’80s Manchester

Whether in stock, or just streaming in store, we’ve got you covered with real, human-generated recommendations straight from the store stereo. We do not receive anything if you buy. All recommendations are our own. (This for fun!)

While it’s often maligned as a backward industrial down, Manchester’s grey skies have been the inspiration for nearly 4 decades worth of seismic shifts in the underground. Whether the proto-punk and post-punk of legendary acts like Joy Division and Magazine, the early electronics of bands like New Order and A Certain Ratio, or the full-on rave revolution the city inspired, a desperate sense of release binds each movement.
Noisy, unwieldy, disturbing and inescapably profound, thee scene’s luminaries may begin dour, but they almost always bring it around. If not to hope, than to a transcendent pit of empathy.