Bar his efforts in assembling a performance of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ under the Brooklyn Bridge last year, not enough has been heard from Liam Singer since he released his gorgeously limpid ‘Arc Iris’ album in 2013. In fact, he’s quit New York City and moved upstate to Catskill, where he’s now co-running HiLo – a combined cafe, bar, art gallery, and performance space. New responsibilities, however, haven’t stemmed his musical flow. Two imminent shows (one at HiLo and one in his old Brooklyn stomping grounds) mark this month’s release of his fifth album, ‘Finish Him‘, on Birdwatcher Records.
Centred on his piano and the sweet murmur of his voice, Liam’s previous records brought in strings, glass harmonicas and spectral studio reverb; the clink and clatter of gamelan and prepared instruments, Morton Feldman namedrops, and women’s voices shading into birdsong. They sketched out a sharply etched dreamworld which seemed to take place in and on the towns, roads and headlands of a permeable New England coastline – one in which ancient mythology and personal headspace interpenetrated, and danced their way up and down from the seabed to the constellations. Either that, or they evoked loft life in an idealised, slightly antiquated boho New York or upscale university town – Art Deco bannisters, rumpled stockings discarded by elusive free-spirited lovers; mannered speech, books on the Harlem Renaissance.
It was pop, but pop over which Steve Reich and the aforementioned Feldman presided as occasional guardian angels (as did Henry Cowell and Shaker music), amidst a papery flutter of old books and wallpaper witnessings, and of dust being blown off enthralling junk-shop discoveries. Longtime co-producer Scott Solter likes to link it to “Edward Gorey and the Brothers Quay“. The descriptions may sound precious, but the songs aren’t. No showboater, Liam is nonetheless one of those singers whose tones gently, subtly shift and refract between wonder, melancholy, wry self-deprecation and ecstacy: a caster of light upon things, rather than a hoarder or showcaser. The folding of literary and mythical references into his songs – and their subtly eclectic instrumentation – may bring him comparisons to Elliott Smith (especially in terms of the intimate delivery) and to Sufjan Stevens; but to me he’s a far more gentler character, bringing a human fragility and self-awareness to his steps in and out of a numinous music realm. A bit like an American William D. Drake, perhaps; though minus the occasional overt music-hall flourishes.
That said, ‘Finish Him’ (described as “a coming-out party”) sees Liam changing tack. Now he’s fully, publically embracing influences he’s previously only hinted at – predominantly colourful 1980s art pop “from a time when traces of the Baroque and avant-garde began to seep into the margins of the mainstream alongside the iconic synths, gated reverbs and big hair.” The science-fiction bacofoil-meets-CGI video, drum machine and layered synths of pilot single Test Tone determinedly sets out this new stall – like Wes Anderson simultaneously taking on ‘Tron’ or one of those Saturday afternoon space operas – and while new tracks like The Devil and I Want To See Sparks are less immediately brash, they’ve set aside some of the diaphanous sound of previously-on-Liam in favour of grander, brighter colourings, scrim-sweeps of noise, and bolder narratives about the struggle between selfishness and connection, the booting over of applecarts.
If there’s a new parallel, it’s the latterday work of Paddy McAloon – the revealing of extra bite and sharp points behind the musical meringue, the emergence of perspective and bone-deep feeling that comes with age and gravity taking more of a hold. The magic and mists are still there, just with a little more lightning.
Main support at both shows comes from Liam’s friends in the “lullanoise” project Sontag Shogun, who travel the world and bring back armfuls of noise and aural capturings of different places and times, only to re-knit them into ambiguous/meaningful post-minimalist mood pieces of piano and soundscape. Evoking or manufacturing memories filled with beauty and displacement, they produce music which is part hypnagogic tape, part four-dimensional postcard or souvenir.
For the Brooklyn show, the core Shogun trio (pianist Ian Temple, laptop/field recordings manipulator Jesse Perlstein and tapesman/oscillator operator/microphonist Jeremy Young) are “reformatting and outfitting” the band with a string quartet (thus forming the Sontag String Ensemble) and are playing “all new music, marrying improvisational and experimental sound with composed string arrangements by Ian.” For the Catskill show, they’re reverting to the trio format.
Each of the two shows will be bolstered by another instrumental set, each by a different guitarist/composer. In Brooklyn, it’s Alexander Turnquist, whose instrumental reflections on nature and philosophy blend virtuosic twelve-string acoustic fingerstyle with studio-based electronic noise aesthetics, producing a melodious state-shifting thunder of folk baroque/New Acoustic stringwork and reverberant processing which perhaps makes him the heart of an imaginary triangle between Michael Hedges, John Fahey and Jim O’Rourke.
Alexander’s counterpart at the Catskill show is Tim Mislock, whose use of simple electric figures and slow, ebbing ambient-country pulses… renders him more similar to Britain’s Rob Jackson or to a Nashville-saturated Robert Fripp, while also dipping into the lonesome romantic post-rock minimalism of Explosions In The Sky. His current album ‘Now Is The Last Best Time’ is “a heartfelt ode to (his) mother, who over the course of the past decade, has been the primary caregiver to her husband and Mislock’s stepfather; as he slowly fades into the ever-present silence of Alzheimer’s disease.” It’s a project encompassing love, regret, compassion and drift, and you can feel all of them in every note.
Dates:
Liam Singer + Sontag String Ensemble + Alexander Turnquist – Wonders Of Nature, 131 Grand Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York 11249, USA, Thursday 12th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Liam Singer + Sontag Shogun + Tim Mislock – HiLo Catskill, 365 Main Street, Catskill, New York 12414, USA, Friday 13th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here
News on an imminent set of alternative folk gigs – eerie, funny, magical and pertinent (aiming as it does at our history of migrations and settlings).
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“Two of the world’s most prominent avant-folk ensembles join forces for a joint headline tour of the UK.
“It’s not often that you can say you met someone over a meat cleaver but in the case of Dead Rat Orchestra and Sutari it’s true. Not that anyone who knows the work of the UK’s DRO – or for that matter, Poland’s Sutari – should be surprised. Kindred spirits not only in their approach to free-folk but in their use of unusual objects – including meat cleavers – in their performances, this tour will see them join forces to explore the cultural impact of Polish and European migration in England. Performing in locations across England that have been centres of Polish immigration, and engaging with British, Polish and European communities, the tour will utilise Sutari and DRO’s unique approaches to performing traditional musics to lead audiences in a performative and timely discussion about the cultural impacts of the UK leaving the European Union.
“Formed by Daniel Merrill, Nathaniel Mann and Robin Alderton – and performing internationally for over a decade – Dead Rat Orchestra have gained a reputation as one of the most innovative ensembles on the UK music scene. Raw, elemental and poignant and with a love of adventure, their performances feature flailing axes, salt and sawdust, throbbing harmonium, grinding fiddle and two thousand shards of micro-tuned steel cast to the floor in cascading, shimmering joy. DRO create works that blur boundaries between installation and performance. Activities have included ‘The Cut’ (2014), a site-specific musical tour undertaken by canal boat along two hundred and seventy-three miles of waterway; and ‘Tyburnia’ (2015/17) exploring seventeenth and eighteenth century gallows ballads and their sociopolitical history.
“Dead Rat Orchestra are adventurers adrift in a sea of sound and possibility, plucking textures and melodies to craft their idiosyncratic vision of what music and performance can be. Most often they have steered their ship through the idioms of folk and improv, to shout, sing and glisten at audiences from the UK to mainland Europe, Scandinavia to Canada. They have created music using the architectural surroundings in which they find themselves; coppice woods, abandoned abattoirs, paper mills, churches. Necessity has sometimes dictated duo performances of any permutation, always imbued with a sense of the missing member. Instruments are constantly swapped. Rarely performing in a conventional manner they often step away from the stage, to sing and holler a cappella amongst the audience. Acutely haunting, occasionally brutal and raucously joyous, their music always attempts to enchant and entrance, be it emotionally or physically.
“Sutari are Kasia Kapela, Basia Songin and Zosia Zembrzuska – a trio of young singers, instrumentalists and performers, each from different musical and theatrical backgrounds, who come together to continue the tradition of home-made folk music. The Sutari project is a fusion of diverse music experiences and passions: they use a mixture of traditional instruments (violin, basetla and drum), and also make use of everyday objects, exploring their potential as musical devices – for instance, a hand mixer, grater, bottles and a wrench… kitchen avant-garde!
“They explore deep vocal harmony traditions, searching for the essence and hidden character of traditional songs, whilst exploring themes of femininity in folklore. Their compositions are based on Polish and Lithuanian folk songs; and they are particularly inspired by the sound and character of Lithuanian Sutartines, sung only by women in perfect harmony. An affecting and elegant fusion of traditional folk, theatrical flair and contemporary mood music.”
There are a couple of support acts along the way. In Nottingham, the support comes from Sarsa Awayes – a Nottingham-based Polish spoken word artist. In Colchester, it’s Sally Currie – a.k.a. The Dyr Sister (where “dyr” is Old Norse for “deer”). A Hull-born “multi-instrumental cervine beat mistress”, she “conjures up surreal tales with the aid of viola, synth, mandolin her voice and an array of DIY samples. Performing her catalogue of haunting, ethereal, modern day folk songs as a one-woman band, she paints a fascinating canvas of sound.”
Dates:
Colchester Arts Centre, Church Street, Colchester, Essex, CO1 1NF, England, Tuesday 10th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Norwich Arts Centre, 51 St Benedicts Street, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 4PG, England, Wednesday 11th July 2018, 8.30pm – information here and here
(secret location), Bow, London, England, Thursday 12th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
The Maze, 257 Mansfield Road, Nottingham, NG1 3FT, England, Friday 13th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
The New Adelphi Club, 89 De Grey Street, Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, HU5 2RU, England, Saturday 14th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Leeds Polish Centre, Newton Hill Road, Leeds, Yorkshire, LS7 4JE, England, Sunday 15th July 2018, 4.00pm – information here and here
Holywell Music Room, Holywell Street, Oxford, OX1 3SD, England, Monday 16th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
The last Society Of Imaginary Friends Soiree for the summer is cartwheeling into view. I smashed two or three of their Beat-y burbles together to bring you this:
“Friday 6th July is our 21st Century Avant Garde Soiree at Karamel, N22. We have in store for you a magnificent exploration of 21st Century new and experimental music with incredible performers already lined up. The fabulous, supremely talented Jennifer Bliss Bennett will be performing master composer Martin Gaughan’s pieces for voice and bass viol: a must hear. There’ll be an appearance from the one-and-only Dekay Ex (queen of the underground urban music arena, virtuosic battle rapper superstar) with guest musician Gerard; and brand new dark intriguing soul music from Stone Deep.
“The multi-talented Darren and Isobel Hirst will be performing as the fascinating, spellbinding duo Outre Dan Steele, and the amazing William Summers (Circulus, Princes In The Tower, Mediaeaval Baebes and innumerable period/Baroque ensembles) will be performing 20th century recorder music. Plus us, the Society Of Imaginary Friends, and that’s just for starters. Delicious vegan food and unbelievably free entry.”
Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
21st Century Avant Garde Soiree: Society Of Imaginary Friends + Jennifer Bliss Bennett + Dekay Ex + Stone Deep + Outre Dan Steele + William Summers Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 6th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
A few examples of the evening’s entertainment:
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There’s no August Soiree (since the Society will be either on holiday or concentrating on their appearances at the Green Gathering festival in Chepstow), but there should be more of these evenings in the coming autumn.
However, you can make up for their upcoming London summer absence with an evening of music and video hosted by Cos Chapman’s Rude Mechanicals, and taking place in a onetime Dalston dance school turned into arty pub and hangout space…
“The art-rock inspired Rude Mechanicals have been compared to Nick Cave, The Tiger Lillies, early Roxy Music and Can and described as post-punk, swamp blues and dark cabaret – altogether creating a music that was best be described by Tom Robinson (on BBC6) as “wild, wicked weirdness… a little bit Flying Lizards, a little bit Native Hipsters and a great deal like nothing you’ve heard before…” The evening will feature the premiere of MHG Music Videos’s animated video for Rude Mechanical’s ‘Paperwork’.”
Meanwhile, here’s something a little older…
“Originally hailing from Birmingham, John Callaghan is an unusual songwriter and performer of thoughtful and spiky electronica. His self-directed video for ‘I’m Not Comfortable Inside My Mind’ aired on MTV. His live performances are energetic and imaginative, and range from one-man auto-karaoke shows to specially-written dancefloor sets. Recent well-received shows have included London’s Spitz, Ginglik and Electrowerks, Cambridge’s Portland Arms, Crystal Palace Bowl and last year’s jaunt around Germany, including Berlin’s Club 103 and Bar 25 and Hamburg’s Golden Pudel. He is 173cm tall, weights 73kg and has a blood pressure of 110/60Hg.”
“Hypnotique is a thereministe, electronic musician and auteur based in London whose lyrical subjects range from the apocalypse, post-feminism, erotic narrative and allotments. She’s performed solo shows at Edinburgh Fringe, worked with Gong and The Heliocentrics, toured the Amazon and annoyed Simon Cowell. She’ll be performing her live sound design for Georges Méliès 1902 film ‘Voyage de la Luna’ (‘Trip to the Moon’)…” …which she’s previously and recently also done at a Colliding Lines film evening: find out more about that here.
“Described last year as “a thing of disquieting dark beauty rolling in through a ghostly fog on timeless ripples whose ebbing wash peels back the years to reveal a vintage crafted in archaic folk tongues” by Mark Barton of ‘The Sunday Experience‘ (and, by ‘The Wire’ as a writer of “coarse and beautifully heavy songs (betraying) hallmarks of folk, metal and classical without subscribing to any particular tribe”), Rotten Bliss is the violent, warm and weird visions of London based avant-garde electric cellist and vocalist Jasmine Pender. Equally inspired by the wild physicality of Jacqueline du Pre and the shrieking glory of a cello played through FX pedals, Rotten Bliss packs diverse influences into an elemental voyage of outer-limits FX-laden drones, weird folk and sound art, raging from tender a capella lyrical fantasies through to ecstatic nihilism.
“Jasmine performs regularly around London, also playing in 11th Hour Adventists (with Jowe Head, ex-Swell Maps) and False Echo (with Tim Bowen, ex-Chrome Hoof) and has toured England, France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Her debut album, ‘The Nightwatchman Sings’, was released in October 2017 on the Reverb Worship label.”
Also on hand for the inbetween bits are DJs Enri, Blue and MJ Ultra, and Rude Mechanicals are bribing any advance tickets buyers with the promise of a “free unique, special edition CD and badge”.
Rude Mechanicals present:
‘Paperwork!’ – featuring Rude Mechanicals + John Callaghan + Hypnotique + Rotten Bliss + DJ Enri + DJs Blue & MJ Ultra Farr’s School Of Dancing, 17-19 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England
Friday 13th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
‘Oracles’ – the BASCA-nominated song-cycle by Anglo-Portuguese singer-songwriterAna Silvera – already has a seven-year history. Created more or less in parallel with her debut album ‘The Aviary’ (and originally a choral piece for the NEC choir at the Roundhouse), it’s now returning this month, freshly re-arranged for Ana and small vocal/instrumental ensemble, for a full album release and the first of two 2018 live shows.
A response to the pain of intimate family bereavement, ‘Oracles’ “draws on folk tales and myths to chart a transformative journey from profound grief to tentative acceptance.” In some senses it’s a wide-spectrum take on adult pop without a trace of that genre’s unnecessary blandening: an as-it-happens assessment of the dramatic personal shifts in position following the loss of both loved ones and of the relationship one has with them while they’re alive.
What I’ve heard of it so far suggests a similar vivacity as her songs elsewhere on album or in her theatrical work – vividly characterised narratives of internal reflection and of landscapes both physical and emotional, mingling detailed, nakedly honest personal verbal imagery and an influx of Portuguese folk feel in a way which makes her sound a little like an Iberian Jane Siberry.
For the live performance, Ana’s six-piece band features her co-arranger – Listenpony curator and singing multi-instrumentalist Josephine Stephenson – plus a wealth of folk-jazz talent in the shape of the string trio of Jasper Høiby on double bass, Alice Zawadzki on vocals and violin, and Alice Purton on vocals and cello, plus Will Barry on piano and percussion.
The concert will feature “specially arranged new songs” for the first half and a full run through ‘Oracles’ for the second: the latter including a specially commissioned dance film by Royal Ballet/’Random Acts‘ director/dancer Kate Church and art director Alice Williamson.
Ana Silvera – ‘Oracles’ Purcell Room @ Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, Waterloo, London, SE1 8XX, England
Wednesday 4th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
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From where she’s standing in her life right now, Holly Penfield can reach out in both directions to touch the passionate, large-lunged ingenue singer of her youth and the salty life-loving veteran she’s transforming into. Of course, she’s got a longer, bolder reach than most. Once tagged as “David Bowie meets Liza Minelli” by a surprised and wrongfooted Simon Cowell, she’s a classic torch-pop singer with a stunning voice who’s also both blessed and cursed with an upsetter’s drive. These days, as she rebounds from twenty years as a leading international cabarettier in order to return to her own songs, it’s more of a blessing.
Raised in San Francisco (and a veteran of the 1980s LA pop scene with the scars to prove it) Holly spent much of the ‘90s writing and performing the psychodramatic one-woman pop show ‘Fragile Human Monster’ in London and elsewhere. A show with such troubled and intense undercurrents that it eventually blew itself apart, it’s now spawned a return… but under very different circumstances. The whirling mirror-glass synths and saxophones of the old days have been replaced by a gritty post-Americana rock band (which growls, gnaws and struts through her songs like a Cash or Waits ensemble) while Holly herself has mostly forsaken standing behind a keyboard (except for when a grand piano ballad calls for that set of skills).
It’s funny, sad, uplifting and stirring all at once. Once the very embodiment of storm-tossed waif and precarious survivor, Holly’s now a wiser and much happier woman. She still absolutely owns the stage, though, helping herself to a big dollop of the jazz and blues flavourings which shaped her initial development, playing a dash of ukulele and engaging in some zestful shimmying (and some delightfully ludicrous party outfits, worn with wit and flair – it seems as if her recent steps away from cabaret involved at least one sly step back).
What hasn’t changed is the quality of her singing, and of her songs. While old FHM standards like Misfit, The Last Enemy, puddle-of-grief ballad Stay With Me, and slinking fingersnapper You Can’t Have The Beauty Without The Beast have shed skins and made the transition to the new show, Holly’s also been dipping into a trunk of neglected and mostly previously unheard work, including the tremendous state-of-the-world song Confessions (based around a lyrical hook she once dangled in front of an intrigued Joni Mitchell) and the vivacious Tree Woman (a more recent effort in which she vigorously embraces both her own ageing and the resilience that comes with it).
Holly Penfield’s Fragile Human Monster Show
Crazy Coqs @ Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, Soho, London W1F 7ED, England
Monday 9th July 2018, 9.15pm – information here
Following the previous two months of successful unamplified outdoor folk gigs in May and June, here’s a rundown of Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows for July. (Well, the first four, anyway, to avoid making the post too long).
What’s on offer for the first half of July involves Bulgarian and civil rights chorale, contemporary English folk, seditious workers’ songs and Devonian stomp. As ever, it’s taking place in London’s playgrounds, garden projects and small artist studios (as well as the odd secret location…)
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The first concert, on 6th July, features Chris Wood.
“A self-taught musician, composer and songwriter, Chris Wood is a lifelong autodidact whose independent streak shines through everything he does. Always direct and unafraid to speak his mind, his song writing has been praised for its surgical clarity. An uncompromising writer (who cites his major influence as “Anon”), his music reveals his love for the un-official history of the English speaking people: with gentle intelligence, he weaves the tradition with his own contemporary parables.
“Hollow Point, Chris’ chilling ballad of the shooting of Jean Charles Menezez, won a BBC Folk Award (he’s won six). This year’s eagerly awaited new album ‘So Much To Defend’ was previewed at Cambridge Folk Festival last summer and includes reflections on minor league football, empty nest syndrome, learning to swim, Cook-in Sauce and, not least, the gecko as a metaphor for contemporary society.”
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The second concert – ‘Sing the Change’, on 9th July, is a particularly personal endeavour for folk singer/songwriter/curator (and Nest Collective/Campfire Club promoter) Sam Lee. It’s the inaugural concert of the Fire Choir which he runs in partnership with The Foundling Museum – “(a) new, “open to all” community choir… dedicated to revitalising communal singing with political empowerment and a sonorous means to protest at its heart. If you want to channel your love for this world or discontent with it through singing, or just discover your voice with like-minded (or unlike-minded) others, then Fire Choir is for you.
“Highlighting social and environmental injustice, Fire Choir builds on the Museum’s centuries-old legacy of social change, campaigning and creativity. Singers tap into the enormous and ancient international repertoire of songs rooted in social change, justice and emancipation. Material includes folk songs, modern songs, anti-war songs, songs of resistance and struggle, the natural world, songs of love and lost worlds.
“A generous aspect of the Fire Choir repertoire has been specially commissioned from the perspective of contemporary communities struggling for a louder voice in society, written by some of the UK’s best songwriters and composers. Plus to keep the spirits high there is of course lots of good old rabble-rousing, soul-lifting chants and hollers! The choir is a vehicle to take these songs to the streets, the auditoria, the recording studio and many other as yet unknown places.
“‘Sing the Change’ will feature protest songs highlighting social injustice and calling for change, and including the world premiere of a special commission by Dizraeli, and Ayanna Witter Johnson‘s ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ (a setting of a speech by Sojourner Truth). It will also contain contributions from special guests and choir leaders Blythe Pepino (Vaults, Mesadorm), Ben See, Alex Etchart, and Sam Lee.”
If you want to sing with the Fire Choir yourself, they usually rehearse at the Museum on a Monday evening and welcome “absolute beginners” – here’s the link again.
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The third concert, on 13th July, features Ewan McLennan and Twelve Dead In Everett.
“Ewan McLennan has come to be known as a guitarist at the very forefront of his generation; a troubadour, balladeer and storyteller cut in the old style; a singer that can move audiences with his passion and pathos; and a songwriter for whom social justice is still a burning issue. From a BBC Horizon Award for his debut album to his performances on the iconic Transatlantic Sessions, recent years have been marked by numerous awards and accolades for his music.
“The reception offered to Ewan’s latest solo album, ‘Stories Still Untold’, continued this tradition, while his most recent project – ‘Breaking The Spell Of Loneliness’, a collaboration with renowned author and journalist George Monbiot – seeks to use music and word to open up the issue of loneliness (their UK tour and concept album have received wide acclaim and been featured widely, including live appearances on BBC Two’s Newsnight, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune.)
“All of them being members of the Industrial Workers Of The World (a.k.a. the Wobblies), Twelve Dead In Everett are a low-down, seditious trio unearthing contemporary political resonances in the traditional music of England, Ireland, Scotland and the United States. Sweet harmonies of reason in a world deaf to exploitation. Songs to fan the flames of discontent and tell your boss to go to hell.”
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The fourth concert, on 20th July, features London Bulgarian Choir and Harbottle & Jonas.
“The award-winning London Bulgarian Choir is a vibrant, sociable and open-hearted group of singers embracing all nationalities, ages and abilities. The choir was founded in 2000 by Dessi Stefanova, a former singer with the legendary Philip Koutev Bulgarian National Folk Ensemble in Sofia. Thanks to her patience and dedication this group of largely non-Bulgarian singers has become a performing tour de force, winning hearts and minds from the Welsh valleys to Bulgaria’s mountain villages. From its early days as a handful of singers, the choir has grown into an extended ensemble bringing its repertoire of traditional Bulgarian songs to concert halls, churches, nightclubs, galleries, festivals, embassies, village squares and even a barge on the River Thames.
“The songs performed by the London Bulgarian Choir are arrangements of traditional and ancient Bulgarian songs. Some tell powerful tales of love and loss, fighting and celebration, while others are inspired by the daily fabric of life. Sung in a complex and unique vocal style, these folk songs have survived five hundred years of Ottoman rule and fifty years of communist indoctrination to emerge with their extraordinary dissonant harmonies, exotic scales, compelling rhythms and exuberant trills and hiccups virtually intact. The choir’s spine-tingling performance of the songs transcends language barriers, and often moves audiences to tears.
“Harbottle & Jonas are a stunning young folk duo based in Totnes, Devon. Their music is eclectic and is always accompanied with a great story. Together the husband-and-wife duo combine the rich traditions of folk music with original and contemporary interpretations, through a blend of closely intertwined vocal harmonies. Their music is performed with integrity and on instruments that include the concertina, harmonium, banjo, stompbox, acoustic and resonator guitars. They can sometimes be found playing alongside their full band – eight members in total (cello, fiddle, mandolin, trumpet, drums, bass). Well-travelled across the UK and playing up to 200 gigs each year, Harbottle & Jonas have managed to establish themselves as one of the most exciting prospects on the folk circuit.”
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Full dates and links:
Campfire Club: Chris Wood – Lumpy Hill Adventure Playground, 15 Market Road, Lower Holloway, London, N7 9PL, England, Friday 6th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Campfire Club: Fire Choir – The Calthorpe Project, 258-274 Gray’s Inn Road, St Pancras, London, WC1X 8LH, England, Monday 9th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here
Campfire Club: Ewan McLennan + Twelve Dead In Everett – (secret location t.b.c.), Friday 13th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Campfire Club: London Bulgarian Choir + Harbottle & Jonas – Phytology, Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, Middleton Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9RR, England, Friday 20th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
There’s another of multi-instrumental soundtrack composer/Anna Calvi sidewoman Mally Harpaz’s audio-cinematic Blind Dog Studio live events taking place in Dalston at the beginning of July. As with previous Dog days, Mally’s bringing her own small ensemble to play the original pieces she composed in order to soundtrack video artist Clara Aparicio Yoldi’s expansions of fine art paintings, and which win her those comparisons to Steve Reich, Max Richter, and Nils Frahm. Also on hand is another Blind Dog favourite, operatic Californian indie-folk-popper Hazel Iris, who uses “the traditions of romantic lieder, vaudeville, and contemporary styles (to) celebrate the high art of storytelling” and whose vigorous witty songs are fleshed out with cello, accordion, guitar and Mally’s percussion (but mostly by Hazel’s own powerful voice and personality).
The newest guest at Blind Dog Studio’s ongoing party is Katherine Christie Evans (previously the bassist for “feminist punk witches” Dream Nails), who’s bringing along her experimental rock project Velodrome. The project takes its cues from various aspects of Katherine’s life and the challenges within it. Musically, there’s her work as a singer of Early Music and her other multi-instrumental skills on guitar, bass and drums (which inspires the music’s layering of choral baroque against lo-fi indie scrawl), while politically and personally there’s the ways in which her determination and talent intertwine with her queerness (and with the more negative elements of her chronic anxiety and fluctuating mental health). As such, she counts herself as an artist “working at the intersections of feminism, social inequality, mental health and queer visibility”, battling the barriers which come with a lack of diversity in the arts while developing her own voice.
All of the above makes Katherine sounds furious, but she seems to be fighting her battles with humour, positivity and a gaming spirit. Viz the awkward but cheerfully determined eroticism of last month’s debut Velodrome single His Physique, which makes lustful hay from the epicene figures in mediaeval art (“lean and slender, / no particular gender,”) and sports a witty, low-budget video blending childlike cosplay and jokey New Weird visuals, as Katherine frolics around ruins, green mazes and antique rooms, invades portraits with her bass guitar to “queer the male images”, and dresses up as everything from playgroup knight to Metallica’s Kirk Hammett to towering pagan carnival-stalker. Totally charming – along with Great Dad, she’s definitely one to watch.
Blind Dog Studio presents:
Hazel Iris + Mally Harpaz + Velodrome The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England
Wednesday 4th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
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Down in south-west London, Brixton lurkers Barringtone – presumably recovered from drummer Boomer’s broken wrist – take over the Windmill again for “an evening of left-field pop” as part of the increasing build towards the release of their debut album: a build which has mostly consisted of them playing semi-secret gigs a stone’s throw from their front room and nerve centre. Talk about conquering the world from your bedsit… Here, again, is their most recently released effort Dream Boys, showcasing their switch from motorik power pop towards a Zappa/Partridgean art-pop embracing some greater breadth and complexity: they’ve always had it in them, it’s just that they’ve now decided to be more blatant about it.
In support is scowling singer-songwriter Stephen EvEns, whose faux-surly demeanour disguises one of the most slyly humorous British songwriters since the aforementioned Partridge and the previously mentioned Ray Davies. Stints behind the drums for Graham Coxon, The Damned, Charlotte Hatherley and Cardiacs concealed his sharp talent for a crumpled, rumpled song: the two albums he did leading his own band Stuffy/The Fuses revealed it. Last year’s debut solo album ‘Bonjour Poulet’ (“the songs are beautiful and the words are horrible”) dragged it fully into the light, first squinting and then revealing its hulking, deceptive charm. Eyebrow ever-so-slightly raised; a little fang, a guitar, a desultory voice and a crappy little keyboard; a pincushion heart and a wash of downbeat Brit-indie shrug. With the imminent return of The Kinks, he’s probably got a little more competition than he did last week, but trust me, he’ll walk it.
Brighton-via-London rockers (and outlying Cardiacs family sprig) Ham Legion complete the bill with their “lo-fi pop… punctuated with proggy outbursts, psychedelic breakdowns and passages of cod-metal joy.” I can’t put it better than that, at least not today.
Windmill Brixton presents:
Barringtone + Ham Legion + Stephen Evens The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, England
Thursday 12th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
With the June sessions of the summer Woodburner season at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden now complete, here’s details on the upcoming July set (bringing further doses of world/international music, acoustic singer-songwriters and bubbling-under internet music sensations to the London summer nights).
Occasionally-tweaked official blurbs below.
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“The 3rd July show features sensational French harpist, singer and composer Laura Perrudin, and London’s eccentric genius Garance Louis & The Mitochondries.
“Seeing her harp as both an orchestra and a drum kit, Laura Perrudin creates a powerful personal universe in her compelling live performances utilizing an arsenal of laptop, sound-effect pedals and multitrack loops. Using her voice like an instrument, she believes that harp and voice are each an extension of the other. Brought up on a diet of jazz, she studied classical music in addition to composing and producing music using her home studio (influenced by a wide array of genres including electronic and traditional music, soul and hip-hop), and trained with many musicians from her birth region of Brittany to New York and Paris. A harpist from childhood, her mission became to open up the possibilities of the instrument to a richer harmonic language: she plays a custom-built electric chromatic/pedal-less harp with a single row of strings, constructed by harpmaker Philippe Volant and allowing her to give free rein to the sinuous harmonies and rich soundscapes of her unclassifiable compositions.
“Upon the release of Laura’s debut album ‘Impressions’ in 2015, ‘Les Inrockuptibles’ proclaimed her a “young iconoclast blends jazz (playing) the thousand games of a tightrope artist (with) cheerful and spontaneous radicalism, definitely modern.” while ‘France Inter Paris Radio’ wrote “it’s rather as if Björk had chanced upon Herbie Hancock in a Dublin pub. Laura Perrudin is only at the beginning of her artistic career, but she has already redefined the framework of the harp and we are sure that her singular universe will become an example.” Laura recently released her sophomore album ‘Poisons & Antidotes’ on Volatine Records.
“Since moving to London from Perpignan in 2010, extrovert, eccentric composer, singer and accordionist Garance Louis (now usually seen fronting Garance & The Mitochondries) has established herself as a powerhouse of the underground live music scene. Her surreal performances have featured bizarre costumes and otherworldly themes, perfectly complementing songs about absurd abstraction, procrastination, star-crossed open relationships; intoxicating love, plus rebirth in the Amazonian forest. The playful Garance always wears a smile, finding humour in physical theatre, funny faces and the clown inside us all.
“Growing up in the independent ‘Cinémaginaire’ in the South of France, Garance spent her childhood travelling the world, her head filled with the sights and sounds of the movies. The nomadic spirit stays strong with her, with an impulsive trip to New Orleans on the cards, and her past history of running away with the circus. Continuing the creative journey, her current record ‘Balance L’Aurore’ shows off Garance’s discovery of music production, bringing a new vitality and direction to her sound, while staying rooted in French chanson, psychedelic folk and old Venezuelan mambo.
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“The 10th July concert features Cameroonian blues-and-jazz player Muntu Valdo and melancholic electronic group Dahlia Sleeps, plus the moody electric guitar stylings of O MATÆUS.
“Hailed as “the prince of Sawa blues”, Muntu Valdo says “my passion is African history; its past glory, present fragility and diverse riches. My ambition is to increase awareness, enlighten, empower people and invoke a positive future for Africa with the rest of the world. My music is a result of all of this; rooted in the blues, mixing African traditions with striking modernity and technical mastery.” The Cameroonian is indeed a master and his performance will be a rare treat for those present to experience his music.
“Over the last couple of years Dahlia Sleeps have risen from being Soundcloud sweethearts with over half a million plays on the platform to the UK’s next big pop band, stacking up almost 1.7 million Spotify streams and three million YouTube views in that time. Their second EP ‘After It All’ showcases their increasing pop sensibilities whilst retaining the intimacy and endearing fragility of their original Soundcloud demos. They continue to show a willingness to tackle difficult subject matter with grace and poise. Lucy Hill’s song writing is even more poignant than ever before, with the record covering deep and personal themes from grief and loss, to love and homophobia.
“Despite the EP’s tough subjects, the band delivers some of its most upbeat efforts to date. Rise – a future LGBTQ+ anthem saw success on Spotify when released as a single last year, which has as much to do with its addictive chorus and epic guitar melodies as its important message. Only You, an intoxicating fall into luscious synth arrangements and furiously catchy vocal samples, shows a band hurtling full speed towards mainstream success.
“Operating as O Matæus, Mat Roberts is a young singer-songwriter from Canterbury, an ex-chorister and classically trained cellist, exploring and developing his emotional connection to a life surrounded by music. Influenced by the likes of Daughter, Ben Howard, Marika Hackman, Lucy Rose, Enter Shikari, Bring Me The Horizon and a wide range of classical composers, O Matæus wishes to create a unique style of material to hear, whether it be heard in a small bedroom or echoing concert venue, music is his life, and he wants to share it with the rest of the world. Dark undertones and words filled with passion and trouble rule his creative style with every note being connected to a moment in time that has passed. He wants to make you feel what he has felt, and with soaring falsetto lines, simple yet intricate guitar licks and raw intensity he brings those feelings back to life in the short time-span a song gives.
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“The 17th July concert features an all-Irish lineup featuring rising star David Keenan, electronic/acoustic songwriter Lilla Vargen, and poet Stephen James Smith.
“An obsession with words and melody took hold of David Keenan at a very early age. Exposed to the writings of Behan, Yeats and Wilde (with a soundtrack of Dylan, Buckley and The Dubliners), his formative years were inspired by the storytelling and character creations of his grandfather. Later he took the boat over the water and gathered tales and tunes of his own, learning his craft and to express his love of language. Having been asked to play alongside the likes of Mick Flannery, Hothouse Flowers, Damien Dempsey and Glen Hansard, David is fast becoming one of Ireland’s most talked-about young artists.
“Lilla Vargen is a singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland. Her name means “little wolf” in Swedish – an alias which encapsulates both her strong, soulful, evocative voice and the vulnerability in those honest, minimal songs of love and loss. Two years after her first couple of demos emerged online, she returned with her debut EP – the three-track ‘Hold On’, including an astonishing cover of Downtown (by Majical Cloudz) and the quietly memorable torch song title track (which showcases her beautiful vocal, offset against producer Nick Rayner’s warm, gently-building production). The critically acclaimed EP racked up just under a million listens online in a month, alongside plays from KCRW and further support from BBCR1. Live, she plays as a two piece alongside Derry composer and electronic musician Ryan Vail. Recent shows include supports for Lisa Hannigan and Newton Faulkner, with her debut UK dates happening in February 2018.
“Stephen James Smith is a Dublin poet and playwright central to the rise of the vibrant spoken word scene in Ireland today. His poetry videos have amassed over 2.5 million views and he has performed at high profile events and venues such as the Oscar Wilde Awards in Los Angeles, Electric Picnic, other voices, Glastonbury Festival, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Barbican in London, Vicar Street and the London Palladium (alongside Oscar winner Glen Hansard). Stephen facilitates poetry workshops in schools around Ireland and is artist in residence with Dunamaise arts centre & Laois arts office. His poetry is included on the syllabus at Western Connecticut State University and his work has been translated into multiple languages. His debut collection, ‘Fear Not’, is published by Arlen House and will be launched on 14 June 2018 in Dublin at Poetry Ireland on Parnell Square.
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“The 24th July show features singer/producer Rachel K. Collier, synth collective Marble Empire, and downtempo songwriter Alexander Carson.
“A one-woman electronic production machine and die-hard Ableton enthusiast, Rachel K. Collier is known for using a multi-instrument technical setup to enable her to perform her song-focused, high-energy studio productions in a live setting. Performing on stage together with a live percussionist and interactive visuals, Collier has built and refined her live show throughout 2017 including sold-out shows at KOKO, Camden and 93 Feet East, headlining the Beats For Love Festival in the Czech Republic and participating in the Ableton Loop event in Berlin. With a string of high profile shows line up this year (including SXSW and BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend as well as The Great Escape) Collier will follow up with her debut album, set for release in autumn 2018.
“Marble Empire is twenty-one-year-old singer/songwriter/producer Matt Berry from north London: a multi instrumentalist who writes and produces all his own material, which he describes as a blend of “gritty bass-lines, jazz harmony and guitar lines soaked in effects.” Influenced by the likes of Ben Khan, Jungle, SG Lewis and Frank Ocean, tentative early single releases last year quickly gained him much attention. He invites you to celebrate the upcoming release of ‘Marble Empire & Friends’ a seven-track compilation mixtapes written and produced by Marble Empire himself with six featured artists. He will be welcoming many collaborators onstage with him and his band throughout the evening, including Katya DJ, KarimThaPeasant, Milo Gore, Kate Lomas, Tchengiz and Natalie Green.
“Alexander Carson is a neoclassical/downtempo composer and songwriter, based in London, who has spent the better part of seven years as the lead singer, and songwriter for genre-fluid quintet Wooden Arms. Since Wooden Arms went on Hiatus in March of 2018, Carson has embraced solo work, with his debut single ‘Lovers’ being released on 4th May and being hailed as “a perfect blend of modern songwriting and classical musicianship” by ‘The Line Of Best Fit’, as “sounding at times like an Irish prayer and others a bit Bowie-ish, but never dull or less challenging” by ‘Where The Music Meets’, and by ‘Outline Magazine’ as possessing “a distinctive timbre and delicate working of the keys that always reminds slightly of Anthony and the Johnsons… the fragile vocals and piano playing are unmistakably Alex.”
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“The 31st July show features live producer Roscius, electronic/classical ensemble Three Laws, and singer/pianist Zoë Phillips.
“French-born/London-based underground composer, producer and live performer Roscius has spent the last year building an enviable reputation with the release of his debut EPs ‘WMD#1’ and ‘WMD#2’, as well as successful tours in France, the UK, the Middle East and Asia. Composing through improvisation, personal recording, live vocal sampling, bass looping, special percussion and piano skills, Roscius creates a unique and absorbing soundscape, genuinely innovative and emotional; a mixture of acoustic and intelligent dance music, organic techno and ethnic deep house.
“An electronic band from the Big Smoke, Three Laws draw inspiration from the city, art, science, nature and the people they meet. Their first EP, ‘Convalescence’, combined haunting female vocals with classical piano, cinematic/military percussion and electronica. Three Laws have been compared to outfits such as Daughter, The XX, and London Grammar.
“Distinguished by haunting vocals and emotive sounds, Zoë Phillips is a vocalist and songwriter from Hertford. Her music is hard to box up, as she has dabbled in dance music but her ambient piano-based approach can nod towards the likes of Birdy and Rae Morris. Now gigging live with a full backing band, her music has previously been supported by BBC Introducing and BBC 6 Music, whilst live performances include Glastonbury Festival.”
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All events are at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, 13 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England on Tuesday evenings. Dates below:
Laura Perrudin + Garance & The Mitochondries, Tuesday 3rd July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Muntu Valdo + Dahlia Sleeps + O Matæus, Tuesday 10th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
David Keenan + Lilla Vargen + Stephen James Smith, Tuesday 17th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Rachel K. Collier + Marble Empire + Alexander Carson, Tuesday 24th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Roscius + Three Laws + Zoë Phillips, Tuesday 31st July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Another quick, late-in-the-day signal boosting – this time for an interesting-sounding female double bill of experimental cross-cultural singer-songwriters, over in Dalston (inevitably)… so from here on in it’s the press release.
Piu Entertainment UK present:
Gazel + Seaker Birthdays, 33-35 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston, London, N16 8BJ, England
Friday 15th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
“Turkish-rooted, London-based singer-songwriter Gazel‘s music is a blend of electronic pop with Middle Eastern folk and philosophical influences: a unique sound that gained nominations in the 15th Independent Music Awards with her debut EP, ‘Bone Key‘ (Best Pop EP, Best Electronic Song). She is a mesmeric live performer and multi-instrumentalist. Since 2017, Gazel has headlined shows at the Waiting Room, The Lexington and Borderline, as well as playing support shows at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and a sold-out Hammersmith Apollo.
“At Birthdays Gazel will play new music from her upcoming debut album ‘Gazel’s Book of Souls’, which she’s described as “a collection of songs that tell the story of a curious nomad girl abandoned in the desert, and the strange encounters she has with a cast of surreal characters as she embarks on a journey in search of her soul”. The production team behind it includes Shuta Shinoda (Hot Chip, Ghostpoet) and Haydn Bendall (Kate Bush, Massive Attack). For this show, she’ll introduce projected scenes from a musical she is developing based on the album, with the first in a series of animations developed by close collaborator Acid Lake.
“Having cut her teeth as a folk singer-songwriter, Seaker‘s sound has evolved to become ethereal, layered and sparkling. In a world that sits somewhere between Portishead and Sufjan Stevens, Seaker’s intimate songwriting is enveloped in expansive and atmospheric soundscapes. Lead by her unique and rare voice, Seaker’s songs cycle interminably between a sense of loss and hope. Shortly after the May 25th release of her new single, ‘Words’, Seaker will take to the Birthdays stage to bring audiences through soft and roaring, delicate lightness and raging inner fire.”
Since 2010, performance ensemble The Society Of Strange & Ancient Instruments – led by Clare Salaman – have “explore(d) a repertoire that ranges from folk songs and earthy dances to high art music from the eighteenth century and before, as well as newly composed pieces.”
Initially a violinist, Clare’s also mastered diverse related instruments including nyckelharpa, hardanger fiddle, medieval vielle and hurdy gurdy, and has also attracted other multi-instrumentalists into the group – mediaeval winds player Ian Harrison (on pipe and cornett, whistle, pipes, shawm, tabor and tambourine as well as singing), Jon Banks on harp, gittern, Baroque guitar and percussion (shading eastwards into santur, qanun and santouri) and Arngeir Hauksson (theorbo, cittern and gittern, Renaissance guitar, lute, saz, hurdy gurdy, percussion). Also on board are Liz Kenny (lutes and guitars), Alison McGillivray and Liam Byrne (viols and lirone); and the ostensibly more narrowly specialised players in the ensemble (harpist Jean Kelly, guitarist Clara Sanabras, harpsichordist Terence Charlston, singing citternist Jeremy Avis and bassist Peter McCarthy) all have extended interests, be they “unusual large string bass instruments”, electric harps, ouds, neglected antique keyboards or just raising a tambourine or voice. Even the ensemble’s dancer Steven Player is an occasional lutenist.
Acting in part as a meeting point for people interested in these out-of-the-mainstream instruments, the Society also puts on themed shows in which to showcase them: revivals of three of the latter have been recently announced.
Conceived by Clare, ‘Sound House’ is “inspired by Francis Bacon’s investigations into the magical properties of sound,” and “presents music of the seventeenth century played on extraordinary instruments within an intriguing modern context. Although Francis Bacon, 17th century philosopher, statesman and visionary, is widely regarded as the father of modern science, his investigations into the nature of sound are little known. He was intrigued by seemingly magical effects like echoes and sympathetic vibration and sought to explain them through a series of experiments in, and observations of, sound.
“Combining modern sound technology with ancient instruments, The Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments explore the aural illusions that so intrigued Francis Bacon and our 17th century forbears with fresh interpretations of 17th century music linked to each other by newly composed pieces.”
A five piece lineup of Clare, both Jons, Alison and Jean (bolstered by narrator Terence Wilton) play unusual and historically appropriate instruments including Jon on Gothic harp, Jean on “the jangling bray harp”, Alison on “the mysterious violone and the little known viola bastarda”, and Clare on a strange conical cello/wooden-horn hybrid, the tromba marina or “nun’s trumpet” (common between the 1500s and 1800s but fallen since then into the memory hole of outmoded instruments).
The Society has this to say about their other current show, ‘The Ministry Of Angels’ – “Angels have played a part in human consciousness for as long as we can remember. Their roles in the life of mankind are various; they appear as guardians, counsellors, guides, judges, and interpreters and cross barriers of culture, language, religion and geography. Many are a force for good but there are also fallen angels, angels of death and others who are spirits of wrath, destruction, confusion and vengeance.
“In this programme we explore music associated with angels, the maverick and fallen as well as the divine and perfect. Playing some of the instruments that appear in descriptions and depictions of angels through the ages, as well as other strange and ethereal sounding instruments, we present traditional tunes, dances, songs and carols in a celebration of these heavenly and occasionally diabolical beings.”
It sounds like a mixture of the occult, the New Age crystal shop and the Hallmark card: although probably much more rewarding than any of them.
Dates:
‘Sound House’ – St George’s Bristol, Great George Street (off Park Street), Bristol, BS1 5RR, England, Friday 15th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
“Dictionary Pudding are hugely proud to welcome the long-awaited return of Kings Heath legends Pram. With a new album out shortly on Domino Recording Company – these are very exciting times for Pram, one of the most uniquely enthralling underground artists of the last 30 years – their return in these troubling times is extremely welcome!
“Birmingham’s Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality. The second city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling early Rough Trade innovators The Raincoats, astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk.
“To say Pram have always ploughed their own furrow is to underestimate the breadth and scale of their music. To listen to this record is to hear a group who have learned to play together whilst teaching each other a new language. The Moving Frontier is Pram at their most widescreen, they’ve created a mysterious and wonderful landscape that’s sky-wide open.”
And here’s a slightly trimmed version of what I wrote for when they resurfaced quietly for their British comeback almost exactly a year ago, back in Birmingham with the park installation ‘Under the Blossom that Hangs on the Bough’…
“This isn’t quite the same Pram that charmed us and subverted pop for a surprisingly long stint in the ’90s and noughties across a string of albums which included ‘Dark Island’ and ‘Sargasso Sea’ and a sound that seemed to be part child’s murmur, part clinking post-kosmische stroll and part friendly haunted house. Most obviously, singer and lyricist Rosie Cuckston (she who used to mount her keyboard on an ironing board at concerts) is absent, having moved on into academia and a more direct form of the social activism which the band’s eclectic inclusiveness and tendency to take philosophical side roads only hinted. That said, the rest of the band’s original creative core (multi-instrumentalists Matt Eaton, Sam Owen and Max Simpson) are all present, having spent the interim years of Pram downtime working with wonky loops as Two Dogs, creating film and theatre sound and making sonic art out of books with the Sound Book Project.
“This also isn’t the first time that the post-Rosie Pram’s reappeared. Earlier in May they made an appearance at Imaginary Musics in Switzerland, playing a “music for Kopfkino” audio-visual set in a festival dedicated to “cinematic, recomposed and fictional musics”, and it seems as if losing Rosie’s quiet reflective voice and cocooned lyrics has shifted them further over into the areas suggested by Matt’s sound design and by Sam and Max’s live sound art. On-spec, it seems as if they’ve succeeded in becoming a kind of “post-band”, with a foot in their old live work, song-structures and performance coherence, but leaning towards something far more abstract and ego-free. ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’ sounds as if it will be something fascinating to be immersed in – an urban psychedelic afternoon stroll with the family, an aural refraction of Birmingham through leaves, greenery and company.”
Here’s a minute or so of the ‘…Blossom…’ project:
And here are some more moments of Pram past: rattle-pop, glows and musings…
A passing note that this is happening in Crouch End this coming Thursday, and that if you’re a listener or player of a progressive/experimental instrumental tinge in or around London that night who isn’t already headed to the Lost Crowns or Friends Serene events, this might be for you.
“An open mic with a difference. We are inviting musicians (and sound sculptors) to play but not the usual blues and classics you get in pubs but to experiment and explore. It’s a journey. Without judgement. All styles – jazz, prog-rock, fusion, folk, classical, avant-garde, electronic, sounds, welcome.
“üF-Beat is inspired by the German underground clubs that gave birth to the Krautrock music scene (Kraftwerk, Faust, Can, Tangerine Dream and inspired many British bands like Van Der Graaf Generator, Henry Cow, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, etc). As part of the Crouch End Festival Fringe (the more experimental part of the Festival), we are setting up an interesting musical adventure in the Committee Room in the Hornsey Town Hall with grand piano plus PA, mics, amps and psychedelic lighting. And a bar. It’s free too.
“Bring your instrument and an open mind.”
And that’s it. All else will depend on what you yourself bring to it either as audient or player, and on who else turns up…
üF-Beat Hornsey Town Hall, The Broadway, Crouch End, London, N8 9JJ, England
Thursday 14th June 2018, 8.30pm – information here
A couple of posts ago I was grumbling vaguely about ‘Misfit City’ getting too rarefied, cubbyholed and white. If I’m absolutely honest, that’s probably my default setting – the subcultural narrowness, that is, not the complaining. Part of the point of the blog is to expand my own musical education: it’s a process of broadening my outlook and involvement as a listener. Still, I’m well aware that I frequently travel and listen more like a toy fisherman in a novelty clock – rotating in a small circle around an established axis while flicking out a line for what must often seem more like show than anything else.
Gratifyingly, a new gig’s hoving into view at the end of the coming week involving two of the acts I’ve previously covered – one outright punk, the other convoluted RIO techprog – rubbing up against hip-hop, textured ‘tronica and avant-soul-pop. On the same day, an indie-slanted choral group duck the spell of Britpop-grunge covers by investigating David Axelrod alongside an Americana band and a showing by Gallo-Anglo lounge-pop queen Lætitia Sadier. Sometimes you don’t have to force or hanker after cross-pollination: sometimes it comes to you, unprompted.
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From promoters Multi-Storey:
“We’ve actually made it to our first birthday and it’s all down to the amazing people who have played, danced, and generally been friendly and encouraging at our shows! We’ve had an absolute pleasure meeting and listening to some of the most thrilling new bands both from London and further afield over the past 365 and a bit days, so we thought that a big monstrous party/gig/exhibition with some of our favourites would be the perfect way to round off a wonderful year. We want to say thanks to those who have been so helpful, say hi to some new friends, and toss ourselves around like a sentient salad. We’ll be joined at one of our favourite venues by an eclectic and spectacular line-up of our favourite and most exciting new acts, which we will be announcing over the next few weeks. Get yourself a ticket for a late night with unexpected levels to it, and some fantastic music that you never knew existed – stay tuned for announcements!”
Multi-Storey presents:
‘Multi-Storey’s 1st Birthday Party’ featuring Worst World Problems + Augustus + Tony Njoku + Elsa Hewitt + The Mantis Opera + Socket Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 42-46 Pollard Row, Bethnal Green, London, E2 6NB, England
Saturday 9th June 2018, 9.00pm – information here and here
Announcements have duly arrived. Up in the headliner slot, Worst World Problems are a new hip-hop collective. On the evidence of their mini-album ‘Tape One’ their sound’s a blend of chilly ‘80s synthpop nightscapes, data-bus drift and exhausted, hooded, sore-heeled rapping. Inevitable ‘Mezzanine’ and Drake comparisons ensue: there’s that same draggled, overcast feel in the sad ambient production billows and the flow, but WWP take it even further. Their raps feel like echoes around corners, anti-brags, collarbone murmurs from introspective three-quarters-broken boys feeling reamed out and deadened by romantic disintegrations. You feel that at some point they’re going to blow themselves out with a sigh.
Augustus is producer/drummer/keyboard player Gus Lobban, who for the past four years has mixed and dispensed cheery ice-cream-flavoured Anglo-J-pop with Kero Kero Bonito, more recently upping the fuzz-rock/stage-school urchin content. I’m not sure what he intends for this solo appearance, but here’s KKB’s recent Only Acting single: pick out his contributions if you can. Here, the breakdown sounds like a literal breakdown: he might still be surfing the shockwave.
Anglo/Nigerian/cosmic artiste Tony Njoku writes and sings eccentric, thread-fine, vulnerable electro/sort-of-soul, reflecting a young life spent mostly in “grey areas”. Beneath his papery falsetto, slide-clicking trap beats and silly-putty analogue synthwork align with lyrics about origami swans, seraphim and care-powered balloons. African tin-can beats are sideswiped by colossal dance drones and billowing symphonic modular-synth stackings. Pick-out piano fragments leans against rice-paper inserts of gospel tones. It’s psychedelic, but it’s a long way from the muscularity of P-Funk or The Temptations: Afrodelic in hue, it’s also untrammelled by cultural confines.
Imagine a set of constellatory echoes of David McAlmont and Arca; of Wayne Coyne and Frank Ocean; of Jackie Shane and Ahnoni; even bits of Jon Anderson and Arthur Russell. Gossamer and guts. As for Tony himself, his music comes with the feeling that he’s unhitching from as many enforced identities and narratives as he’s clambering onto: as if he’s escaping in plain sight.
“Electronic – lo-fi – avant garde – experimental – singer-songwriter – ambient – if there is one thing I am not, I know that it is pop… catchy nonetheless.” The releaser of a series of cassette albums (rising to a prolific swell in 2017), Elsa Hewitt creates assorted soft and mesmeric musical shapes on samplers, loopers, guitars or pianos; or on captured, folded sounds; or with banked and buried voices. It’s electronica of a kind, but without the matter-of-fact construction – this stuff sounds genuinely collaged and soft-sculptural, its cycles and processes and dream-pop sibilances ready for flexion or redeployment at any time. Some of her work is like chiming cartoon birdsongs, some of it like knitted cirrus or a cove-caught sea of whispering mouths. There are plenty of loopers and glitchers about, but few who can make their work sound so organic and subtly potent.
If you missed my original summary of The Mantis Opera late last month, I suggested that they “fused Henry Cow, Battles and early Scritti Politti…. Guitarist, singer and electronics meddler Allister Kellaway… delivers his stirring, challenging constructions via a full electro-experimental synth-rock band, voicing a collection of “avant-garde grumbles” via a multiplicity of synth sounds and colliding pop tones. If this sounds inaccessible and snooty, it isn’t. It’s just that the tunes arrive in complicated cascading splinters, many parts urging in parallel towards an out-of-sight coda, while a dreamily precise atmosphere prevails: avant-prog keeping watch from under a dream-pop veil.
“The pieces themselves display an ambitious, orchestral thinking – Reykjavik, for example, is less a guitar clang with lofty ambitions and more of a cerebral/visceral string quartet piece transposed for rock band. Allister’s winding, philosophical lyrics, meanwhile, are very reminiscent of Henry Cow and of Rock in Opposition preoccupations, dissecting as they do themes of resistance, logic, language and compliance with the air of a man trying to bring intellectual rigour to the pub, grabbing at the misty answers before the closing bell rings.”
As regards emergent punkers Socket, I’ve previously summed them up as “female-fronted firecrackers (who) don’t worry about anything like (angry, disenfranchised boredom and frustration), specialising in a hell-for-leather guitar pelt with capacious Lust For Life drumming and barely controlled chant-yelling.” That’s probably a bit reductive. For a start, they’re female-founded and female-focused as well as female-fronted (with unassuming, supportive drummer Morgan the only bloke in the lineup).
Read the ‘Beautiful Freaks’ interview here for more insight into the intertwining (or lack of it) of their band work with their assorted Fine Art and game music studies and the happy melding of schooled and unschooled musicality within the band. I suspect that you’ll get more out of that than you will out of this Bandcamp posting.
Adding to the texture, there’s offstage artwork, writings and chat from grassroots rock zines/nascent promoters ‘See You Mate – Yeah, See You Mate‘, and ‘Some Might Say‘, and from activist/theatre person Maya Harrison, with more to filter in in due course.
Their first project is a songbook version of David Axelrod’s 1970 jazz-funk cantata ‘Earth Rot’… and when I say jazz-funk, I’m not talking slap-grooves and plastic synth burbles, but the close-harmony vocalising in swagged cadenzas, twang-pocketed funk basslines, a pushing saxophone backed by a battery of brass. Strangely overlooked at the time of its original release on record (apparently down to it being too much of a leap out of Axelrod’s existing groove), it’s a vaulting, stained-glass show of an album: an early venture into pop-culture ecology drawing on Old Testament text and Navajo legend, celebrating the planet and chiding humans for the mess they’re making of it. The music’s now been transcribed for voice, by ear, by Arthur Sajas of Gabelt, ÉPÉE and Syd Kemp (who also serves as HAHA’s conductor).
This will be the work’s second performance, following its debut outing at Servant Jazz Quarters in February – yes, that slipped my notice too. This one doesn’t have to slip yours. Here’s a brief clip of HAHA Sounds Collective warming up, plus a taste of the original album.
Ostensibly an Americana band, Blueprint Blue actually use Americana’s moods, tones and characteristics to add coloration to what are otherwise very British songs about weather, walking and mild disappointments – the kind which might appear on the mimsier kind of folk-pop album, or which would have been half-smothered in noise or feedback on first-generation shoegazer records a quarter-century ago. Like a mixed bag of British players before them (including Gomez and Mark Knopfler, but more recently Acadian Driftwood and Horatio James) they’ve certainly mastered the sonic signifiers of American roads and roadhouses; but that’s not enough to fully inhabit the form.
The trouble with Americana is that the further you are from the situations which shaped its tones and subjects (and an ocean’s breadth doesn’t help with this), the more it starts sounding like a tinkle in a hollowed-out theatre. If you’ve got to pay tribute you’ve also got to pay dues, or fake it more convincingly. Songwise, at least, Blueprint Blue need some more grease on their axles; some more heartache and heartstring damage; some more blown-away shacks and more chances to sit dripping angry tears into their johnnycakes. Otherwise, it’s going to be a life of striving to be just a bit more like Mojave 3.
There may come a time when Lætitia Sadier isn’t associated, first and foremost, with Stereolab. I hope so. It’s not that there wasn’t, or isn’t, plenty to admire about her former band – just to pick out a few things, there was their unabashed musicality and willingness to draw on broad varieties of tone or reference; their matter-of-fact bilinguality and ready play of ideas; and the fact that they actually managed to revisit their varied roots and to somehow advance and transmute them (something of a holy grail achievement for many musical projects, but rarely achieved). But I, for one, am glad that her post-‘Lab work (with Source Ensemble and others) has unshackled her from that post-Velvets/post-motorik/brainiac-garage pulse: the rhythm cliche that blights so many otherwise promising acts; presses them out into two unforgiving dimensions; makes those who should be innovators and developers into enmired followers.
Lætitia’s set is either an evening opener or a middle-of-the-bill event, so I don’t know whether she’s brought along the Source Ensemble for accompaniment (for all I know, many of them may be in HAHA), or whether this is going to be a chance to hear her alone and independent/unencumbered. Either way, I hope it offers us the chance to hear her as she truly is now – a belatedly great French folk singer, although one neither bonded to the obligations of traditions or the past, nor restricted from broader conceptual and textual pallettes. In effect, an embodiment of a folk impulse reborn into the current age – with all of its opportunities for research and reflection and fresher global instincts – and let loose to create.
Despite their increasing whirl of gigs over the past year, it’s difficult to find performance video of V Ä L V Ē besides these gnomic little fragments: glimpses of feet and harps, pedals and synths, shuffles and patch wires. They’ve been rapidly evolving far beyond their beginnings as Chlöe Herington’s vehicle for musical jokes, chance theory and post-Zappa woodwind patchworks and her experiments with samples and homemade instruments. Now, they’re a live, surprisingly accessible avant-everything trio with Elen Evans and Emma Sullivan – reeds and microsynth, melodica, harpstrings and bass, RIO/Raincoats-style vocals that inhabit both the forthright and the naïve – and they’re getting pieces in ‘The Quietus’ about how they’re expanding on synaesthesia and spacework and the disjunction of time, and mining the weird yet archetypal templates of Chlöe’s recurring dreams.
While we’re waiting for more evidence to emerge, here are a couple of pieces which represent a couple of V Ä L V Ē’s varied polarities – the avant-rock all-in wrestle match of Rhythm Strip (based on an EEG reading from Chlöe’s mum) and the warming songwork of the more recent Lights – plus one of those distracted fly-on-the wall videos (this time, of Chlöe negotiating a keyboard, pretty much literally).
V Ä L V Ē’s next show (just over a week before Chlöe pops up again with the Lindsay Cooper Songbook) is this coming Sunday, supporting the Monkey Puzzle Trio – which unites perpetually/perversely-journeying art-rock and improv drummer Charles Hayward, Pinski Zoo bassist Nick Doyne-Ditmas and longstanding sound-and-place voice artist Viv Corringham. It’s a post-jazz music of deformed rounds, ranging chatter and a kind of reimagined dub focus, via Charles’ assured yet regularly broken-up and disrupted drum cycles, Viv’s cavernous range of vocal effects (stippled by loop pedal and flexible larynx, augmented by mini-disc abuse) and Nick’s bass, which seems to be travelling at two-thirds of the thinking speed of the voice and drums but always knows where to settle and lean on the moving beat.
V Ä L V Ē and Charles Hayward present:
Monkey Puzzle Trio + V Ä L V Ē Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 10th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
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Charles Hayward shows up again just under a week later when he guests at Laura Cannell’s ‘Modern Ritual’ show at LSO St Lukes, performing a self-explanatory experimental piece called ‘30 Minute Snare Drum Roll’, an “improvisational piece that sees him develop a rudimental drum technique into something more complex, subtlety changing density, pressure and volume before our ears.” There are precedents for this kind of thing – people like Max Roach or Art Blakey keeping an audience enthralled by a quarter of an hour of carefully modulated hi-hat – but any excuse to see Charles thinking hard behind a drum kit is a good one.
In many respects, this is a revisitation of the ‘Memory Mapping’ show which Laura brought to Daylight Music in November 2016. More to the point, it also revives an event at Cafe Oto last March, with repeat appearances for Charles’ drum roll, for ‘Wire’/Resonance FM/Arc Light Editions mainstay Jennifer Lucy Allan and for Suffolk-based “edgelands” musician Andre “Hoofus” Bosman.
Hoofus’ experiments in FM overlaps, raw-formed percussion and drifting oscillators “(explore) the uncanny beauty of the intangible, the occult and the arcane seeping through into the post-industrial 21st century world of reason and corporate compliance” resulting in “music of eerie wonder, where oscillating melodic loops meld with distorted rhythms.” In contrast, Jennifer presents her combined talk and performance ‘Foulis’s Daughter: Social and Cultural History of the Foghorn in 30 Interrupted Acts’ accompanied by “the ghost of a long de-activated foghorn which is on a fifteen-second loop”: Jennifer’s history is narrated during the gaps between blasts, tracing “a rhythmic history of the foghorn at the edges of the Atlantic: along the fog-bound Labrador Coast; at a bend on the Firth of Clyde; on the tip of The Lizard and from the cliffs at the South Foreland in Kent.”
In keeping with this drift into New Weird Britain ambience, writer, filmmaker and ‘Quietus’ co-founder Luke Turner explores his own world of liminals with a talk on “urban forests, family, death and sexuality”. This is based around his forthcoming “spiritual memoir” ‘Out Of The Woods’ – a study of Luke’s own coming-to-terms with his bisexual identity and his past experiences with sexual abuse and a religious upbringing, alongside his investigations of “memory and experience in the context of landscape and the natural world”. It’s a journey framed by the trees and the history of Epping Forest, which for Luke seems to have become representative of an ur-forest which allows for the expression of “a wilder, truer, more spiritual self” (and brings those wood-woses, drones and leafery which have threaded through ‘The Quietus’ into fuller perspective). Laura, meanwhile, keeps up her own traditions of reinvention, refurbishment and recontextualising on double recorder and bow-threaded violin: generating eerie, often-violent sonic landscapes of folk melodies and sharp-minded post-classical noise, each calibrated to the particular place where it’s being performed.
The evening will be topped off by a large group collaboration involving all of the named performers plus additional guests.
Laura Cannell: ‘Modern Ritual’ LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England
Saturday 16th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
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More assorted improvisations and explorations come on the 22nd, when Ashley Paul and Tom James Scott team up as a duo at The Old Dentist in Homerton. Both have a fair amount in common, as multi-instrumentalists heading up small exploratory record labels (Ashley with Wagtail, Tom with Skire). Equally, there’s enough distinction between them to make for some interesting friendly frictions as Ashley’s American background, reeds leanings and free-form tastes interact with Tom’s Cumbrian background and the process that’s taken him from classical guitarist to experimental minimalist.
In support are improvising trio Glowering Figs, made up of venerable Ya Basta! free jazzers Ivor Kallin and Dave Fowler (on electric upright bass/vocals and drums, respectively), plus Ivor’s London Improvisers Orchestra comrade and ex-Astrakan member Jerry Wigens on guitar. Come for bilious, awkward avant-power-rock noodlings topped with Ivor’s authoritative stream-of-conscious rantings: here’s an example…
Opening the show is Ben Pritchard – not to be confused with the former Fall guitarist, he’s a London-based artist, songwriter, experimental musician and Ashley Paul bandmember who writes disintegrating-shack instrumentals for prepared acoustic guitar and percussion – strangely compelling pings, scrapes, rattles and string noise with an emotive visual quality as well as a knack for summoning in illusions. You can somehow hear impressions of ghost fiddles, a whittler’s workshop, or vocal chords tweaked by breeze gusts. When he wanders into song, it’s along the frail, fluttering-shirt lines of end-of-the-road Talk Talk, or the sparsest of Robert Wyatt: spontaneous-sounding experimental folk sketches with an undertone of parched, amnesiac blues.
Muckle Mouth presents
Ashley Paul & Tom James Scott + Glowering Figs + Ben Pritchard The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Friday 22nd June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Several of London’s more convoluted art-rock genii are emerging from the woodwork to play live in the early part of June, accompanied by assorted fellow travellers and burlesque pop sympathisers. Read on…
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If you’ve wondering what a band might sound like if it fused Henry Cow, Battles and early Scritti Politti, you’re in luck… and, to be honest, probably pretty marginal. Come over here and sit next to me.
Stemming from solo work by guitarist, singer and electronics meddler Allister Kellaway, The Mantis Opera now delivers his stirring, challenging constructions via a full electro-experimental synth-rock band, voicing a collection of “avant-garde grumbles” via a multiplicity of synth sounds and colliding pop tones. If this sounds inaccessible and snooty, it isn’t. It’s just that the tunes arrive in complicated cascading splinters, many parts urging in parallel towards an out-of-sight coda, while a dreamily precise atmosphere prevails: avant-prog keeping watch from under a dream-pop veil.
The pieces themselves display an ambitious, orchestral thinking – Reykjavik, for example, is less a guitar clang with lofty ambitions and more of a cerebral/visceral string quartet piece transposed for rock band. Allister’s winding, philosophical lyrics, meanwhile, are very reminiscent of Henry Cow and of Rock in Opposition preoccupations, dissecting as they do themes of resistance, logic, language and compliance with the air of a man trying to bring intellectual rigour to the pub, grabbing at the misty answers before the closing bell rings.
Assuming that recent reports of a broken-wristed drummer haven’t entirely torpedoed their availability, Barringtone should be in support, continuing their live drive towards the release of their debut album on Onamatopoeia this summer. Released songs have been sparse over the past few years; but enjoy this new-ish brainy little post-power-pop conundrum, exhibiting Barry Dobbins’ own ambitions as he moves up from the band’s previous wry, ornamented motorik drive into much more castellated, conversational proggy territories while keeping their knuckly XTC-inspired edge intact.
Seven-piece big-pop band New Born Animal complete the lineup at this Friends Serene gig. Headed by singer/songwriter/arranger Thomas Armstrong, they’re a sonorous wall-of-drunken-sound effort who sound like Blur (during their music-hall period) dragging the Walker Brothers into a dressing-room tipple too far. If so, they also sound like the stage before it all turns nasty: slightly discombobulated singalongs where self-consciousness is just rags in the breeze, the emotional valves have been opened up and everyone in the room is temporarily your lifelong friend. If this in turn sounds sloppy, then I’d suggest that there’s a lot of craft going into something which sags and collapses so gloriously and visibly, but which never disintegrates. There’s longing, wonder and helpless laughter all brimming at the back of this.
On top of this, the whole evening’s free if you turn up soon enough…
Friends Serene presents:
The Mantis Opera + Barringtone + New Born Animal The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Shacklewell, London, E8 2EB, England
Friday 8th June 2018, 7.30pm – free entry – information here and here
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The following week, Richard Larcombe’s Lost Crowns spearhead “an evening of songs with a lot going on in them”. In many respects, it’s a re-run of their triumphant London debut at the same venue back in January. No Prescott this time, sadly (though their instrumental ping-pong twitch would have been welcome), but Kavus Torabi is back with a guitar, a hand-pumped harmonium and more songs from his ongoing solo project. Launched the other month with the ‘Solar Divination’ EP, this might be a holiday from the jewelled and roaring intricacies of his main gig with Knifeworld, but it’s certainly not an escape from the psychedelic shadows which nightwing their way through the band’s apparently celebratory rainbow arcs. For this isolated, darker, more grinding work, Kavus strips the flash-bangs away and leaves us with the droning echoes: the meditative bruises, fears and queries, many of which nonetheless contain their own seeds of determination and a kind of celebratory acceptance.
As for the headliners, last time I anticipated Lost Crowns as likely to be (deep breath) “a rich, unfolding master-craftsman’s confection… complex, artfully-meandering songs built from delightfully byzantine chords and arpeggios that cycle through ever-evolving patterns like palace clockwork; accompanied by rich, lazy clouds of hilarious, hyper-literate, wonderfully arcane lyrics; all sealed by an arch, out-of-time English manner which (in tone and timbre) falls into a never-was neverworld between Richard Sinclair, Stephen Fry, Noel Coward and a posh, Devonian Frank Zappa.”
A tall order (even it was based on what Richard’s delivered in previous projects), but I wasn’t disappointed. With Lost Crowns, Richard’s created the most dynamic and surprising music of his career.
As before, the rest of the band’s lineup is a cross-section of London art-rock luminaries: Charlie Cawood, Nicola Baigent, Rhodri Marsden, Josh Perl, drummer “Keepsie”. Certainly the influence of Richard’s brother and usual collaborator James is missed (his genial, warm, embroidering effect on Richard’s work is underrated) but his absence allows both Richard and the band to stretch out in different directions – fiercer, more crammed, sometimes brutal in their complication.
A vortex of influences funnel around Richard, including Chicago math, witty Daevid Allen psych rampage, contemporary classical music and skipping, tuneful folk singalongs. Shaped by his particular persona and thought processes – as well as his innate Englishness – it all emerges as a kind of prog, but one in which the fat and the posturing has all been burned off by the nerves and the detail, and in which his dry, melodious wit winds around the work playing mirror-tricks, theatrical feints, and the conspiratorial winks of a master boulevardier. As much at home playfully slagging off the precious venerations of synaesthesia as they are with nine-minute epics with titles like Housemaid’s Knee, Lost Crowns are a delightful self-assembling puzzle.
Frustratingly, with Richard still keeping everything close to his chest (outside of Lost Crowns’ welcoming gig environment), I’ve got nothing to show you. No embedded songs, no videos, nothing but those words and these words. Richard’s likely to keep everything culty, so the best way that you can find out whether I’m just lying through garlands here is to go to the gig yourself.
Originally this was to be a double-header with Lost Crowns’ other friends and allies, the revived psychedelic-acoustic band Lake Of Puppies (re-teaming North Sea Radio Orchestra’s Craig and Sharron Fortnam with William D. Drake, in order to build on the bouncing life-pop they cheerfully hawked around London together in the late ‘90s). Sadly, the Puppies have had to pull out of the show following Bill’s collision with pianist’s RSI in early May. Instead, Lost Crowns will play an extended set with Sharron woven into it as a special guest; while Kavus will be stretching out his own set, covering the remaining time that’s not taken up with snooker-ace-turned-avant-rock-uncle Steve Davis on DJ duty.
Lost Crowns (with special guest Sharron Fortnam) + Kavus Torabi + DJ Steve Davis Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Thursday 14th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
The first full week of June sees a three-in-a-row set of London gigs combining the contemporary classical and the outright experimental.
The Kammer Klang season bridging 2017 and 2018 now comes to its summer close with a double ensemble show featuring the unconventional trio of Oliver Coates (cello), Eliza McCarthy (piano) and Tom McKinney (banjo), and Neil Luck‘s ARCO quartet (Neil on voice and objects, joined by fellow composer/squib-box founder/ vocalist Adam de la Cour, violinist Chihiro Ono and viola player Benedict Taylor).
The Coates/McCarthy/McKinney trio will be playing chamber music by American composer Laurie Spiegel, who divides her time between professional programming and automation and writing the original music which the other two activities both inform and fund. Along with Suzanne Ciani, she’s a precursor of many latterday women immersed in and shaping music tech, such as Holly Herndon.
Once a leading light of the New York New Music scene, Laurie distanced herself from it just as it hit its public heyday in the early ’80s, having come to believe that it had sacrificed artistic integrity in favour of pumping out a readily consumable project. Since then, working for or in collaboration with various giant American communication technology firm, she’s followed her own interactive/algorithmic-inspired path primarily on electronic instruments, ranging from the Buchla synthesizer to early software synths or samplers. Among other things, she’s the conceiver and programmer of Music Mouse, mid-’80s compositional software with a “built-in knowledge of chord and scale convention and stylistic constraints” in order to encourage those who use it to think about other musical factors.
Despite Laurie’s usual focus on electronic sound production and methodology (plus its expansion into visual components), she began her musical life very much as an acoustic player – self-taught on mandolin, banjo and guitar, later moving on to lute – and has continued to write for traditional acoustic instruments either solo or in groups, and it’s this area of her work that gets an airing at this particular Kammer Klang. Seems it’s difficult to dig up examples of her acoustic work on Youtube, so instead here’s a quick, rare clip of her playing guitar followed by the New Music USA documentary from four years ago which it’s taken from, investigating Laurie’s work in broader terms (including the concept of her as a “grassroots technologist”).
Accompanied by a video work by Anders Bigum with Neil Luck, ARCO will be performing the British premiere of Neil’s new work ‘Live Guy Dead Guy’. One of Neil’s fields, loosely speaking, is musical theatre, but not of the ‘Oklahoma!’ or ‘Hamilton’ side. Rather, it’s peculiar, sometimes comical or unsettling interactions between live musicians and noisemakers, performance artists and (sometimes) whoever happens to be present in the venue at the time. One of his previous pieces, ‘Submission (Rear Naked Choke)’, is scored for “guitarist and stagehand”, while his choral work ‘PA’ features a standard choir plus speaker but also “optional audience participation”.
‘Live Guy Dead Guy’ has been described as“a batty display of his thoughts around digital identity and avatars.” Here’s a baffling clip from his earlier, similarly-themed lo-budget experimental work ‘Perfect Geek’, in which “a prodigal son returns home from Silicon Valley to visit his traditional Danish parents… he’s brought his fiancé with him; a digital avatar he’s programmed himself. Using a sort of reverse motion-capture/bad-puppet performance technique the scene classical contemporary post-digital fears via jarringly conspicuous non-digital means.”
The opening Fresh Klang item will be a solo cello performance (by Oliver Coates) of ‘Gate, gate’ by emerging synaesthetic British composer Alexia Sloane, whose inspirations are “nature, philosophy and psychology. She also enjoys exploring the setting of texts from a wide range of cultures and languages. Her method of composing involves very strongly imagining the pitches she wishes to be played or sung both melodically and harmonically away from any instrument. She writes the pitches down in Braille music and then dictates them to an amanuensis. The use and effect of silence in music fascinate her, perhaps as a result of her love of Buddhism.”
Here’s her earlier ensemble piece ‘Colour’ from the 2016 Aldeburgh Young Musicians apprentice weekend.
Kammer Klang presents:
Oliver Coates/Eliza McCarthy/Tom McKinney play Laurie Spiegel + Neil Luck/ARCO + Oliver Coates plays Alexia Sloane Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 5th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
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The following night, there’s a launch concert for Nonclassical‘s new EP release – ‘Outside The Lines – Vol. 2’.
“The ‘Outside The Lines’ series showcases new and emerging artists, bringing interesting, boundary-pushing music to the fore, and spanning the breadth of the new classical music scene in London and beyond. Curated by radio DJ, tastemaker and all-round musical adventurer Nick Luscombe, the EP celebrates the diverse breadth of new classical music being created in scenes in London and beyond.
“A selection of artists from the EP will perform live, alongside sets by Nonclassical DJs. There’s a new work by Midori Komachi for violin and field recordings, plus a new composition by Zoë Martlew for cello and tape performed by Cecilia Bignall – both of which will be performed live, alongside other artists and sets by Nonclassical DJs.
“Also featuring contributions from singing cellist Anyanna Witter-Johnson, percussionist Beth Higham-Edwards, cellist Gabriella Swallow, and composers Freya Waley-Cohen and Charlotte Harding, the release is available for streaming and download from 8th June. It’s an EP full of artists that are bending the rules and finding their voice – artists that aren’t afraid to colour outside the lines. Enter the secret bookcase at the back of The Victoria in Dalston to join us for the launch party.”
There’s not much more information on the EP just yet, so here are some previous pieces and performances by some of the associated composers and performers:
Nonclassical presents:
Outside the Lines #2 EP Launch: Anyanna Witter-Johnson + Cecilia Bignall + Beth Higham-Edwards + Gabriella Swallow etc. (playing Midori Komachi, Zoë Martlew, Freya Waley-Cohen, Charlotte Harding etc.) The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England
Wednesday 6th June 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here
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…and the evening after that, Club Inégales continues its Song Of Songs sequence (I’m a bit disappointed that I’ve missed the existence of the preceding ones…)
“…Drawing inspiration from Middle Eastern and Asian poets such as Rumi and Khalil Gibran, and that exceptionally sensual chapter in the Bible ‘The Song of Solomon’, our house band and talented guests will be celebrating music and poetry that expresses love and devotion, in both human and mystical ways.
“In the fourth of five shows, we are very lucky to be showcasing the talents of Jenni Roditi‘s The Improvisers’ Choir, who recently won the Non-Classical Battle of the Bands Competition. They are truly impressive, and we can’t wait for them take us on spontaneous journeys of vocal invention from our Euston HQ.
“As always, our ever-adventurous house band Notes Inégales will be on hand to help bring both artists’ exciting sonic explorations to life. As always, there’ll be delicious food from Taste of India available on the day, and free WiFi.”
Club Inégales presents:
Jenni Roditi & The Improvisers’ Choir Club Inégales, 180 North Gower Street, Euston, London, NW1 2NB, England
Thursday 7th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
With the cake-crumbs and echoes just settling on the last of Daylight Music’s May shows, it’s time to look forward to their June ones – a treasure-trove of contemporary folk, pop, drones, chamber music, mambo, samplescapes, chanson, and classical and soul fusions. Dip deep.
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“The 2nd June show features Pieter Nooten, Moon Gangs and Blasio Kavuma.
“Pieter Nooten is a Dutch musician and composer best known for his work with the legendary Clan Of Xymox. Over the course of his varied career in music, he has produced numerous dance, ambient and avant garde records. He will perform songs from his long-awaited new album ‘Stem’.
“Moon Gangs is the solo project of BEAK>’s keyboardist William Young. His music mixes analogue synth loops with foreboding, cinematic drones, heavily influenced by teenage years spent playing Commodore 64 games and listening to film scores like ‘Terminator’.
“Blasio Kavuma is a London-based composer, arranger and curator. He has recently completed a collaboration with visual artist Gina Southgate involving live visual responses to his music, and he currently has a residency with dance company Wayward Thread. Drawing from a range of musical traditions, his music is full of rhythmic vitality and stylistic versatility, and is committed to championing forward-thinking music that is accessible to a wide audience.
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“The 16th June show features She Makes War, Garance & The Mitochondries and Chaouche.
“Making a welcome return to Daylight Music, She Makes War (a.k.a. multi-instrumentalist, producer and visual artist Laura Kidd, blending urgent indie rock with melancholy torch songs) previews new material from her fourth album, which is due for release in September 2018.
“Garance & The Mitochondries pairs Garance Louis (an extrovert, eccentric composer, singer and accordionist) with a band who mix Venezuelan mambo and psychedelic folk with the melancholy softness of post-musette songwriting. The result is a fresh, new way of interpreting the tradition of French chanson. Garance has busked her way across the world, travelling through New Orleans, Brazil, Portugal and Italy with her accordion in hand, and her adventures are documented in her songs.
“The music of Bristol-based singer/musician/producer Chaouche has been described as “heartbreaking and spine tingling hymns” by ‘Wonderland’ magazine. Her delicate piano playing features prominently and is bolstered by balanced production of her own massed vocals, programmed drums, sub-bass, cello, violin and an obsession with reverb and delay.
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“The 23rd June show features Sans Soucis Experience, Alisha Sufit and Malin Andersson.
“Sans Soucis Experience is a fusion soul collective of musicians based in London. Coming from different countries and meeting in the heart of Europe, they bring together a shared love for their own folk music, blending Central African and European influences and border interests in hip-hop, jazz and soul for this acoustic performance.
“Alisha Sufit was the singer/songwriter with the pioneering British psychedelic folk band Magic Carpet, who released an album of the same name in 1972 on the Mushroom label. The album is now highly sought after. British guitarist Davey Graham wrote “her voice, full of love, soars and swoops, her lyrics full of keen observation and tender comment.” Alisha also sang and recorded with Amorphous Androgynous, and has recorded four solo albums.
“Swedish singer-songwriter Malin Andersson grew up close to nature, and her songs reflect the sound of the wilderness and honest Scandinavian simplicity. Her style of gentle fingerpicking guitar playing, mixed with contemplative lyrics and evocative melodies, has gained considerable support outside her homeland.
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“The final June show, on the 29th, features Henning Fuchs, Takeo Toyama and Kate Ellis.
“Film composer Henning Fuchs will perform ‘A New Beginning’, a performance that combines live music and live sampling together with sound artist Patrick Muller and visual artist Sven Mücke. This bewitching performance celebrates silence and stillness of the mind. Silence is never solely the end. It is also always the beginning of something new. This idea is reflected throughout the composition.
“Discordant harmonies and fast-changing beats are the trademark of the sound variations of pianist Takeo Toyama. His innovative digital compositions for analogue instruments have attracted considerable attention. After recording five full-length albums, he has now started to arrange tracks for various artists, TV shows and animations. He is also in great demand as a composer for modern dance choreographies.
“Cellist Kate Ellis is dedicated to the performance and exploration of all things with the shiny label of new music. Kate is the Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble, and a member of the Taquin Experiments, Yurodny and Fovea Hex.”
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As usual, all gigs are at Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England and are free, though it’s good form to donate a fiver on the way in or out. Dates below:
Daylight Music 283: Pieter Nooten + Moon Gangs + Blasio Kavuma, Saturday 2nd June 2018, 12:00pm – information
Daylight Music 284: She Makes War + Garance & The Mitochondries + Chaouche, Saturday 16th June 2018, 12:00pm – information
Daylight Music 285: Sans Soucis Experience + Alisha Sufit + Malin Andersson, Saturday 23rd June 2018, 12:00pm – information
Daylight Music 286: Henning Fuchs + Takeo Toyama + Kate Ellis, Saturday 30th June 2018, 12:00pm – information
Quick repostings for a couple of early June concerts on the heavy/complicated side… another Facemelter metal night in London mixing up a big pile of prefixes (post-, sludge-, grunge- hardcore etc.); and a Smokehouse show in the warm, dark heart of Suffolk uniting The Display Team’s blazing jazz-rock convolutions, Babar Love’s acoustic hip-hop and reggae-folk, and Perhaps Contraption’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink brassery.
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Chaos Theory Music Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Archelon + La Bestia de Gevaudan + DeadBlondeStars The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 1st June 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
“A super special edition of our long-running night, as we see a southern album release, a UK debut tour pass through from Chile and the latest signing on Rockosmos.
“Archelon are a stunning post-metal and sludge band from Sheffield, who we saw just beginning to explode into their true selves last year. Now a five-piece band and with a powerful debut album under their belts, Archelon have reached a point where they have crafted a nuanced and textured sound, taking cues from Neurosis, Cult of Luna and Isis, yet standing out on their own. Their album ‘Tribe Of Suns’ is out now via Sludgelord Records – this is the London release show.
“La Bestia de Gevaudan are passing through the UK for the first time on their way from Dunk!festival in Belgium. Blending genres that many of us may be familiar with (such as post-rock, sludge, electronica, post-metal and hardcore), this Chilean band have somehow created a sound not totally like anything we’ve heard from European and North American bands in the same scenes. Their forthcoming album ‘Kintsukuroi’ will be finished in the second half of 2018 and features Mike Armine (Rosetta) and Eric Quach (thisquietarmy). Having already opened for Neurosis, Ruins Alone, Deafheaven and thisquietarmy, it’s time for the UK to catch up and discover something unconventional within a scene that we know well.
“The latest band to join the roster for esteemed prog rock label Rockosmos (which already has many releases out for Amplifier, Awooga and Thumpermonkey), DeadBlondeStars are a sumptuous throwback to some of the best grunge bands, so fans of Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and Alice In Chains are going to be overjoyed to hear them. Proof that some of our foundations can be pulled forward and made relevant again.”
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Uncomfortable Beach Party Promotions present:
The Display Team + Babar Luck + Perhaps Contraption The Smokehouse, South Street Studios, 6 South Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 3NU, England
Saturday 9th June 2018, 8.30pm – information here
“This gig is a little out of the ordinary for the Uncomfortable Beach Party, but all the same we are excited to announce…
“The Display Team (the band that grew from the ashes of Mumra – in other words, it’s been a long time since they were last in Ipswich) are an infuriating blend of catchy and off-the-wall mental. Any fans of Cardiacs will not want to miss this gig. Horns a-plenty, falsetto vocals and a frenzied mess of time changes make up much of their sound. Check out their new album ‘Shifts’.
“Support comes from the gentleman known as Babar Luck. A true wild spirit and a troubadour. I’m sure you’ll all know him both as the bass player in King Prawn and for his own inimitable solo stuff. He’s a man powered by love, and he’ll be dead happy if you get him stoned.
“And opening the night will be The Display Team’s trombonist’s other band Perhaps Contraption, who describe themselves as “marching band/jazz/punk/avant-rock/post-classical/something”, and sound no less mental or horn-led than the Display Team. A brass band with a real difference the likes of which you’ve not seen at Uncomfortable Beach Party Promotions gigs before.
“Don’t miss this gig – all the sets will be mindblowing, I promise ya.”
North Sea Radio Orchestra are bringing their chamber-fusion sound to south London as part of the Lambeth Readers & Writers Festival. They’re a leafy and lambent confection of strings, reeds, nylon-strong guitar, boutique post-Stereolab keyboards and softened brass, fronted by the heartfelt disparate vocals of husband and wife team Sharron and Craig Fortnam (one a clarion carol, the other a papery whisper-croon).
Given the Festival’s context, they might pull out a few of the pieces with which they initially made their name a decade-and-a-half ago – garlanded, illuminated settings of Thomas Hardy, William Blake and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Either way, come for an evening which merges English country-garden airiness with German experimental rock boffinry and Zappa-styled tuned-percussion tinkles. Regular gigmate and sometime NSRO contributor William D. Drake was scheduled for a support slot, but since an injury put him out of action for the summer, he’s had to pull out. There may or may not be a suitable replacement.
There’s a tenuous but true link between NSRO and Yumi Hara’s Half The Sky project. On top of the existing ties of friendship, they’re both mostly-acoustic chamber music projects with prominent bassoon and an electric experimental rock component; both focus predominantly on a single composer; both lean (implicitly or explicitly) towards the ‘70s Canterbury scene and sound.
However, where NSRO has a core of sweetness Half The Sky is decidedly umami. Set up to curate, recreate and perform the work of the late Lindsay Cooper (and specialising in the repertoire she put out for the groups Henry Cow, News From Babel and Music for Films) theirs is a knottier, more querying sound: a winding road full of debate and pointings, animated but affectionate.
There have been shifts in the band recently. While Yumi continues on keyboards and lever harp alongside co-founder/former Cow drummer Chris Cutler, and singer Dagmar Krause was added as the primary vocalist for last year’s European dates, the band now features John Greaves on bass and keyboards and Tim Hodgkinson on reeds and lap steel, bringing its ex-Cow member count up to four (with Chlöe Herington still on hand to add more assorted reeds). They’ve kept the fifty-fifty male/female player ratio which reflected their original title, but have now taken up the more sober, less whimsical name of Lindsay Cooper Songbook. This will be the debut of the new crew, but here’s video of various previous lineups of the band in action in London and Japan…
The evening also features three support sets drawn from the ensemble. Making their British debut, The Watts unites Yumi Hara with Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler in a post-Cow trio. John Greaves adds a solo performance of his own songs on voice and piano, and Chlöe Herington (following the development of her VALVE project into a collective female trio which, in some respects, echoes Lindsay’s work with FIG) will be returning to her own solo roots with music for bassoon and electronics. If there are any gaps left, staunch ‘Organ’-ista Marina Organ will be filling them with her DJ set, drawing on the horde of fringe-rock and experimental records she plays on her Resonance FM show.
Lindsay Cooper Songbook + The Watts + John Greaves + Chlöe Herington + DJ Marina Organ Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Saturday 16th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
There’ll be a second chance to catch them this summer – at the Zappanale in Bad Doberan Germany on 21st July. For those who missed my Lindsay summary last time, here’s a trimmed version:
“Long before the knot of current pop-culture wrangling over women’s control over the music they make, (Lindsay) was plugging away in her own corner, striving (and ultimately succeeding) for much the same thing in the often arid and unforgiving spaces of British art rock, improv and jazz… Pinning down the nature of a woman’s work in art – or women’s work in general – is not always an easy thing, nor even desirable. Even the most positive intentions can produce more restrictive categories, more unwanted boxings and demands to conform.
“In the case of Lindsay, whose career always foregrounded honest effort and end product over personality showboating, and which was tinted by doubt and determination, it’s probably best to concentrate mostly on the mind behind the music: to listen to the querying voice coming through. Operating over a set of times in which both contemporaries and colleagues had a tendency towards answers and stances, stated in both bald pronouncements and modernist-baroque ornamentations, she opted to bring a more questioning tone which nonetheless carried some of its possible answers in both action and presentation.
“Hers was a polymathic but purer musicality: an instrumental voice which voyaged alongside others’ often harsher pronouncements, détournements and doctrines and drew from them while never being subject to them, and which always kept a gentler, more accommodating side open to allow growing space and to consistently rebuild… She was responsible for most of the piled jazzy grandeur of the second side (of Henry Cow’s ‘Western Culture’) finding previously unexplored links between the music of New York, Canterbury and Switzerland)…
“In the late ’70s Lindsay had already formed the witty, subversive Feminist Improvising Group, or FIG (which) not only enabled previously sidelined female voices onto the improv scene but deliberately upturned expectations as to what such a scene could achieve. FIG were spontaneous, mutually supportive and – just as importantly – funny. With a strong and personal rooting in lesbian, class-based and feminist activism (plus parallel feelings of sidelining and denial on the part of others) but a suspicion of dogma, they expressed frustration and political challenge by drawing on a collective sense of the absurd and of the sympathetic… Men carped, frowned and cold-shouldered; women laughed, argued and sometimes welcomed; the group members continually challenged their own sense of self and role; but the work itself sounds joyously unshackled – something I would have loved to have been around to see…
“Post-Cow and FIG, Lindsay ran her own Film Music Orchestra to create and record arthouse soundtracks (often working in cinematic cahoots with Sally Potter). She rejoined Chris Cutler for the 1980s post-Marxist art-song project News From Babel (in which) Chris’ social and political musings would make a happier marriage with the pop-cabaret end of Lindsay’s music. She also contributed to the counter-cultural jazz colours of various Mike Westbrook and John Wolf Brennan bands, played with Pere Ubu ranter David Thomas, worked in theatre and (in the ’90s) composed a more formal chamber music which nonetheless retained the edge and inquiring spirit of her work in avant-rock and political art. She’d collaborate with Potter again for the Cold War song cycle ‘Oh, Moscow’ in the late ’80s, to which Chris Cutler also contributed. If encroaching multiple sclerosis (which had privately dogged her throughout her post-Cow career) hadn’t dragged her into early retirement in the late ’90s, there would have been more.
“(Lindsay Cooper Songbook) provide a welcome re-introduction to Lindsay’s work, performed by committed people whose sympathy with Lindsay Cooper’s music is absolute. However, they should also be viewed as a window onto the wider career of a quietly remarkable woman whose death in 2013 forced a premature coda onto the work of a mind whose personal humility had been more than balanced by its nimbleness, thoughtful and flexibility. Come along to these concerts and hear some of that mindwork and heartwork come alive again.”
Last month, I said that June would see “a couple more” of Nest Collective’s unamplified outdoor folk gigs. Instead, there’s going to be a cavalcade – six in the space of four weeks, including one double event on the 21st, itself part of a cluster of three later in the month.
See below for a quick roundup of their early summer recipe – including Senegalese griot, storytelling, chamber jazz (well, presumably not “chamber” anymore), folk-rap, country, Gothic blues and pop chorale in addition to folk flavours from the British Isles, continental Europe and the United States. They’re taking place in London’s children’s playgrounds, open spaces and artist’s studio yards: as with many of the Nest Collective gigs, some of the locations are hidden and secret with the locations only given to ticketholders, so plan ahead.
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Campfire Club: Seckou Keita
(secret location), Bow, London, England
Friday 1st June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
“How to describe Seckou Keita? Griot, praise singer, composer, djembe master, virtuoso, Kora player, pioneer? The answer is ‘yes’ to all of those. Seckou Keita is a true master of his instrument, a childhood prodigy, born of a line of griots and kings (Keita is the royal lineage, and not traditionally a griot name). Cissokho, his mother’s family name, gave life to his talent. His family includes Solo Cissokho, Seckou’s uncle, who introduced him to the International stage in 1996.
“The intense rhythm of Seckou’s working life has been driven by the desirability of his musical talents and his ability to get along with all kinds of different people. He toured with the Sierra Leonean musician, Francis Fuster, one time sidekick to Paul Simon, Miriam Makeba and Manu Dibango, and with Baka Beyond, whose founders Martin Cradick and Su Hart had befriended Seckou in Ziguinchor a few years before. The pair helped to produce his first solo kora album, ‘Baiyo’ (Orphan), which was released in 2000 (and subsequently renamed ‘Mali’ by the record label Arc Music).”
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Campfire Club: Gwyneth Herbert + Noemie Ducimetiere Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton Street, Shoreditch, London, E1 5AR, England
Friday 15th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
“Gwyneth Herbert is a strikingly original performer, award-winning composer and lyricist and versatile musical adventurer who continues to redefine and challenge expectations. Drawing on influences from the worlds of jazz, folk, contemporary classical music and storytelling, she has worked in collaboration with writers, musicians, directors, choreographers, visual artists, academics, clowns and young people to create a huge canon of genre- defying interdisciplinary work, as well as touring nationally and internationally with her band and releasing six critically albums to date on major, independent and self-owned labels.
“2018 sees the launch of Gwyneth’s ambitious and hugely anticipated seventh album and live show, ‘Letters I Haven’t Written’, songs from which she recently previewed in session for BBC Radio 2 and live from the Edinburgh Festival on BBC Radio 3. Gwyneth describes the project as “a musical, narrative and visual journey exploring the lost art of letter writing. Through blots of heartbreak, strokes of curiosity and scribbles of whimsy, ‘Letters…’ unearths the emotional complexities of putting pen to paper, and, in a climate of status updates and limited characters, seeks to find a more meaningful dialogue with the world”.
“A singer, composer and instrumentalist currently based in London UK, Noemie Ducimetiere is best known for her wide range of musical styles and her work with nine-piece band Gentle Mystics. With the Mystics currently on a recording hiatus, she is taking to the stage with her solo explorations of folk, rock and what some have called gothic blues. Noemie is a self-taught musician with an experimental approach, who found her mentors in her diverse influences: mid-century French cabaret, American blues, traditional Eastern folk and desert rock… today her live set-up comprises of an electric guitar and an expanse of blinking effects pedals.”
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Campfire Club: The Embers Collective
(secret location), Brockley, London, SE4, England
Thursday 21st June 2018, 7:00pm – information here, here and here
“The Embers Collective is a London based storytelling and live music collective formed by three friends; a writer, an actor and a musician who wanted to put on events with a focus on community, and driven by a passion for the art of sharing stories. Their events bring audiences together through the exploration of myths and folklore from all over the world. Each of their stories is accompanied by a live, professional multi-instrumentalist whose soundscapes take listeners on a journey. They welcome you to their warm embrace.”
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Campfire Club: Dizraeli + James Riley Kindred Studios, 18 Saltram Crescent, West Kilburn, London, W9 3HW, England
Thursday 21st June 2018, 7:00pm – information here, here and here
“Dizraeli is a rapper, multi-instrumentalist and sometime singer taking hiphop to new terrains. His exploration has taken him to unexpected places: he composed the soundtrack for a new parallel-worlds comedy on E4 (Tripped); he toured France with producer and turntablist DJ DownLow; he spent a week in the refugee camp at Calais, giving workshops and listening to the migrants there. At the start of 2016, he travelled to Senegal to study West African music with an albino master, and in a remote fishing village covered in dust and music, he finished six new songs. Carrying these pieces home to London in his head, he decided to record them in a completely new way. Instead of shutting himself in a vibeless, carpeted studio where the impulse of the songs would be lost, he would invite an audience of close friends to the basement of a cafe, play live for those friends and record what he played – no editing; no studio tricks: in the words of one of the tracks: “Through the lens to the substance”.
“Born of a transatlantic relationship, James Riley grew up in South East London listening to the folk and soul sound of 70s America and wrote his first melody at the age of four. His first guitar, acquired at the age of nine, became the tool for surviving the tumult of a nowhere place, and helped James find somewhere he felt he belonged. In his early twenties, he took off, alone once again, hitchhiking and busking through Europe from Amsterdam to Istanbul, writing songs along the way. Back in the UK, these songs became a band, but eventually James had to shed another skin, and disembarked in Nashville, Tennessee. Here he found his producer and they set about making the album which had travelled with him to his maternal homeland, where it could finally get free.”
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Campfire Club: London Contemporary Voices Glengall Wharf Garden, 64 Glengall Road, Peckham, London, SE15 6NF, England
Friday 22nd June 2018, 7:00pm – information here, here and here
“London Contemporary Voices specialises in work with established bands, including gigs, recordings and festivals. We also perform at private and corporate events, and host our own largescale concerts. They have worked with over fifty artists, including Sam Smith, James Bay, Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons), Joss Stone, Elbow, Alt-J, Basement Jaxx, Imogen Heap, Laura Mvula, Charlotte Church, Kate Nash, Alison Moyet, Kim Wilde, Nitin Sawhney, Ella Eyre, Little Mix, The Vamps, Public Service Broadcasting, Andreya Triana, Nicole Scherzinger, Andy Burrows and many more!”
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Campfire Club: Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith + Sophie Janna Spitalfields City Farm, Buxton Street, Shoreditch, London, E1 5AR, England
Friday 29th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
“Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith are one of the finest duos to have emerged onto the British folk and acoustic scene in recent years. Their combination of outstanding vocal work, sensitive instrumentation, and a powerful social conscience has brought them widespread critical acclaim. The songs themselves are always given centre stage but they are brought to life with stunning musical arrangements and vocals. There is an integrity that shines through their performances and a common thread of political struggle, resistance, and justice. Their critically acclaimed second album ‘Night Hours’ was released in December 2016 on Fellside Recordings. Described as “exhilaratingly diverse and full of impeccably crafted songs”, it has cemented the duo’s reputation as two of the most exciting musicians and social commentators on the scene.
“Sophie Janna sings dark songs from eras past as if they were written yesterday. The person who guesses the correct number of deaths and broken hearts at the end of a gig will get a reward. Sophie accompanies herself on guitar, thumb piano, bodhrán or on nothing at all.”
I’m rushing this one into post, since I’ve only just heard about it. No apologies for the excessive cut-and-paste here, nor for the absence of much personal insight (although I will say that when a shortage of information meant that I had to dig deeper, I found more).
“While touring the world as guest multi-instrumentalist with Mogwai, Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie, Bows, Music A.M.) used the downtime to sketch a bunch of songs. Once he got home, he wrote a handful more and recorded them with the help of a few friends at his cottage on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. The result was an album’s worth of material with references ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Teebs, Lemmy-era Hawkwind to ABBA, Vaughan Williams to Boulez.
“Keen to translate the radiant chaos of the recordings into a live setting, Luke put together Rev Magnetic, featuring Audrey Bizouerne (Gift Horse), Sam Leighton (Live w/ Prides, St MARTiiNS) and Gregor Emond who played with Luke in a band called Hynd, way back before the birth of the internet. Combining elements of dream pop, shoegaze, R&B, and post rock, their first single, Like No Girl That Ever Was/Don’t Let Joy Destroy You is the sound of summer at full pelt.”
Imminent Scottish and English tour dates are below:
Neu! Reekie @ St Andrew’s Church, 410-412 Easter Road, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 8HT, Scotland, Friday 25th May 2018, 7.15pm (with Salome Benidze + Helen Mort + Erin Friel + The Honey Farm) – information here and here
Stereo, 22-28 Renfield Lane, Glasgow, G2 6PH, Scotland, Sunday 27th May 2018, 7.30pm (supporting Superchunk) – information here and here
The Hug & Pint, 171 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G4 9AW, Scotland, Tuesday 29th May 2018, 7.30pm (with Nova Scotia The Truth + Caitlin Buchanan) – information here and here
The New Adelphi Club, 89 De Grey Street, Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, HU5 2RU, England, Thursday 31st May 2018, 8.00pm (with Foolish Atoms + others t.b.c.) – information here, here and here
Conroy’s Basement, 51-53 Meadowside, Dundee, DD1 1EQ, Scotland, Friday 1st June 2018, 8.00pm (with Stonethrower + winterThieves) – information here
It’s probably accidental, but when you take a look at the finer details of the tour, it’s almost like an exploded reflection of Luke’s influences and sympathies; the cultural and artistic breadth he’s shown throughout a career voyaging through books and music. Indie rock and dance chemistry, hip hop and poetry; filtered and transformed Scottish folk; literacy and blasting noise. The balancing of multiple cultures in one evening, or just in one person.
Regarding the Glasgow shows… if you’ve been hitting on indie-punk playlists and festival lineups for the past twenty years, you’ll need little introduction to Superchunk. Headlining over Luke and co. at Stereo, they’re early ‘90s favourites who helped define a Carolina DIY punk sound. They were all over the inkies back in the day more or less during the same time that Luke first was; they founded Merge Records, and have kept their place in indie rock affections ever since. On the other hand, the two support acts at the Hug & Pint show are still thrumming – just – under the radar.
Originally from Aberdeen, Caitlin Buchanan is an emerging acoustic singer-songwriter working towards her first EP and taking Angel Olsen, Laura Marling and Kate Bush as influences. Perhaps Angel’s the most obvious one – the slowcore tempos, the collapsing drapes of melody – but Caitlin has little of Angel’s narcotic slur. She also isn’t as propulsive or as easy-to-follow as Laura, and (despite her own musical theatre background) isn’t as brilliantly hammy as Kate.
That’s not actually a string of negatives. Rather, it’s a suggestion that, even at this early stage, Caitlin’s already sloughed off her initial inspirations and found a voice of her own: a folded, cleverly elusive literary one which makes you sit up and take notice, full of double-take lyrical moments. Nestled in strong hammocks of folk guitar, and in gorgeous transplanted curves of Scottish melody, her songcraft is often a series of strange elisions and non-sequiturs somehow coalescing into stories, delivered in a velvety softness which makes it all the more jolting when she drops a perfectly-enunciated precision F-bomb into the crook of a tune – “I fucked up your favourite song, and this is why I don’t do imitations. / Betrayed by the idea of God, we are her most hated creations / Dressed for the office but underqualified, / express my gratitude between her slender thighs…”
I suspected that Nova Scotia The Truth might have picked her name as a ScotNat political assertion. It seems that I was half right. A “queen of sample-based electronic music”, active in the Scottish hip hop scene since her teenage years (and now stretching out as a producer-performer), Nova might well be representing a rising strand of modern Scotland, but not necessarily one which will cradle comfortably in the old-school saltire. Her preoccupations are with feminism and of people of colour: a pavement-and-club engagement with embedded and intersectional inequalities, mapped out in whip-crack sonic edits and shifts.
Nova’s recent ‘Al-Haqq’ EP is a determined but bewildering mash of pointers and unrest. Cyber-mimetic R&B, corbies and round-chamberings; blasts of rap and dancehall chat; industrial-grime sound collage; all mixed in with found speech from black culture and protest and faith (some of it tweaked and repurposed, but much of it left free to run). The follow-up, Zoom, is a half-hour of rapid sonic cross-cuts in a similar vein: it’s intended as a backing track for a live rap story of love and talk gone wrong, ultimately, broadening out to a wider exploration about power imbalances in relationships, silencings and language. As with a lot of underground hip hop, there’s plenty packed in there: I’m guessing that onstage, this flies.
The Dundee show could have been created as a vast-contrast tribute to Luke’s own willingness to be broad in listening. Rev Magnetic aside, it’s a truly strange, rather brave pairing of opposites. “East coast ecossemo” band Stonethrower bring “monolithic slabs of lead-heavy riffage, angular rage-filled spiky melodies and frantic jazz-core arrangements to blast our faces off”; while Edinburgh/Dundee duo winterThieves are a sacramental ambient act “pool(ing) their varied musical backgrounds to craft a sound that is in equal measures melancholic and euphoric, featuring vast ambient swells, lush guitar and piano melodies, and crashing drums,”, playing wordless slow-reveal post-rock hymnals to an empty sky. The angry hammer and the lonely quilt.
South of the border, the London show features Ilk, whose “colourful and dreamy songs unravel against a collision of psych pop influences and scruffy, found sound warmth… the band’s songs and sketches are somehow both grandiose and playful, upbeat and melancholic” plus the “psychedelic jazz-infused” songwriting of rising folk-rock favourite Jack Cheshire in solo mode.
Supporting at Hull, Chris Norrison – a.k.a. Foolish Atoms – is a solo performer who “dreams up droning acoustic swamps in his sleep… creating music so delusional and pain numbing, audiences peacefully drown in the sweet rustic guitar tones and his strained vocals.” Other acts will be added at Hull over the course of the next few days: let’s see what the city’s recent pop-cultural renaissance has produced…
However, it’s the Edinburgh show which looks like the pick of the crop. It’s a packed-to-the-gills mass of words, music and beats put together by “Scotland’s favourite avant-garde noisemakers” and high/low art boundary-smashers Neu! Reekie, as a partial benefit for the Save Leith Walk community crowdfunder.
As well as Rev Magnetic, on hand for performance are poets Salome Benidze and Helen Mort and a couple of Scottish hip hop acts. Onetime Deadlife Crew member Erin Friel (part of a wave of Scottish hip hoppers who stick, refreshingly, to their own accents and cadences) recently opened for rapper/activist Loki at his sell out King Tuts event for Poverty Safari. The Honey Farm – Scotland’s only all-female rap crew – are self-confessed East Lothian rap bumpkins who “simultaneously skewer and celebrate rap stereotypes with their unapologetic, take no shit attitude” and whose recent debut release L.A.D.S. is “a dragged-up pussy-grabs-back takedown of laddish, bullshit behaviour.”
It’s not quite the fierce textured outrospection of Nova, and perhaps the Farm sometimes let their drama school backgrounds show a little, but it’s all fine. Wit over pose; and plenty of rap’s supposed to be accessible, youthful and funny, including the bit of cross-cast fun with which the Farm kick off the roll of verbiage below…
Some interesting technological, electronic, sociological collisions are coming up in London this month and next month.
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If you’re fascinated by art and technology but find either or both too crowded by aggressive/patronizing male ownership and entitlement, or if you just like the idea of different viewpoints and identities being brought to bear on the world of geektech, you might find the following an interesting opportunity…
“WITCiH (Women In Technology Creative Industries Hub) is hosting a party to celebrate the making of its podcast pilot episode, featuring Irish composer/producer and “latterday Delia Derbyshire” Hannah Peel (whose work includes the Rebox musical box project, collaborations with John Foxx and membership of The Magnetic North, and whose analogue-synth-cum-brass-band project ‘Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’ recently headlined at the newly refurbished Queen Elizabeth Hall). There will also be an interactive audio-visual performance with AV duo Output Arts and WITCiH co-founder Bishi, featuring the former’s immersive installation Storm, which “recreates the thrill and excitement of watching a storm as it moves from dark and foreboding to booming explosions of light as the gale approaches” and which was previously seen at Enchanted Parks in Gateshead.
“This is an ideal opportunity to get together with artists and professionals in the creative tech industries. Science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) have always had an intimate relationship with the arts; and WITCiH (Women In Technology Creative Industries Hub) aims to explore & expand our knowledge of women working at that intersection – past, present & future. WITCiH is female-focused but is gender inclusive, welcoming to all people throughout the spectrum of gender and identity.
“WITCiH aims to educate and inspire people through an understanding of women and non-binary people in tech, set in an historical context; and to highlight, celebrate and showcase women currently working in technology with a clear focus on creativity and the arts. Founded by interdisciplinary musician/artists and audio-visual performers Bishi and Matthew Hardern (a.k.a. Glamorre), WITCiH is an online and real world platform for ideas, research, performance, creation & networking.”
Previous WITCiH events in last year’s Winter Salon series have featured Bishi herself, Empress Stah (the aerial artist, cabaret performer, show producer/director and Peaches collaborator) and media artist Aphra Shemz, who “(seeks) to express herself through radical new technologies, abstraction, interactivity and light, (exploring) the way in which we might use these tools to imagine what the role of art could be in the future.” WITCiH are currently “looking for sponsorship to produce an entire series, so any ideas of how we could achieve this are very welcome.” If you’ve got any, get in touch and get stuck in.
WITCiH and Bishi present:
WITCiH Podcast Listening Party The Barge House, 46a De Beauvoir Crescent, De Beauvoir Town, London, N1 5RY, England
Wednesday 30th May 2018, 8.00pm – information here
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A week later, a group of people led by space designer Tuo Lin are decking out Bloomsbury’s house-of-weird The Horse Hospital for what organiser Rica Zhu is claiming will be “a unique synth/electronic music show with a stunning visual journey. We bet it’s gonna be a magic time of synth electronic music you have never experienced before! Three musicians are ready to refresh your ears by using some special instruments with multiple synthesisers to take you to a neo synth world! The venue is also installed like a light-reflecting crystal especially for the interaction of the synth music and full of interesting experimental elements. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s fly to the electronic galaxy!”
That may sound a little gushy, perhaps even a tad huāpíng, but the music itself suggests otherwise. Handling the noises, textures and tunes are Yoshiki Ichihara (maker of jittery, bubbling cave/chemical tank music), “relaxed bass-focussed dance” specialist Sam Hostettler (who also creates immersive sub-bass rollscapes) and Przemysław Trzaska (who makes wombadelic firework electronica as Crowstep). Given the Horse Hospital’s already trippy architecture – rooms which burst off a set of long ramped floorways, originally built to lead horses to the upstairs section, and sharing space with a collection of archive fashion costumes – plus the promise of crazed crystallinity, you can expect a delightfully disorientating evening.
Rica Zhu presents:
Synth 2.0: Yoshiki Ichihara + Sam Hostettler + Przemysław Trzaska The Horse Hospital, The Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Thursday 7th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
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In the middle of June, down at the DIY Space, they’re sketching out something broad and absorbing which will investigate and defy interconnectivity and its impact on art and music-making. So far, only the bare bones of the concept have been made public. Here they are:
“NowHere is an event series focusing on post-internet music and art. We invite emerging artists to collaborate together, creating one-off multimedia performances inspired by the internet but will not be shareable online. To do so, mobile phones won’t be allowed in this event.
“The Internet is a huge simulating machine through which everything is reproducible. Will the content of the performance and our experience still be original and valuable when it can be copied over and over again? We want to raise and discuss this question with our artists and audiences through this event. We want to create a commonplace in the middle of virtual and physical reality, bringing music and arts from nowhere on the internet to now here, a physical space where celebrating improvised performance emerged from the intimate connection between artists and audiences.”
No news on who’s creating and performing here yet – I’ll try to put up an update closer to the time. As with all DIY Space events, this is a members-and-guests only event, so if you’re going be sure to sign up for your two-quid annual membership deal here first.
Sadteabag Ltd. presents:
‘NowHere_0000000000000001’ (lineup t.b.c.) DIY Space For London, 96-108 Ormside Street, South Bermondsey, London, SE15 1TF, England
Sunday 17th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Regardless of gentrification, Stoke Newington remains one of the best London places to look if you’re up for hippy-punk cabaret weirdness. This is not just due to the regular string of evening goings-on and shenanigans at The Others, but also because of the recent revival of Slapper’s Club at the Mascara Bar heading up to Stamford Hill. Curated as a joint effort between multi-skilled classical rebel-turned-sultry/scholarly Mediaeval Baebe/Miranda Sex Garden singer Katherine Blake and glam-socialist piano player/Speaker’s Corner veteran Clifford Slapper (possibly best known, despite a whirl of activity, for his work on Bowie songs), it’s a loose-bag celebration of artistic diversity… and it’s free.
For this end-of-May show, Clifford himself will be performing in two separate, sung duo sets performing “the classics”: one with Katherine, and the other with singing theatre/art/novel-writing polymath Danielle Imara (the former Nina Silvert). No-one involved has said what “the classics” are – could be anything from Purcell to Prince, Bolan to music-hall, Bowie to Wiemar, Flesh For Lulu. Could be some of Danielle and Katherine’s own songs. Here are three possibilities…
Mediaeval Baebes multi-instrumentalist Charlie Cawood will take a little time out from being London’s beloved jack-of-all-fingerboards, and will celebrate the success of his recent debut album ‘The Divine Element’ (a glorious fresh-fusion magic-carpet ride across half a globe’s worth of music) by pulling together various other heavy playing friends for a set of Indian sitar music. Not sure whether he’s playing the classic ragas, but in case he isn’t, here’s something suitably sitar-ful from ‘The Divine Element’. Alongside is something from Charlie’s Knifeworld bandmate Kavus Torabi, who’s adding this particular Mascara Bar evening as another stop on the meandering solo tour supporting his own recent solo debut (April’s dusky psych-folk EP ‘Solar Divination’, which perhaps drawing some influence from Kavus’ other lives in Gong, Cardiacs, Guapo and others, but not nearly as much as it draws from ominous imagined dusk rituals and mysterious old ghosts on the darker hippy trails).
Also on hand are a stripped-down acoustic version of the ferally witty Cesarians – just singer Charlie Finke and pianist Justine Armatage, treating us to a more intimate take on the band’s ambitious, expansive knife-dancing pop. Rounding off the main musical acts, Jo Below (probably accompanied by Claudette the concertina) will sit down, tell you stories, recite her poems and sing songs, and along the way “regale you sweetly with surprising lewdness”. There’ll probably be “tales of captains and nomads and loves of her not-so-sure life” and perhaps some traditional stuff, as well as accounts of winking etiquette for the Tube.
Hopefully able to make it on the night will be dancer and all-round burlesque-rian Suri Sumatra; while definitely on the performance roll is celebrity milliner Piers Atkinson with his alternative catwalk routine (“Salon Show: A Masc-Querade where our in-house superstars will treat you to an extraordinary hat parade accompanied by a live musical atrocity.”).
Capping the night’s gambit is poet Jan Noble performing ‘My Name Is Swan’, a poetic monologue that’s already done the rounds of various Swan pubs in London and elsewhere. “Drawing on Jan’s fifteen years experience teaching poetry and creative writing in prisons and on psychiatric wards, ‘My Name Is Swan’ describes a twenty-four hour journey across London. An odyssey of loss and belonging, lies and loyalty, ownership and neglect, Brexit and heartbreak, drugs and the suburbs, boredom, football violence, vandalism, happiness, isolation, addiction, rivers, shopping trolleys, love, hope and the metropolitan malaise… addressing the growing social and economic disparity of the modern city, it is most of all a beautifully evocative portrait of London, the struggles it presents and the solutions it offers.” The work’s also been filmed by Adam Carr with additional musical contributions by Samuel Kilcoyne and Takatsuna Mukai: I’m not sure whether we’re just getting Jan on his own, or whether we get bits of the film or music too, or whether we get all three.
Katharine Blake and Clifford Slapper present:
‘Slappers’ Club’ Mascara Bar, 72 Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, London, N16 6XS, England
Thursday 24th May 2018, 7.30pm – free entry – information here
Here’s another prompt for me to pay more regular attention to what’s going on at the Daylight Music shows in London – British folk guitarist Marcus Corbett is playing there this month, and next Wednesday (alongside Brona McVittie, whose own Daylight performance I missed back in March due to looking elsewhere), they’re both playing at a separate event in Oxford.
It’s easy to miss or forget the pointers at concerts which might lead you somewhere interesting – and I only picked up information on this Oxford event – billed as “a night of Thai electronica, Indian classical meets British folk and pastoral Celtic folk through a kosmiche filter” – by accident. Meanwhile, here’s a bit more on Marcus and Brona…
Marcus Corbett is an Anglo-Indian singer and guitarist spending his time between the English West Country and Pune in India: likewise, his guitar playing draws on Western-shaped ideas of folk and blues, but also on the world and tones of Indian classical music. His most recent recording is 2013’s ‘Strung Deep’, which also calls upon the talents of bansuri flute player Milind Date, violinist Sanjay Upadhye and tabla players Ntin Gaikwad and Sharanappa Guttaragi. It’s this record, amongst others, that he’ll be playing from for this concert, for which he’s rejoined by Ntin Gaikwad. (Both Marcus and Ntin are currently on a wider tour together, which you can find out more about here.)
Brona McVittie is an Irish harpist, singer and electronic musician from County Down, perhaps best known for fronting/plucking for acclaimed London-Irish trad outfit The London Lasses and for adding the Early Music influences to the Orla Wren-affiliated neo-impressionist project littlebow. During the noughties, she played in folk duos Footnote and The Balance and Footnote duos, followed by a spell leading experimental folktronica band Forestbrook. More recently, her occasional experimental folk-pop work as Queen Of Corkbots has displayed a sprightly humour in electro-acoustic arrangements as well as a love of reviving and gently reinventing old folk songs, carols and not-so-innocent children’s ditties in a web of electronic blips, Mellotronic flutes, pattering synth percussion and other delicate ornamentation.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this comes the new work under her own name which she’s gathered up into her formal solo debut album, ‘We Are The Wildlife’. Voice, harp, flute and strings combine with careful well-honed electronic arrangements for what’s described as “a psycho-geographic journey through a collection of traditional folk ballads and original compositions inspired as much by the geometries of London’s urban fringes as by the sonic phenomena within the great rural landscapes of Mourne.”
For this performance, Brona will be accompanied by friend, collaborator and American émigré Myles Cochran on slide guitar; himself an established solo artist in the more psychedelic, atmospheric end of UK Americana. Here’s the title track from ‘We Are The Wildlife’, plus the album’s version of Irish traditional song Molly Brannigan.
The third act at the concert is Oxford musician and PinDrop promoter Sebastian Reynolds. Possibly solo, or possibly accompanied by his Solo Ensemble (also featuring keyboard player Jody Prewett, cellist Anne Müller and violinist Alex Stolze), he’ll be performing excerpts from his Mahajanaka Dance Drama project score (released on a Bandcamp EP last month). The music itself is founded on sampled loops taken from recordings of a piphat (high Thai classical) session undertaken by Thai pop ensemble the Krajidrid Band, which Sebastian has continued to build on.
The Mahajanaka story tells a tale from Buddhist mythology concerning a shipwrecked prince who survives alone at sea until the goddess of the ocean comes to his rescue. Here’s both Sebastian’s original version and a shimmering, urgent live treatment from the Solo Collective; plus a video documentary about the research into, and making of, the source music.
TMD Media and PinDrop present:
Marcus Corbett + Brona McVittie + Sebastian Reynolds Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 1BP, England
Wednesday 16th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
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Back in London, at Poplar Union, there’s a coming together of spoken word, poetry, rap and experimental folk for Mental Health Awareness Week, as poet/rapper Jack Miguel collaborates with exploratory post-folk musician Sam Mumford in ‘A Murder Of Crows’, a multimedia response to ‘Crow‘, Ted Hughes’ collection of poems dealing with his own “demons” following the suicide of his wife and fellow poet Sylvia Plath. All proceeds will go towards supporting the Campaign Against Living Miserably, an award-winning charity dedicated to preventing male suicide (the single biggest killer of men under the age of forty-five in Britain) with additional donations encouraged on the door. This is a work-in-progress, so expect – even savour – a few rough edges, which might be part of the point.
Well established as a guitarist, singer, composer and sound artist, Sam makes a kind of deconstructed and rebuilt electro-acoustic folk music which draws equal comparisons to Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading, Aphex Twin and Venetian Snares. While electronic sound techniques and collagery (taken from Sam’s love of dub, techno, drum and bass and electronica) lean in to both the mix and the toolbox, shaping and impling, Sam’s work is rooted in fingerpicking and voice, resulting in an unmoored new folk music which carries its roots with it as sleepwalking instinct, leaving him free to explore the here and now, whether addressing personal concerns or broader contemporary matters.
In this he’s well matched by Jack, whose own previous work has encompassed sound design, sculpture and moving image. The first poet and rapper to attend the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, he’s gone on (as “Jakaboski”) to become a writer and performer with psychedelic hip hop group Strangelove (and release his own solo debut, the ‘Mount Strive’ EP, in 2014). He also also exibits his own art installations, and works as a diverse arts educator with a particular specialisation in damaged but nurturable psyches (working in hospitals, pupil referral units and secure psychiatric units).
The latter, in particular, has led to work like Jack’s collaborative installation and performance study ‘The Turning of the Leaves’, a meditation on the First World War, masculinity and intergenerational trauma (drawing on the aforementioned Hughes, Carl Jung and Kendrick Lamar, and dealing directly with “the challenges facing men today amidst inherited narratives of power, violence and invulnerability.”) It will be interesting – and important – to see how this interest in toxic and tortured masculinity feeds into Jack and Sam’s examination of Hughes: well known, even beyond his poetry, as a man’s man and an alpha male; and whose treatment of Plath (including his co-opting of her posthumous legacy) has come under increasing challenge and outright attack in recent years (a further darkening of the story).
Also engaged with the project are two special guests – performance poet and theatre maker Cecilia Knapp and cellist-composer Natasha Zielanzinski (who specialises in contemporary repertoire, early music, free improvisation and folk music and whose performance history spans Sadlers Wells, Kanye West, the Royal Court Theatre and Kate Tempest). More special guests may be announced closer to concert time, although there’s only a week to go…
Jack Miguel & Sam Mumford present:
‘A Murder of Crows’ Poplar Union, 2 Cotall Street, Poplar, London, E14 6TL, England
Friday 18th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Although they were a ‘Misfit City’ mainstay for a number of years, it’s been a while since I’ve put up any previews for Daylight Music‘s free Saturday noontime concerts at the Union Chapel. Blame this on the slapdashery that passes for “method”, back here at ‘Misfit City’ HQ; blame concentration or distraction by other things, but for goodness’ sake don’t blame Daylight Music themselves.
I suppose that it might be possible for a regular attender to sometimes feel as if you’ve had enough of Daylight’s particular cosiness – that warm wooly-sweatered whimsicality, the cake stall, or the feeling that you might just crack if you see another community choir singing alt.pop cover versions. But ultimately it’s churlish to take swipes at them for the side trappings when what really counts is the musing intelligence and the well-honed curatorial instincts underneath the family-friendly fuzz. In the end, there are precious few regular gigs in London that can match Daylight for unassuming stealth education: few that will host a baroque quartet alongside rustling sampledelia, set guileless acoustica off against arch indie, season your ears with sudden rushes of Baltic sound or pipe organ interludes; introduce you to musicians and songwriters who leave you astonished and blinking about the fact that you’ve never heard of them before; and all the while balancing the kiddie-friendly with the uncompromising and actually pulling it off. There are few gigs that are just so plain generous.
So, without more ado, here’s a quick signal-boost for the first few gigs of their imminent summer season…
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“The 12th May show features Green Seagull, respectfulchild and Twenty Three Hanging Trees. Green Seagull are the latest band to burst out of London’s burgeoning neo-psych scene. Their harmony-laden baroque/freakbeat sound draws upon influences such as the Left Banke, the Kinks and the Association. respectfulchild is the solo instrumental project of Gan from Saskatoon on Treaty 6 Territory. Their music is electronic in nature while being acoustically created, building experimental ambient soundscapes through slow progressions of meticulous improvisation. Their sound has been likened to Brian Eno, Nils Frahm and Owen Pallett.
“Twenty Three Hanging Trees is the meditative modular synth exploration project of Xavier Watkins (Fuzzy Lights/Violet Woods/Red Red Eyes.) The project’s progression from hazy guitar drones to electronic-based explorations with dusty, contemplative tonalities has been a transformative one. Learning to express himself with synthesis was like learning a new language, each step having to be carefully planned and executed so as to maintain the fragile equilibrium created. While 2016’s ‘Nocturne’, released on the Sacred Tapes label, had a contemplative, embryonic stillness, 2017’s ‘Prémonitions’ has a deeper, more emotional heart, tempered by subtle rhythmic buzzing, shimmering oceanic drones and solemn arcs of melody.
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“The 19th May show features Firestations, Seán Mac Erlaine and Hatchie. Firestations are an alt-pop band who write simple songs then paint over them with drones, vocal harmonies, electronica and unusual rhythms. Their second album ‘The Year Dot’ has recently released by Lost Map Records. Séan MacErlaine is a Dublin-based woodwind instrumentalist, composer and music producer, recognised as one of Ireland’s most forward-thinking creative musicians. His work intersects folk, free improvisation, jazz and traditional music.
Hatchie is the world of Harriette Pilbeam. To hear her music is to step inside her mind; a dreamy landscape where cascading synths, jangling guitars, propulsive rhythms and white noise undulate beneath undeniable and irresistible pop melodies. This will be a special acoustic set.
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“The 26th May show features Vesperados, Guastalla Quartet and Marcus Corbett. Award-winning composer and jazz musician James Brady first formed Vesperados in 2011, bringing together musicians to explore African, Caribbean and Latin American influences in jazz through original music. Formed in 2013, The Guastalla Quartet brings together musicians from the finest conservatoires in Europe to form a chamber music group dedicated to the exploration of the string quartet repertoire from its roots to as yet unwritten works. Between them, they have performed at world-famous venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Katara Opera House and the National Concert Hall of Taiwan.
“The Guastalla Quartet will also join Vesperados for an octet set during their performance: the use of strings will allow the full expression of rich jazz harmony alongside the rhythmic engine of Vesperados’ Latin-infused grooves.
“Completing the lineup, Marcus Corbett is a singer, acoustic guitarist and composer based between the UK and Pune, Maharashtra, India. He has been studying Indian classical music and working with musicians in India for over 10 years, skillfully combining the worlds of Indian classical and British folk music and producing a string of albums. He will perform with one of his key Indian collaborators, Tabla maestro Nitin Gaikwad.”
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As ever, all gigs are at Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England and are free, though it’s good form to donate a fiver on the way in or out. Dates below:
Daylight Music 280: Green Seagull, respectfulchild + Twenty-Three Hanging Trees, Saturday 12th May 2018, 12:00pm – information
Daylight Music 281: Firestations, Seán Mac Erlaine + Hatchie, Saturday 19th May 2018, 12:00pm – information
Daylight Music 282: Vesperados, Guastalla Quartet + Marcus Corbett, Saturday 26th May 2018, 12:00pm – information
Two outdoor folk gigs coming up from Nest Collective, part of a fourth summer for their Campfire Club events – “filling London’s green spaces with music. A concert like no other: unamplified, outdoors, around a fire. Gather together and listen.” There’ll be a couple more next month.
“Well-known for his work with Cahalen Morrison, Tim O’Brien, Jayme Stone and more, the Seattle-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Eli West oozes understated talent. We recently witnessed both Martin Simpson and Richard Hawley utterly floored by his skill. Truly a sublime musician!
“Eli’s recent debut solo album, ‘The Both’, sees him taking the lead, on electric and acoustic guitars, banjo, and pedal steel, whilst remaining a thoughtful collaborator – here with some of his close friends and personal heroes, like jazz great Bill Frisell, new Americana discovery Dori Freeman, and Anna & Elizabeth. The album focuses on the story of his two grandfathers; one a decorated WWII prisoner of war, the other a Brethren preacher and peace advocate. They couldn’t have differed more, but together they shared a family. In this spirit, the theme of the album is duality: the first half showcases carefully built arrangements of six American folk songs, the second revisits these as instrumental passages, revealing new sides to the other.
“With no management, publishing or record support to speak of, singer/songwriter Josh Savage has blazed a bright trail through the music industry, which should serve as a beacon to any musician looking to make a name for themselves in the unrecognisable 21st Century landscape. “The most promising new young artist to emerge in Winchester in years” has built a loyal fanbase one living room at a time, and his sprawling career has seen him supporting acts as diverse as Razorlight, Rizzle Kicks, Reverend and the Makers, Roll Deep, and even some acts with names that don’t begin with ‘R’ such as Benjamin Francis Leftwich, John Hiatt, Catfish & The Bottlemen, and Ward Thomas.
“His self-released recordings have been played on BBC Radio 2, BBC Introducing and BBC 6 music and accumulated over 1.5 million plays on Spotify without PR representation. In 2015, Josh played 79 shows in 5 months with Sofar Sounds and in people’s homes across America and Europe (including the famous SXSW festival), resulting in the ‘Living Room Tour’ documentary.”
The Nest Collective presents:
Campfire Club: Piers Faccini + Jim Ghedi Glengall Wharf Garden, 64 Glengall Road, Peckham, London, SE15 6NF, England
Friday 18th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
“Crossing and blurring musical boundaries is an art form for Piers Faccini. Treading the frontiers which delineate one country from another, Faccini finds his inspiration in the cultural ambiguity of borderlands. If his songs were maps, they’d stretch from the English moors to the Saharan dunes via the plains of the Mediterranean.
“Over seven acclaimed albums, ‘Leave No Trace’ (2004),’Tearing Sky’ (2006), ‘Two Grains Of Sand’ (2009), ‘My Wilderness’ (2011), ‘Between Dogs & Wolves’ (2013), ‘Songs Of Time Lost’ (2014) and ‘I Dreamed An Island’ (2016), Faccini has toured his music worldwide, recording and collaborating with numerous musicians and singers including Ballake Sissoko, Vincent Segal, Ben Harper, Rokia Traore, Patrick Watson and Ibrahim Maalouf amongst others. As well as producing his own albums, Faccini has also produced several albums for other artists, most notably ‘Ela’ by Brazilian cellist and singer Dom La Nena, ‘Northern Folk’ by Jenny Lysander and ‘Terre de Mon Poeme’ by Yelli Yelli. In 2013 he started up his own label Beating Drum, specializing in the production of bespoke and hybrid physical objects that bridge music, art and writing such as the 2013 book/CD ‘Songs I Love’ or the 2016 book/CD ‘No One’s Here’. He is currently touring the new album ‘I Dreamed An Island’ worldwide.
“Born in Sheffield before moving around various parts of Derbyshire, Shropshire and Scotland and then settling in Moss Valley – an abandoned and forgotten area on the edgelands of South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire – it makes perfect sense that twenty-six-year-old Jim Ghedi’s music feels both fluidly transient yet also deeply rooted to a sense of place.
“In 2015 he released his debut album, ‘Home Is Where I Exist, Now To Live and Die’, which was an extension of the folk-tinged six and twelve-string acoustic guitars instrumentals he had been forging for some time around Sheffield’s pubs and then whilst travelling across Europe. On his second album, ‘A Hymn For Ancient Land’, his elemental style of playing has expanded into a fuller band set-up, complete with glorious orchestration and dazzling composition that makes it a truly innovative contemporary record whilst still being rooted in great tradition.
“Through the inclusion of double bass (played by Neal Heppleston, who hand crafts them for a living), violin, cello, harp, trumpet, piano, accordion and numerous other instruments, Ghedi has elevated his unique blend of folk music to a level far beyond that of that of his earlier work. Perhaps most remarkable still is how seamless their inclusions feel, rather than wrestling for space, the wealth of instruments float in and out of one another, interlocking absorbing guitars, gently whirring strings and drums that beat like the faint sounds of thunder on the horizon.”
Swoon. /swo͞on/ A verb. To be emotionally affected by someone or something that one admires; become ecstatic. Here are some people and things that make me swoon. #swoon #swoonage
Bar his efforts in assembling a performance of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ under the Brooklyn Bridge last year, not enough has been heard from Liam Singer since he released his gorgeously limpid ‘Arc Iris’ album in 2013. In fact, he’s quit New York City and moved upstate to Catskill, where he’s now co-running HiLo – a combined cafe, bar, art gallery, and performance space. New responsibilities, however, haven’t stemmed his musical flow. Two imminent shows (one at HiLo and one in his old Brooklyn stomping grounds) mark this month’s release of his fifth album, ‘Finish Him‘, on Birdwatcher Records.
Misfit City 