Liverpool Sound City
Vicky Andrews
With more false starts than the Grand National, Liverpool Sound City have got everything crossed that the long-delayed festival will now return to the city in October 2021.
The new dates on the first weekend of October cautiously follow the government’s roadmap out of lockdown and it can’t come soon enough for festival organisers, who have now had to postpone the event three times from its original date of May Bank Holiday 2020.
Sound City has earned a reputation around the world for capturing the vibrancy of Liverpool with a three-day festival and solid music industry conference, drawing inspiration from the US festival South By South West. It’s the place to discover the giants of tomorrow and was one of the first to host huge names like Ed Sheeran, Florence and the Machine, Stormzy, Jungle, Alt-J, Paloma Faith, The 1975, Christine & The Queens, Years & Years and many more at the beginning of their musical careers.
The original Sound City in 2008 was held across some of Liverpool’s coolest city centre venues, including The Kazimier, The Zanzibar, The Black-E and even Liverpool Cathedral. In 2015, the festival moved to an arena set-up at Bramley-Moore Dock, with limited success. Since then, Sound City has come back to its roots and now takes place across the Baltic Triangle at venues including District, Camp & Furnace and 24 Kitchen Street, as well as outdoor stages, pop up shows and more.
The first wave of artists to play Sound City 2021 include Rejjie Snow, Red Rum Club, The Snuts, The Lathums, The Mysterines, The Murder Capital, Lanterns On The Lake, Abbie Ozard, Brooke Combe, Hello Delaware, Miss Tati and Isabel Neib. Enjoying amazing new artists in incredible venues is what makes Sound City great and it’s exciting to see a line-up coming together that looks set to bring together genre-pushing favourites, thrilling live bands and more must-see moments.
Sound City is also a champion for Keychange, a global movement focused on the restructuring of the music industry to achieve gender equality. While many of the world’s major music festivals have carried on perpetuating male-dominated line-ups, more than 120 UK music organisations – including Sound City – have promised to achieve a gender balance by signing up to the Keychange 50:50 pledge.
With many more names to be announced, including a special third headliner, finally coming back to Sound City is going to be a very special moment. We can’t wait.
