that gets dwarfed by the bright lights of Manchester down the road. We visited the main stage in the town's newly refurbished and impressive Octagon Theatre to catch Ist Ist, Gravediggers Union and locals Clouds And Errors.
Live music. The buzz, the thud of the bass drum that mirrors your heartbeat, faster and faster as the energy in the room rises and the adrenaline starts to pump. It's a feeling that you don't get elsewhere, your aural senses triggering a reaction that enables to lose yourself in the creativity of others. Fuck, we've missed it for the past fifteen months. Ist Ist and Gravediggers Union provide us with a first trip down the road to what music lovers among us love the most.
Live From The Attic was the first opportunity for people to hear Ist Ist's debut album Architecture played live in its entirety with the addition of a few old favourites and the first airing of a brand-new track from the sessions for their second record. The self-released album hit number three in the independent charts in May against the odds and has consistently won new admirers since. Yet as the evening was to prove, Ist Ist are at their most formidable in the live environment even without an audience present as they deliver an alternate version of the songs from Architecture that will cement its place in the hearts of those whose path it has crossed.
