Misfit City

Usually I’ve got pin-sharp memories of where and when I saw a band play. The one occasion when I saw The Kenny Process Team is an exception. I’ve got next to nothing. A scruffy black cube of a room somewhere, with guitar leads and primary-colours gaffa on the floor; a small-kit drummer ticking away with a pair of bisected sticks. A guitarist and bass player sit on amplifiers or boxes, playing with the whiskery, matter-of-fact precision of master joiners shaping their umpteenth wooden cabinet. A second guitarist stands off to one side, with a flowing sheaf of dreadlocks. The lone black guy in an otherwise white quartet, he almost looks as if he’s been teleported in from a reggae backline but his eyes, wary and committed, tell a different story. Clearly engrossed in the music, he plays blunt, abbreviated questioning lines against the rolling machinery of his bandmates; their mixture of Fifties-twang and conversational Fred Frith art-rock arpeggios, of lean spare proggy lines a-tilt on the wave tube.

As regards the rest of it, I remember nothing. Not the stairs up or down to the venue, nor where it was. “Somewhere in London” is the best I can do. Otherwise, this little memory exists in a cell of its own – a room floating in a void, a space that existed purely as a setting for the music. I certainly wasn’t drunk, nor under the influence of anything stronger than a semiquaver. I may well have been slightly hypnotised by the Team’s cramped fluidity, the crystallising complexities jagging up from simple bases. Bar a single, rare record, the band themselves have sometimes seemed to have vanished down a black hole. Even the web only offers the smallest scraps on them. While I only encountered them once, they apparently played together for eighteen years. Perpetually on the sidelines? Deliberate masters of self-effacement, only really coalescing for gigs?

Seeing a different iteration of The Kenny Process Team pop up around a decade later for a Club Integral gig, therefore, is quite surprising, although everyone concerned has probably been hiding in plain sight. I guess that they won’t have been the invisible band to everyone (and, in particular, not the more knowledgeable people who are likely to make up a Club Integral audience) – but if, like me, you remember the Team as an oblique one-night encounter which snagged in your memory, here’s an opportunity to catch up.

Blurb follows…

Club Integral presents “A Thousand Butterfly Skeletons” featuring Bing Selfish & The Windsors, élan, Andrew Ford and Ragmatic (The Others, 6-8 Manor Road, Stoke Newington, London, N16 5SA, UK, Friday 26th June, 8.00 pm – price £5.00/£3.00 concession)

In an exciting one-off performance, fabled DIY pioneer and visionary misanthrope Bing Selfish is joined by micro-lounge minimalist rock quartet The Windsors. From the early eighties Bing Selfish has followed his own unique path, assisted on the journey by a plethora of maverick musicians from Jim Whelton, Rob Storey, through to Bill Gilonis and Chris Cornetto. Drawing from the well of European avant-garde sensibility, from the Symbolists to the Situationists, coupled with relentless punning and sardonic rhyming, Bing has built his own parallel world, defiantly in opposition to 21st century neo-conservative capitalism, and mainstream musical consurism. Many magazines, records, radio shows and films later he still stands upon the stage, and he’s still seriously pissed off. Chris Cutler has described him as “a phenomenon in the galaxy of songsters today” while ‘The Wire’ has hailed him as “an intuitively sharp lyricist with few peers.” More pungently, Options USA has imagined his character as “a self-pitying drunk, a self-loathing homosexual, a bitter poli-sci professor, or all of the above.”

The Windsors rose from the ashes of the legendary Kenny Process Team, described by Eugene Chadbourne as “forward-looking electric guitar music with a rock base, (stylistically) somewhere between the precision control of surf rock groups such as the Ventures and the almost classical compositions Captain Beefheart.” The new group (Simon King – guitar, Tom Murrow – drums, Matthew Armstrong – bass, and Phil Bartai – keyboards) play intricate, driving instrumentals composed by Kevin Plummer with the band. This is a one-off chance to hear them apply their genius for deftness, intricacy and dynamic arrangement to the anarchic poesy of Bing’s song catalogue.

élan is the kosmische muzik side-project of Dave Tucker (The Fall, London Improvisers Orchestra, Charm School) and friends. He is joined by Matt Chiltern (Spork) on bass, and Ed Lush (Test Dept. Spork) on drums and percussion. Expect krautrock.

Ragamatic is Reiner Heidhorn, a sitar-and-electronics musician from Weilheim in Germany. The music is a result of Reiner’s many years studying classical Hindustani music whilst simultaneously making electronic music. With an emphasis on ragas from northern India, played in the style of master sitar player Vilyat Khan, Reiner locates the natural meeting point between Indian classical music and contemporary electronics.”
Projections by Rudapinka, aka Inga Tillere.

Andrew Ford is also playing – details to be circulated later.

More information on the concert and on other Club Integral events is here.

If you’d prefer something a little more straightahead, then another option is to catch The Many Few playing on the same night, promising to “edify and exultate your earballs and eyedrums with our own original guitar-drum-and-vocal shenanigans… on an optimistically lovely Friday Juneful night coming soon, in the company of assorted fellow groovesters.”

(Headliners t.b.c.) + Purple Implosion + The Many Few + Halcyon Days (Bugbear @ The Dublin Castle, 94 Parkway, NW1 7AN, London, UK, Friday 26th June, 7.30pm – £7.00/£5.00)

I covered some early Many Few demos some years ago, offering assorted comments and insults on their witty, slightly wonky songcraft which the band still seems to remember with affection. As for other descriptions, Bugbear settles for “kitchen-sink lo-fi indie-pop with female/male harmonies and vocal sharings over some Smiths meets McCarthy C86 type backing. Some interesting twists and turns. A bit of The Monochrome Set, something of Yeah Yeah No and stuff like that.” (The Bugbears go on to quote a bit of the ‘Misfit City’ review a bit later on – or, rather, misquote it. It’s a bittersweet world, writing about indie-pop.)

Also on the bill are Halcyon Days (“hooky electro-pop with a nod to 80’s pop but with an electro interface more akin to New Order off-shoot Electronica”) and Purple Implosion (“another great band mixing spiky post-punking punk-funk with counter-cultural garage-birthed rock’n’roll featuring out-there frontman antics.. but always pretty damn danceable.”) In addition, there’s also an unconfirmed headline act. Probably Kate Bush again, or perhaps The Sonic Jewels. You’ll just have to go along and hope, I suppose.

More information here and tickets here.

Tags: élan, Bing Selfish, Charm School, Dave Tucker, Halcyon Days, Kevin Plummer, live concerts, London (England), London Improvisers Orchestra, Purple Implosion, Ragamatic, Reiner Heidhorn, Spork, Test Dept., The Fall, The Kenny Process Team, The Many Few, The Windsors, Weilheim (Germany)