Photograph
Out Of The Blue Studio
1994

Out of the Blue studios were a partnership between Nick Garside and Adam Lesser. Nick concentrated on working with guitar bands from Manchester and Liverpool and Out of the Blue is regarded as the original "Madchester studios", although some Mancunian legends that won't take kindly to such a tag - the likes of The Fall and 808 State - also rehearsed and recorded there. Adam carved a niche for himself in dance music and was the drummer for a while in Cath Carroll's band, The Gay Animals. Perhaps the most famous band to use the studios were Oasis, exemplified by 2009's "Out of the Blue - The Oasis Photographs" collection:

"In a five year journey which began with a photo-shoot of an unknown band at Manchester's Out of the Blue studios in 1993, Michael Spencer Jones worked closely with Oasis to create a series of enduring images which adorned the bands' first three albums and their accompanying singles."

Out of the Blue was in Ancoats, just north-east of the city centre which is recognised as the birthplace of the industrial revolution. It was in Ancoats where the towering cotton mills and warehouses were constructed with thousands of tiny terraced, back-to-back and cellar dwellings crammed between, housing the impoverished workers.

If Ancoats was the engine that powered arguably the most important trading city in the world in the 18th century, then this engine had well and truly stalled and died by the time the Manchester punk scene emerged in the late 1970s. Factories had closed, streets and houses flattened, and communities dispersed.

Amongst the debris, some warehouses and mills did survive, and in the 21st century are actually being restored and converted into flats and business premises. It was in one such decaying factory that Out of the Blue was housed on Blossom Street, and although the studio is no more, the building has been restored.