Manchester Music Map - "Very Tasty." - Mike Joyce, The Smiths

"Very tasty." – Mike Joyce (The Smiths)

"A lovely artefact." – CP Lee (1944–2020)

"As a member of Fast Cars I had to buy this. Well done." – Stuart Murray (Fast Cars)

This large-format A1 print maps seven decades of Greater Manchester's music history, and the region genuinely earns the scale: few places have reinvented their sound as often, or as influentially, as Manchester has.

The map starts with the city's often-overlooked 1960s beat scene (Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits, The Hollies) and the Twisted Wheel club's Northern Soul all-nighters, before tracing punk's arrival through Buzzcocks and The Fall, whose four-decade run under Mark E. Smith became a genre unto itself. From there it moves into the Factory Records era, Joy Division's austere post-punk giving way to New Order's turn toward electronic dance music, alongside labelmates A Certain Ratio and The Durutti Column, all shaped by producer Martin Hannett's distinctive sound.

The Hacienda anchors the map's next chapter: acid house colliding with indie guitar music to produce Madchester, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, and the dance acts (808 State, A Guy Called Gerald) who blurred the line between clubland and the charts. Britpop brings Oasis into the frame, and the map continues into the 2000s with Elbow, Doves, and The Chemical Brothers, tracing a city that somehow keeps reinventing its sound roughly once a decade without losing what makes it recognisably Mancunian.

Specs

• Hand-signed by Alejandro De Luna
• Size A1 (59.4 x 84.1 cm / 23.4 x 33.1 inches)
• Also available in a limited "Manc Yellow" edition, hand-signed and numbered (limited to 500)
• Printed on premium quality paper

About The Sense of Doubt
I'm Alejandro De Luna, the creator behind The Sense of Doubt, making wall art inspired by music, pop culture, and heritage. What began as a way to make sense of the records, places, and stories that shaped my life has grown into a visual archive that connects moods, history, and art. Every print is researched, designed and hand-signed by me.