This spring we’re supporting the Musicians’ Union with Levy Market Mixtapes which sees a host of local record labels, venues and other independent music organisations each putting together a playlist for the market. We’ll be releasing a new mixtape each week and asking you to donate to the Musicians’ Union Coronavirus Hardship Fund.
We have a whopper of a market lined up for you this weekend, with some knock-out food, drink, arts, crafts and more, all popping-up in Levy for your shopping pleasure.
And a top notch shopping experience requires a top notch soundtrack. So it’s with huge pleasure that we bring you the latest playlist in our Levy Market Mixtapes series. As usual, this playlist is available to listen to both while you’re at the market and while you’re at home enjoying your cheese, tacos, art, cake, moonshine, goose eggs or whatever other wild and wonderful items you pick up a the market.
This week’s tracks are the selection of Finders Keepers Records, with some incredible tunes from their archives and, folks, it’s an absolute cracker.
Finders Keepers are Manchester’s resident musical librarian, janitor and music teacher, with a particular interest in pop’s lost property box. They are best known for their incredible archival releases, sourcing lost music from the past 60 years and from over 40 different countries, and bringing it to a new audience. But Finders Keepers are no mere re-issue outlet, with many of their records being previously entirely unreleased, many of their artists being actively reintroduced into a new and welcoming musical landscape and sister label Twisted Nerve releasing work from new artists like Jane Weaver and The Liftmen.
Collaborations with well known names like Gruff Rhys, Jarvis Cocker, Maxine Peake and Belle & Sebastian testify to the quality of their back catalogue, and their mixtape reflects a winning world-music-punk spirit, digging deeper to bring you some adventurous sounds, taking in forgotten 80s synth pop, Swiss electro-jazz, radiophonic Turkish pieces and everything in between.
You can enjoy via Spotify right here.
And remember: professional musicians like the ones on this playlist have not been able to perform live for over a year. This is the main source of income for almost all musical artists and the lifeforce of the UK music industry. So if you like a song you hear – why not buy the artist’s record? In fact, we can heartily recommend going hog wild on the Finders Keepers webshop. Did you also know that Spotify, while it has a reputation for not being the most lucrative platform for its artists, now allows them to feature a ‘Fundraising Pick’ link on the top of their Spotify profiles, allowing you to pay them direct for their music?
More urgently, you can also donate to the Musicians’ Union Coronavirus Hardship Fund which we’re asking all our customers to support if they can this spring.
The Musicians’ Union provides small grants of £200 to musicians in urgent financial hardship. They have distributed over £1.3M to members via their hardship grants since April 2020, but there are many more who are still in dire financial circumstances.
So when you visit the market at the weekend, please enjoy listening to the sounds of your city, take them home with you and make a donation if you can – anything at all can make a difference. We’re all looking forward to live music returning later this year – let’s do what we can to ensure that there are people there to play for us.
