Supersonic Marketplace
Open Friday 21:30 – 00:00; Saturday 16:00 – 22:00; Sunday 15:00 – 21:00.
By The Crossing Stage, South & City College Birmingham
You will no doubt already be stunned by our marvellous lineup of music, art and film – but no Supersonic would be complete without its vibrant Market Place, complete with talks, high-energy DJ sets and extracurricular activities.
The Market Place is a space for independent distributors, record labels and pedlars of curiosities to sell their wares, network and for you to meet face to face. It’s also where the bands sell their merchandise. The area is equipped with a tearoom serving a selection of epicurean delights, including cakes (of course!), tea and coffee and a bottle bar for those who prefer a tasty ale with their lemon drizzle cake.
So here’s the lowdown on all the sellers joining us at Supersonic, plus a taste of the wondrous activities you’ll encounter in the Market Place over the course of the weekend.
Bunny Bissoux is an artist, illustrator and hardcore fanatic, raised in Birmingham and now based in Tokyo, Japan. Her work is heavily inspired by popular culture, with recurring themes including music, teen angst, pro-wrestling, animals and idols. Previously collaborating with Capsule on exhibitions, t-shirt designs and the infamous trading cards at Supersonics gone by, Bunny returns to selling prints, zines, badges and stickers in addition to vintage trading cards, cult memorabilia and treasures from Japan.
Workshop – Sat 5-7pm, Sun 4-6pm
Bunny will also be running drop-in workshops [info here] over the course of the Festival weekend to make your own uchiwa – paper fans commonly made by concertgoers in Japan, emblazoned with band names, pictures, slogans and words of admiration, to send a message to their idols or as a memento of a live experience – show your support for the festival acts, proclaim your adoration for your all-time favourite band or create a Supersonic souvenir to treasure forever!
All materials provided, but feel free to bring an image of your favourite band or musician.
Founded by Pigs x7’s Matt Baty in 2009 and home to fuzzed-out and furious British bands including Terminal Cheesecake and Casual Nun, Box Records is a DIY record label & distro specialising in only the wildest and finest strains of UK underground psych, noise, punk, kraut, prog, folk and rock. Expect vinyl, cassette, prints, t shirts and more!
Shelanu: Women’s Craft Collective
Shelanu is a developing social enterprise of migrant and refugee women producing high quality craft objects in collaboration with Craftspace and inspired by their new home, the city of Birmingham. They will be selling their Birmingham souvenir and Migrating Birds ranges.
Defunkt Dialekt / Irrational Media
The Irrational Media Society is a Birmingham-based record label creating vinyl for a worldwide selection of artists, with only one item on its agenda: ‘do what you love and do it well.’
Edgeworld Records
A Supersonic regular since 2011. No longer a shop but still active with pop-up stalls specialising in all things Alternative, Outsiders, Emergent…VINYL!
A member of electronic mavericks Hacker Farm & pHarmerz, Stephen Ives (a.k.a. Farmer Glitch) customises discarded found objects into sonic devices – transforming rusted buckets and old cameras into potent noise-machines. In addition the Farmer himself specialises in his own line of compact and affordable noise-making kits, to suit a range of devious tastes.
Farmer Glitch Workshop – Sat, 3-5pm [info here]
A humble record label, currently living in the hills of Shropshire. Lancashire and Somerset attempt to help and support a growing family of bands with a like-minded ethos. Privileged to put out very special releases on mainly the superior format of vinyl. Artists include Enablers, Kogumaza, Nathan Bell, Daniel Bachman, Mugstar and Nick Jonah Davis.
Buyers and sellers of good quality vinyl records specialising in indie, post-punk, noise rock, metal and free jazz.
Wow And Flutter
Wow And Flutter is a record and comic shop in Hastings, East Sussex, specialising in cult artists and unusual releases. It opened in December 2014 in the heart of Hastings’ America Ground, a vibrant area close to the pier and home to many artists and designers.
The Marketplace Stage will also play host to pounding DJ sets from Fat Out, Golden Cabinet, Dorcha and the place where you may also catch…
Black Metal Life Drawing with Russell MacEwan (Black Sun)
Sat, 6.40-8.40pm
Join Russell MacEwan (Black Sun Drum Korps) in exploring the brutal and beautiful art of black metal, in a two-hour introduction to life drawing, presented in the context of heavy metal and black metal art, music and history. Ritualistic in form, carbon in soul, unleash your creative potential and inner darkness in two hours of demonically fun life drawing. No previous experience required. Participants may bring their own sketchbooks if they wish, and all other materials are generously provided by Cass Art Birmingham.
Sat, 9 – 10.30pm
You are invited to come and spend some time with Willie Stewart and Natalia Beylis of Woven Skull and their collection of cassette tapes they have gathered up on their travels through Morocco. It’s a chance to listen, dance and celebrate the many styles of music found in North Africa and it’s place in tape culture. You can pick up a fanzine giving a brief history of the music found in Morocco as well as a mixtape or two with a selection of songs from the Chaabi, folklore, Berber, Gnaoua and Sufi traditions.
Supernormal Presents: Sabbath-Aoke
Sat, 10.50pm-12.20am
Come all ye Children of the Grave, accept the challenge to embrace your inner Wizard, and sing your heart and lungs out to your fave Sabs anthem. Supernormal – the annual Oxfordshire festival enclave where the most otherworldly wonders of the underground converge – has been reaping minds and destroying larynxes with a regular karaoke session each year honouring the likes of Prince, Kate Bush and The Fall alike, and it seems only fitting that they should bring the Sabbathian version of this spectacle to Birmingham, the Home Of Metal and motherlode of all things Iommi-Butler-Osbourne-Ward. Moreover, we’ve enlisted the help of an unholy incarnation of both Ozzy and Sharon O. to host the ceremony. Satan’s coming round the bend, indeed.
Sun, 4.10-5.10pm
Using a four track, two tape decks and cassettes from her collection, Natalia Beylis layers seemingly incongruous recordings atop of each other to spawn strange juxtapositions and garbled parallels. Inside her stockpile of tapes are recordings she made on family vacations, a cassette of a roadside preacher she picked up in a truck stop in Nevada, rantings of blissed-out self-improvement gurus, weird noises from the natural and unnatural world and more.
So there we have it.
Come take a saunter around the Market Place at Supersonic 2017.
