Damien from Caulbearers joins Manchester Scene Stories for a conversation about Blackburn’s acid-house parties, Hulme’s creative community, meditation, psychedelics, political activism and the power of music to bring people together.
Caulbearers emerged in Hulme around 2008, with several of the original members living on the Red Bricks estate. Damien remembers an inspiring community of musicians, artists and activists supporting one another’s ideas while becoming involved in protests, direct action and campaigns for social justice.
The conversation takes us back to Damien’s childhood in Blackburn. As the youngest of five children, he heard an unusually broad mixture of music through his older brothers and sisters—from The Beatles, Joni Mitchell and Irish republican music to punk, reggae, funk, disco and Manchester’s post-punk scene.
His brother played in The Passage, connecting Damien at an early age to the music being created around Manchester by bands including Joy Division and A Certain Ratio.
When acid house reached Blackburn, Damien was around 15. The warehouse parties introduced him to electronic music, psychedelics and the powerful feeling of becoming part of something larger on the dancefloor. They also showed him how the police, media and government responded to rave culture, leading to his later involvement in protests surrounding the Criminal Justice Bill and other political campaigns.
Damien talks about meeting Jane Winterbottom through the rave scene and later working with her on Headspin, a series of hip-hop and live-music nights at Band on the Wall.
Travel opened another chapter in his musical and spiritual journey. He studied tabla in India, encountered different rhythmic and classical traditions, and discovered Vipassana meditation during a period when he was struggling with depression. Time spent around Moroccan Gnawa music also deepened his interest in music as ceremony, trance and healing.
We discuss how early experiences with drugs and psychedelics could be both spiritually revealing and personally damaging. Damien reflects on later returning to psychedelics in more structured ceremonial settings while processing bereavement and difficult periods in his life.
The conversation becomes personal as we talk about meditation, gong baths and the ways sound can unlock grief and memory. I share an experience following my mum’s death in which a gong bath created an extraordinarily powerful sense of movement, space and reconnection.
Throughout the conversation, Damien returns to the belief that music can do more than entertain. Whether experienced at a Blackburn warehouse party, through meditation or in a live performance, it can dissolve barriers, create community and help people process emotions that are sometimes difficult to express in words.
This is a story about music, but it is also about Manchester, Blackburn, spirituality, activism and the experiences that continue to shape us long after the music has stopped.
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