While I’m not particularly happy with the fact that time and concentration opportunities are mainly restricting me to posting up gig news at present, there are side benefits. One of these is to go on virtual tours of my own, finding out (via tour schedules) where music is still happening in this time of chopped budgets and closed venues. If I’m covering musicians who play in out of the way places, or out-of-the-way venues, I get to find out even more – drawing myself out of my London-centric knowledge or a focus on big-gig places. I get to discover pubs, restaurants or found spaces in which people are still fanning musical sparks or maintaining a tradition instead of just selling up for luxury flats. I find this heartening.
Theo Travis
Between them, the four can collectively boast involvement with some heavy-duty transatlantic jazz names (Nucleus, Loose Tubes, Tim Garland, Norma Winstone, Herbie Mann, John Etheridge, Slim Gaillard, Martin Speake), but also some serious engagements with rock (David Gilmour, Steven Wilson, The Wonder Stuff, Catherine Wheel), soul and dance (Bill Withers, Working Week), loop work with Robert Fripp and Steve Lawson, drum-and-bass with Photek, contemporary classical with Harvey Brough, and excursions into country and kids’ music. Having straddling all of these approaches via the application of talent and open-mindedness (and, crucially, a lack of preciousness), all four bring the same qualities and the lessons learned to Double Talk’s music – an airy English merge of fast-moving quizzical tunes, omnivorous jazz vocabulary and breezy humour bouncing on a solid chassis, but with the ability to move purposefully into open meditational territory and to stop and smell the fresh air whenever necessary.
The new tour starts on Saturday and crops up hither-and-yon until January next year – and here are the dates:
- Jazzlive @ The Crypt, St. Giles Church, Camberwell Church Street, Camberwell, London, SE5 8JB, UK – Saturday 26th September 2015
- The Eagle Tavern, 24 High Street, Rochester, Kent, ME1 1JT, UK (afternoon performance at 1.00pm) – Sunday 4th October 2015
- Restormel Arts @ Bosun’s Charlestown, Quay Road, Charlestown, St Austell, Cornwall, PL25 3NJ, UK – Wednesday 21st October 2015 –
- Jazz Steps @ Bonington Theatre, Front Street, Arnold, Nottingham, NG5 7EE, UK – Thursday 22nd October 2015 –
- The Bear, Mill Yard, 24a Guildford Street, Luton LU1 2NR, UK – Friday 23rd October 2015 –
- The Oval Tavern, 131 Oval Road, Croydon, CR0 6BR, UK – Sunday 1st November 2015 (afternoon performance at 1.00pm)
- Sound Cellar @ The Blue Boar, 29 Market Close, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1NE, UK – Thursday 5th November 2015
- International Guitar Festival of Great Britain @ Floral Pavilion Theatre, Marine Promenade, New Brighton, Wirral, CH45 2JS, UK – Thursday 12th November 2015
- St Ives Jazz Club @ The Western Hotel, Royal Square, St Ives, Cornwall, TR26 2ND, UK – Tuesday 17th November 2015
- Fringe Jazz @ The Mall, 25 Union Gallery, Clifton Village, Bristol, BS8 4JG, UK – Wednesday 18th November 2015
- Fleece Jazz @ Stoke by Nayland Hotel, Keepers Lane, Leavenheath, Colchester, Essex, CO6 4PZ, UK – Friday 15th January 2016
- Arts Depot, 5 Nether Street, North Finchley, London, N12 0GA, UK – Saturday 30th January 2016
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Closer to home for me, there’s the opportunity to discover a new set of promoters and their club nights. On this occasion it’s Baba Yaga’s Hut, who’ve been ferreting away for years on the fringes of some of the (once) cheaper, artier and edgier London districts without me hearing about them before. I think I’ll be mentioning them again, as their mashed-up roster of latterday hard-psychedelia, noise bands, alternative pop and assorted fence-vaulters certainly interest me. For now, here’s just one of their upcoming gigs, which is happening this coming Tuesday:
Death & Vanilla + Lust + T.Edwards (DJ) (Baba Yaga’s Hut @ Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, London, SE17 1LB, UK, Tuesday 29th September 2015, 7.30pm) – £9.00/£10.00
Swedish dream-poppers Death & Vanilla have moved some way away from the psychedelic lounge-pop of their debut releases (in which they had a similar sepia-sampler sound to ’90s British post-rockers such as Broadcast and Pram, or even the cunning rush of Laika). These days they’re a tad more musically pointed and direct – positioning themselves straight in front of you, catching your eye and flipping open little musical doors as if they were some kind of musical advent calendar. In some respects, they sound like a more relaxed version of The United States Of America, the late ’60s experimentalists (part distracted folk carnival, part avant-garde tape effects) who arguably grandfathered and grandmothered the likes of Broadcast in the first place, albeit a little more smoothed out and hazy. They themselves offer “hands in the dark” and “Kraut-lullabies” as other labels which we can use. Check out a couple of their more recent songs below.
In support are multinational London-based quintet Lust, who’ve evidently looked back to those mid-’90s dream pop ideals of girl-group coos and quilted waves of balmlike guitar noise and decided, perhaps, to try to do it all better. With a sixty/forty girl/boy split, the instrumentation shared across genders, and Anna Haara Kristoferson, Moa Papillon and Andrea Muller singing in a creamy and hypnagogic triple-blend as they play, you can indulge happy memories of Lush (just one consonant shift away), Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. You can also note that Lust seem a little cannier and calculated than Kevin Shields, Emma Anderson and co – not contrived as such, but perhaps a little more on-the-ball as regards their sense of pop music. The rills of ‘Loveless’ might never be far away, but neither is the songwriting suss of ‘Rumours’ and the directness of The Shirelles… or the option to go all gloriously New Romantic in a video. Take a look and a listen…
One “T. Edwards” is listed as playing as DJ for the night – I suppose that there’s a reasonable chance that this is man-of-all-seasons-and-many-instruments Terry Edwards, but you’ll have to find this out by yourselves.
Tickets available here, while up-to-date information is here.
Coming up – October events. It’s damn well snowballing…
Misfit City 