A 40-capacity venue in Barrow draws bold experimental musicians

Barrow-in-Furness sits on a windswept hook of Cumbrian coastline, an industrial town known for 140 years of submarine building. The corrugated peaks of BAE Systems’ Dock Hall dominate the skyline and roughly a third of working-age locals are employed in its complex.

Against that militarised backdrop, Full of Noises is a 40-capacity experimental music and arts venue whose first event featured krautrock veterans Faust destroying an electric guitar with a pneumatic drill. After securing funding for a two-day festival in 2009, artistic director Glenn Boulter and four other local artists took temporary custodianship of a crumbling canteen on wind-lashed Barrow Island, part of a heavily security‑controlled military‑industrial complex.

The surveillance around the site contrasted with creative freedom: there was no established scene to satisfy, so the organisers felt they could try almost anything, from big German men banging on oil drums to ex‑submariners performing Kurt Schwitters in morse code.

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