Hive Twilight City: New electronic music for Liverpool

This project involved four high-profile audio-visual performances staged in 2008, run by the Hive Collective.

Hive Twilight City is a project run by the Hive Collective, which aims to promote new and exciting electronic music throughout Liverpool. Dr Robert Strachan from the Music Department is one of the founding members of HIVE.

Twilight City involved four high profile audiovisual performances staged in 2008. A multimedia DVD documenting the project is currently in production. The project was designed to pay tribute to potentially overlooked spaces in Liverpool, celebrate existing city structures in a context of rapid change, and rework and distort familiar sounds and sights.

Event I: Industry Versioned

Hive took over a warehouse space for an audiovisual event which engaged with the city's industrial heritage. Featuring: Jah Wobble / Jaki Liebezeit / Philip Jeck, The Bug feat. Warrior Queen, Shackleton, Mugstar.

Event II: Shopping Remixed

In an inversion of the usual passive 'background music' associated with shops and malls, Shopping Remixed engaged with the city’s physical environment and its shoppers to turn Liverpool’s St John’s Shopping Centre into an interactive musical instrument.

Event III: The Spectacular Suburb

Hive commissioned two of the world’s most accomplished sonic pioneers, Matthew Herbert and Chris Watson, to collaborate on a unique composition constructed entirely out of recordings from Crosby Beach – the site of Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ installation.

Event IV: Uncanny Space

As a new city slowly emerges from amidst the dust and clatter of construction, Hive's final Twilight City event - Uncanny Space - simultaneously sounds an elegy to Liverpool’s past whilst heralding its future. Featuring: Alva Noto, Vladislav Delay, Donnacha Costello.

Hive Twilight City is supported by the Liverpool Culture Company Ltd as part of the European Capital of Culture 2008 programme.