A Walk about Studio Electrophonique
2025-06-15 14:00 - 16:00 (Europe/London)
At La Biblioteka

Join us for a fascinating walking tour through Sheffield city centre celebrating the launch of “Studio Electrophonique” by Jamie Taaylor. This guided journey will take you through the musical landmarks that shaped Sheffield’s influential electronic music scene of the 1980s.

Discover the spaces and places that inspired groundbreaking artists like The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, and ABC as we explore the city that fostered a unique DIY music culture during a time of industrial decline.

Perfect for music enthusiasts, local history buffs, and anyone interested in Sheffield’s rich cultural heritage!

About the book:

The amazing story of the home studio that helped launch some of Britain’s most beloved bands.

The Sheffield space age began in 1961, when local mechanic Ken Patten won a tape-recording competition by recreating the sound of a rocket launch using a pencil and a bicycle pump.

In the decades that followed, the makeshift home studio he constructed became the launch pad for a group of young musicians who would shape the futuristic sound of 1980s pop. The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, ABC and others made their early recordings with Ken, whose DIY ethic was the perfect fit for a city facing industrial decline but teeming with ideas.

Studio Electrophonique tells the story of a generation seeking new frontiers in music, using everything they could lay their hands on – from science fiction novels to glam rock, Dada art and cheap electronics – to get there. Drawing on original interviews with Jarvis Cocker, Martyn Ware, Mark White and others, it brings to light a world of humour, charm, creativity and unfounded yet undaunted self-belief.

About the author:

Jamie Taylor is a writer and filmmaker from Sheffield. He is the director of The Campaigners and A Film about Studio Electrophonique.

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Simon Mason with Russ Thomas: The Woman Who Laughed
2025-06-25 18:00 - 20:00
At La Biblioteka

Join us for an evening with acclaimed author Simon Mason, in conversation with Sheffield’s own Russ Thomas, as they delve into Simon’s gripping new novel—a haunting crime story set in the aftermath of the 2020 lockdowns. When the bag of a murdered sex worker reappears five years after her disappearance, old wounds are reopened and new questions arise. With themes of justice, memory, and the unseen lives in our cities, this promises to be a powerful and thought-provoking event.

About the book:

In the first months of 2020, there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders. Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder.

South Yorkshire Police call in the Finder. So begins a search that takes him back to the strange days of the pandemic, to talk to those who knew Ella best, such as her wayward girlfriend ‘Loz’, abusive boyfriend Caine Poynton-Smith and respectable foster-parents still struggling to come to terms with Ella’s life. How did their intelligent, strong-willed daughter, a bright student and national schoolgirl athletics champion, end up in that alley?

As fear grips the city, our Finder must court danger to discover the truth.

About the author:

Simon Mason has pursued parallel careers as a publisher and an author, whose YA crime novels Running Girl, Kid Got Shot and Hey, Sherlock! feature the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith. A former Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, he has also taught at Oxford Brookes University and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.

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