7 must-see things at Threshold Festival 2013

Threshold takes over the Baltic Triangle this weekend for their affordable, ace two-day music and arts festival. We pick our seven must-sees.

Let’s get this clear right away: there is a lot of stuff at this year’s Threshold Festival. A lot. Music, arts, talks, food, film screenings. Across two days in various Baltic Triangle venues, they’re absolutely bloody packing it in.

You’ll never, ever see everything you want to at arts festivals like this. It’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately. But we’re here to trawl through the programme for you, so rather than an exhaustive list of what’s on we’ve picked just seven must-sees across the weekend. For information on tickets (just 10 and 20 quid) or times, head to the Threshold website.

Threshold’s art series

Threshold’s visual arts side looks to be especially strong in this year’s edition: Liverpool Art Prize winner Robyn Woolston is sorting a top-secret installation ahead of her forthcoming exhibition at the Walker Gallery, Charles Holden & Sam Skinner are creating a bespoke exhibition and Egg Cafe curators HeadSpace are installing some interesting sounding moveable art. There’s also Orwellian-inspired work from Jazamin Sinclair, and Pam Sullivan of Arena Studios revisits her ace Biennial piece ‘Unterschlupf’ - a forest of found items (above).

Efterklang’s ‘The Ghost of Pirimida’ screening

We previewed this as a Radar last month, but it’s worth bringing up again because this making-of documentary, following the brilliant Efterklang as they record their most recent album, is a beautiful piece of work. Visiting a desolate Norwegian Arctic Territory mining village, the film veers between the band at work and an enthralling history of the town itself.

Gold Room @ Camp & Furnace, 3pm, Sunday 10 March

201: A Country Odyssey with Graham Hughes

Part of Threshold’s new ‘Spark’ talks/panel/conversation series across the weekend, this session features Guinness World Record holder Graham Hughes (main pic) - the local chap who last year successfully travelled to every country on Earth without the use of air travel. During his journey he’s been thrown in jail (twice), been to countries we’ve never even heard of, and met some fascinating people. This is set to be an enlightening, inspiring talk with a fearless local adventurer.

Baltic Creative, 3.30pm, Saturday 9th March

Reflections of Giants: Sea Odyssey talk

Another ‘Spark’ session, this panel on the huge-scale Little Girl Giant/Sea Odyssey event across Liverpool last year features Polly Moseley (the interpreter to the eccentric Royal De Luxe street theatre boss/mad genius Jean Luc Courcoult) and event manager Andy McNicholl of Culture Liverpool, amongst others. They’ll be talking the hows, whys, and whats of last year’s massive event in more detail.

Baltic Creative, 4pm, Sunday 10th March

Little Panther stage

Often ignored on many festival bills, metal and noisy rock feature proudly at Threshold: management crew Little Panther are hosting this stage at new space Blade Factory, featuring the brilliantly riotous local boys Jazzhands (unmissable), Scare Tactics and The Torn Prince amongst others.

The Blade Factory @ Camp and Furnace, Sunday 10th March

Coffee and Cakes For Funerals

With festivals as busy as this, it’s good to just throw away the timetable - you’ll stumble across great bands in every venue. But one of our personal local must-sees is Coffee and Cakes For Funerals, a gang who make guitar-drenched R&B pop: think the XX if they devoured classic modern soul like Omar or D’Angelo. The potential’s big, and well worth catching. Check out their actually-really-good sampling of Lana Del Rey, above.

Camp and Furnace, 7.50pm, Saturday 9th March

MelloMello Takeover

Heading to the Baltic Triangle, favourite Ropewalks hangout MelloMello sets up in The Picket where they’ll be offering up healthy, hearty veggie stuff from their kitchen to fuel you for the weekend’s exploring. Not only that, there’ll be some typically ace entertainment: poetry, burlesque, theatre and dance all through the day and night.

The Picket, Saturday 9th March

Threshold Festival 2013
Friday 8th - Sunday 10th March 2013
Tickets here