The Toolshed project started in 1998 as a new kind of club night at Manchester's Night and Day Cafe. It was curated by 808 State's Graham Massey who wanted to create a night out he himself might leave his instruments at home for. In the time since, Toolshed has been hailed as one of the most expansive and ambitious attempts to leave the planet.

The Toolshed Allstars play each month alongside guests as open minded/crackers as they are. Initially it was just Graham alone on computer, guitars and wind instruments. He was quickly joined in subsequent months by like-minded Manchester luminaries such as Paddy Steer (Homelife) Dick Harrison (Spaceheads) Graham Clark (jazz violinist extraordinaire) James Ford (Simian) and the unique multi-octave voice of Seaming To.

The agenda was simply to play a fresh set of wildly free ranging music every month, bringing in local musicians able enough to bounce off Massey's idiosyncratic computer mapping. The project has continued with various commissioned large-scale multi media shows at venues in Manchester and London - including a 28 piece expanded orchestra show at the Contact Theatre in 1999. For the fearless Mr Massey, the more collaborators he could persuade on to the stage, the better.

The core of the Toolshed crew have an incredible 15 to 20 years of playing together and an empathy for making mad, mad music that is deadly serious, digestible, daft, delightfully danceable and unquestionably infectious.