A couple of quick dips into wider worlds, with minimal blather from me..
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This isn’t the first time I’ve featured the audio-visual collaborations of jeweller and live artist Poppy Porter and multilayering bass guitar maestro Steve Lawson, but if you haven’t heard of/seen either of them before, nor encountered their unusual duo approach, here’s an opportunity to go and immerse yourself at a new show in Steve’s current home town of Birmingham…
Steve Lawson/Poppy Porter: Illuminated Loops Tower of Song, 107 Pershore Road South, Kings Norton, Birmingham B30 3EL, England
Sunday 25th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here
“Steve Lawson and Poppy Porter bring their amazing music and live art show to Birmingham. Steve plays his textured bass guitar loops, Poppy draws what she sees. Poppy is synaesthetic – she “sees” sound, and as the images appear on the paper, Steve treats the emerging art as a graphic score, folding it back into the music in way that creates a glorious feedback loop of art influencing art. It’s an immersive experience, to watch the art take shape before your eyes, to hear the music morph and twist as it is improvised in response to the art.”
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Back in London, the Nest Collective (in collaboration with internationally-minded arts inspirers Dash Arts) have been broadening their commitment to presenting and celebrating the breadth and ongoing relevance of folk music by staging Queer As Folk, “an ongoing series of events celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ artists working in folk, world, and roots music”.
I don’t feel well-equipped to dig into this topic in depth yet. Most straight blokes such as myself who start digging – even with the best intentions – into LGBTQ+ history and culture tend to find it rapidly and explosively unfolding into our faces like a long-compressed jack-in-the-box… or, more accurately, as if someone’s abruptly whisked our blinkers away and we find ourselves in the heart of a bustling, previously invisible party (with its own long-running stories of love and loss, inspiration and pain, quarrels and solidarity, bullying and resistance). It’s quite jolting – although often inspiring – to be confronted with one’s own ignorance.
During my own lifetime, while lesbian women have had an long-established presence in the singer-songwriter field (the redoubtable Holly Near and Joan Armatrading in the ’70s, Melissa Etheridge and Judy Small in the ’80s, the Indigo Girls in the ’90s, to name just the obvious few), it’s been more difficult to identify other aspects of the queer spectrum within folk unless you were already deep in the scene or privileged with word-of-mouth knowledge. Still, all of that is there – as, indeed, it’s everywhere – and this gig, while first and foremost an occasion for good music, should help any fresh attendees to open up a new perspective (and perhaps offer some new interpretations of folk traditions with their shifting tales of love, lust, disguise and transformations).
Enough of me and my vagueness. Here’s Nest Collective’s matter-of-fact briefing for the evening: the rest can just be learned in time…
“Born and raised in southwest Virginia, Sam Gleaves performs innovative mountain music with a sense of history. Sam carries on the ballads, dance music and storytelling he learned from numerous mentors in the Appalachian tradition including multi-instrumentalist Jim Lloyd and ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams. He tours extensively in the U.S. and, in 2016, toured the UK supporting Peggy Seeger.
In 2015, Sam collaborated with producer Cathy Fink and released a debut record of original songs, titled Ain’t We Brothers. In 2017, he appeared at the Cambridge Folk Festival and brought forth a new eponymous record with his singing partner Tyler Hughes, a fellow southwest Virginian steeped in the region’s musical traditions, which has received glowing reviews… Appalachian novelist Lee Smith has heralded Sam as “the best young songwriter around… courageous as hell and country to the bone.”
“Landless are Ruth Clinton, Meabh Meir, Sinead Lynch and Lily Power. They sing unaccompanied traditional songs from Irish, Scottish, English and American traditions in close four-part harmony. Their repertoire features songs of love, death and lamentation, as well as work songs, shape-note hymns and more recently penned folk songs. They’ve performed in a variety of settings, both in Ireland and abroad, and are closely involved with traditional singing sessions in Dublin and Belfast.”
Filthy Lucre presents:
Filthy Lucre: “Lingua Inota – A Night of Imagined Languages” Hackney Showroom @ Hackney Downs Studios, 13-15 Amhurst Terrace, Hackney Downs, London, E8 2BT, England
Saturday 24th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
“Every song in the night uses invented languages to express the things that real words can’t touch… The divinity of nonsense has served, like music, to say the unsayable. Whether associated with religious ecstasy or utopian projects, these utterances are inscrutable yet intimate.”
For a while now, freewheeling concert/club night/collective Filthy Lucre (run by composer Joe Bates, clarinettist Anthony Friend and composer/conductor William Cole) have been putting together events “tied together by artistic concepts, such as cultic rituals and urban sprawl.” I’ve not caught up with them before now, but this event’s an ideal opportunity to get a feel for how they think.
Incorporating chamber choir and synthesisers, the Filthy Lucre ensemble will be performing ‘Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? (Do You Believe In The Immortality Of The Soul?)’ the final, morbidly romantic langue inventée work from renegade Canadian composer Claude Vivier (infamously found in manuscript form on his desk in the aftermath of his murder, which it seemed to predict in its envisioning of a narrator stabbed in the heart by a potential lover). Also in place on the bill will be an exploration of the original lingua ignota of visionary theologian, polymath and composer Hildegard of Bingen (she of the hallucinatory Christian visions and the remarkable command of twelfth century experience from its musicality to its medicine, its theological orientations to the outer fringes of its philosophy).
In addition, Filthy Lucre will be tackling the “nonsense” of the David Bowie/Brian Eno collaboration ‘Warszawa‘ (born from Bowie’s blind phonetic transcriptions of Polish folk song) and the “electric babble” of Talking Heads. I guess they could mean the band’s pulsing Afrodelic loft-music setting of Hugo Ball’s ‘Gadji beri bimba’ (from ‘Fear Of Music’) but it could extend to any of David Byrne’s chopped songtexts – in particular, those on 1980’s haunted, free-form-sermonizing ‘Remain In Light’ and its funk’n’free-association follow-up ‘Speaking In Tongues’ (which could also have lent its name to the event).
There will also be new music by Laurence Osborn (‘ELITE’, scored for tenor, keyboard, two synthesizers and tape), art by Georgia Hicks (inspired by the illustrated manuscripts of Hildegard’s visions, which depict reality as a wheel) and a Hildegard-themed film by Paul Vernon. Various musical arrangements come courtesy of event coordinator Joe Bates himself, and from Emma-Jean Thackray.
Some examples of what’s on offer or what might be propelling the thoughts behind it can be found below…
(Update – 19th February 2018 – have just been able to share the Paul Vernon Hildegard trailer too. Looks as if music by Xenakis and Cocteau Twins has been added to the brew…)
Sprawling out over a long month between early February and early March, Théâtre Volière’s Marchland performance season will transform the City of London’s Bridewell Theatre into a recreation of “a secluded European theatre” aiming – via discussion and performance, music and acting, photography, discussion and art – “to explore what it means to be European today… everything that is good and bad about the human response to being pushed up against “otherness”…. (to) come together to share and unpick these European stories in an attempt to answer the question, “how do we live together?”…” Slipping in under the frowning threat of a hard, bruising Brexit and the rising of surly, xenophobic British fences, it’s a welcome and timely thing.
In principle, ‘Marchland’ is theatrical. Threaded through the season are performances of Volière’s own ‘Arnika’ dealing with the corrosive effects of dreadful secrets and guilt, post-Nazi occupation, in an Alsace town (exemplifying “the tragic choices forced on a border community trapped in a cycle of international vengeance” and of its quadralingual companion piece ‘Retour au pays‘, “exploring the multi-lingualism of border regions and its effect on their cultures” via the story of Alsatian poet Andre Weckmann and his journey – as a forced military draftee – through the Wehrmacht, the Russian front and the Free French). Also on offer are two pieces by La Soupe Compagnie: ‘Macao et Cosmage‘ (their headphone-driven children’s tale of colonialism – “part Japanese kamishabaï paper theatre, part pop-up storybook” – performed in a tiny twelve-person booth), and their poetry-and-puppetry-incorporating ‘Evocation’, a transposition of ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ (Albert Giraud’s Symbolist poem-cycle of conscious, candid estrangement and displacement) to a Victorian-era Brighton Beach where it’s fed through the experience and cyclic memories of a traumatised young female refugee (scored by electro-acoustic composer Antoine Arlot). There’ll also be a festival-spanning interactive attempt (featuring the combined efforts of Marchlands artists and audience) to create and represent a borderland country of the imagination.
Yet – point for point and performer for performer – the majority of the festival is musical, bringing together a fascinating sweep of players from across Europe and interspersing them with British musicians exploring transcontinental roots and history (whether these are their own – as in the case of British-based Sephardic ensemble Sefiroth – or where their curiosity, studies and sympathies have led them.
Here’s a breakdown of the musical events, condensed from various bits of the programme text.
Carneval String Trio
“Carneval String Trio (made up of violinist Kamila Bydlowska, viola player Shiry Rashkovsky and cellist Timothée Botbol) have created a fascinating programme of twentieth-century music for us. Vanished kingdoms and shifting borders here, in an Eastern Europe where identities and allegiances were torn apart under the most savage circumstances imaginable.
“They’ll be playing pieces by Zoltán Kodály, Ernő Dohnányi and Gideon Klein, works that shock and mesmerize in equal measure. Each of these composers used folkloric themes to express their unique national identities, and yet these identities were rewritten for them many times as borders shifted and ideologies fought over their homelands. This is music that challenges us to ask “what is left of our identity when it is warped and usurped by the forces of nationalism?”
“The cultural and political history of the former Yugoslavia features large in this year’s ‘Marchland’. Greek guitarist Nikos Baroutsakis joins the conversation with a recital of music from the Balkans and the wider region, where Europe meets the Middle East. He’ll be playing pieces inspired by the folk culture of Armenia, the Balkans (including the former Yugoslavia) and Turkey.
“Carlo Domeniconi’s Variations on ‘Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım (I’m On A Long Narrow Road)’ – a Turkish folk song of pain and suffering – opens the programme. It is followed by four traditional Armenian dances arranged for guitar by Iakovos Kolanian. Finally, a rare performance of Dusan Bogdanovic’s ‘Six Balkan Miniatures’, composed for and dedicated to, world peace during the Yugoslavian Civil War.
“Fran & Flora are cellist Francesca Ter-Berg and violinist Flora Curzon. BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction described them as fiercely passionate and a string duo bound for glory, and that says it all about their approach to music making and their musical influences. For ‘Marchland’, they will be exploring musical styles from Eastern Europe, and how they are influenced by ongoing exchanges and tensions across borders and migrating communities. Expect soulful laments, exquisite songs, irresistible dance tunes, and tales of their musical adventures as outsiders intent on incorporating traditional music-making into their own, unique style.
“In addition, they’ll also perform in a double bill of music and conversation with Nikos Baroutsakis (extending their programme, their distinctive music-making interspersed with anecdotes and insights from their musicological travels in the Balkans) and, in another event, pairing up with Alex Batesmith’s dramatised talk ‘Blackbirds and Blue Helmets’ (about his experiences as a UN war crimes prosecutor in Kosovo and his travels in the former Yugoslavia).
“This is a melting-pot of rare and deeply-affecting music, woven around an ancient folktale. A resourceful harper charms his audience to sleep in order to steal their magical harp – The Oak of Two Greens. The harp belongs to the king of the Tuatha da Dannan; a legendary tribe which, according to legend, brought music to Ireland. Bardos Band follow the route this music might have travelled, using voice, harp, medieval fiddle, gittern, flutes and symphony to create an enchanting wash of sound.”
(Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any embeddable examples of the Bardos’ treatment of ‘The Oak Of Two Greens’, but it’s close enough to Christmas for me to offer you this…)
“The Bardos Band’s Sophia Brumfitt and Leah Stuttard also make up the early-music due Maiden In The Moor. For their own ‘Marchlands’ performance they’re reviving the music of Occitania, a vanished kingdom that once straddled Southern France and Northern Spain.
Maiden In The Moor
“The Occitan Troubadours sang of loyalty, love and longing, and their language and music survived through travelling poets and illuminated songbooks long after their culture was devastated by the Albigensian Crusade. Their work had a profound influence on European music and culture, and echoes of it can be heard in lieder, folk music, and the work of the singer-songwriters of our own time. The programme includes Troubadour and Trouvère songs, songs from the courts of Aquitaine and the Languedoc, and Spanish pilgrim songs.”
(Although there’s not much Maiden In The Moor material online, here’s an example of Occitan songcraft…)
“Norway’s KultNett bring together some of the foremost folk musicians and storytellers from beyond the Arctic Circle to examine the history of the peoples of Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Sápmi, the land of the Sámi people. Storytelling, a fast and furious fiddle and the traditional ‘joik’ of the Sámi are interwoven to create a performance that explores and interrogates the dynamics of cultural and ethnic hegemony in the Nordic region of Europe.
Ignacio Evangelista: ‘After Schengen’
“Adapted especially for Marchland and illustrated by a multi-media presentation, this is a truly immersive experience; a rare insight into a rich and vibrant borderland culture from the Northernmost reaches of Europe. They’ll also play in a separate double bill with Bardos Band, presenting an extended version of their Marchland programme.
“Inspired by Ignacio Evangelista’s photography sequence ‘After Schengen’, we brought together three artists to create an interdisciplinary event, ‘Before and After Schengen’, exploring the politics and the poetry around notions of the vanishing border.
Shiry Rashkovsky
“In front of a screening of his work, Ignacio will be talking about his fascination with Europe’s disused border posts. His talk will be interwoven with poems by Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes, written in response to Ignacio’s images and read by George himself. The whole will be framed by a unique performance of musical fragments and improvisations devised by Carneval String Trio violist Shiry Rashkovsky (also an associate member of the Philharmonia Orchestra).
This is a truly international collaboration that encapsulates perfectly the spirit of ‘Marchland’). Expect to find yourselves pondering the ephemeral and often arbitrary nature of borders. ‘Before and After Schengen’ will also be performed as a separate double bill with another extended performance of Kultnett’s ‘Sound of the Arctic’.
“Sefiroth is an international collective of musicians founded by brothers Nick and Alex Roth to explore traditional Sephardic repertoire. music from the descendants of the Jews who left Spain or Portugal after 1492. Sung in Ladino (a language primarily spoken by Sephardic Jews), these ancient songs weave stories of love, loss and yearning for home, and evoke the lands where the diaspora settled: Iberia, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
“The group’s arrangements are as porous and wide-ranging as the history of the Sephardim, combining acoustic and electric instruments, improvisation, modern harmonies and trance-inducing rhythms. They’ll also be performing separately alongside Maiden In The Moor in a double bill; setting the revived music of a vanished culture alongside the living, evolving traditions of a banished people.
“Sweden and Denmark’s Åkervinda perform their unique, modern Scandinavian folksongs. Jazz singers at heart, and influenced by artists such as Björk and The Real Group, they share a deep love of folk music. Through improvisation, they breathe new life into traditional songs, singing stories of women through the ages in a programme of haunting harmonies and dazzling improvisations inspired by women’s history and the shifting populations of Europe. Their appearance at Marchland marks the opening of a UK tour and the release of their latest album. They’ll also be performing in a separate double bill with Maiden In The Moor.
“What can we say about our show ‘A Vanished Kingdom’? Not much, since it’s actually mostly your show and you’ve yet to devise it! Come and help make a season-long, open-access interdisciplinary event to be presented on the closing day of the season.
“On three consecutive Saturdays we’ll be meeting to create our own Vanished Kingdom – an imaginary borderland with its own culture, geography, history, language… All devised by you. If you’re a visual artist, writer or performer, if you’re someone who wants to share ideas in a supportive and respectful environment, if you’re someone who enjoys playing and make believe, then join us and artists from the Marchland season to help make something truly unique. You are welcome to come and go as you please for the duration of each workshop, and even to just quietly observe the controlled chaos! It’s completely free to participate.
On the 3rd March, we’ll be presenting the audience with a free ‘Vanished Kingdom’ event featuring the stories, songs, dances, artwork, history, geography of a European borderland of our participants’ collective imagination. As an opener to the presentation, there’ll be another chance to hear a performance by Åkervinda (giving us their perspective on women’s history and cross border co-operation) plus a one-off set from three members of Sefiroth (Alex Roth, Alice Zawadzki & Olesya Zdorovetska).
“Expect, perhaps, robust and lively debate about the tensions between regional identity and cross-cultural fertilisation, absurd flights of fancy and charming anecdotes, and a rich tapestry of differing viewpoints and traditions. Looking forward to meeting you at the crossroads!”
All events are at The Bridewell Theatre, 14 Bride Lane, Blackfriars, London EC4Y 8EQ, England. Dates are as follows.
Nikos Baroutsakis – Thursday 8th February 2018, 1:15pm
Fran & Flora – Friday 9th February 2018, 1:15pm
KultNett’s ‘Sound of the Arctic’ – Friday 9th February 2018, 7:30pm; Tuesday 13th February 2018, 1:15pm; 16th February 2018, 1:15pm; 17th February 2018, 9:00pm
Bardos Band’s ‘The Oak of Two Greens’ – Monday 12th February 2018, 1:15pm
Before and After Schengen – Thursday 15th February 2018, 1:15pm
Sefiroth – Friday 16th February 2018, 7:30pm; Saturday 17th February 2018, 2:00pm; Friday 23rd February 2018, 7:30pm
Maiden in The Moor – Wednesday 28th February 2018, 1:15pm
Åkervinda – Friday 2nd March 2018, 1:15 pm
Double-bill concerts:
Nikos Baroutsakis + Fran & Flora – Saturday 10th February 2018, 2:00pm
Bardos Band’s ‘The Oak of Two Greens’ + KultNett’s ‘Sound of the Arctic’ – Saturday 10th February 2018, 7:30 pm
‘Before and After Schengen’ + KultNett’s ‘Sound of the Arctic’ – Thursday 15th February 2018, 7:30 pm
Alex Batesmith’s ‘Blackbirds and Blue Helmets’ + Fran & Flora – Tuesday 20th February 2018, 7:30 pm
Maiden in the Moor + Sefiroth – Thursday 22nd February 2018, 7:30 pm
Åkervinda + Maiden in The Moor – Thursday 1st March 2018, 7:30 pm
‘A Vanished Kingdom’:
Free-entry workshops – Saturday 10th February 2018, 9.30am; Saturday 24th Feburary 2018, 2.00pm, Saturday 3rd March 2018, 10.00am
Presentation concert (plus pre-concert performances by Åkervinda + Alex Roth/Alice Zawadzki/Olesya Zdorovetskaya) – Saturday 3rd March 2018, 2:00 pm
February’s Kammer Klang sees the Dalston performance evening marching ever further away from contemporary chamber music and embracing an ethos of outright sonic performance theatre. The works presented by Jennifer Walshe and Distractfold Ensemble next week use musicality as merely one available limb of expression – even if many of the tools used are musical.
Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Jennifer Walshe + Distractfold Ensemble (playing Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Hanna Hartman and Barblina Meierhans)
Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL
Tuesday 6th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Witty, shapeshifting Irish composer-performer Jennifer Walshe was once described as “the wild girl of Darmstadt” (by ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’) Often hiding, Residents-like, behind the mask of the fictional ‘Milker Corporation’, she’s delivered nearly two decades worth of intriguing, award-winning work, from near-conventional instrumental composition to way-out self-performed video theatre more reminiscent of a larkier, less traumatic version of Karen Finley.
Examinations and implementations of pop culture have been a persistent creative motif for her. While this can be an embarrassing stumbling block for many a composer hamfistedly trying to ginger up high culture or elevate street culture (most of whom bellyflop soundly into the discomfort zone) Jennifer displays a thorough grounding and innate understanding of how this things can tick. This is clearly displayed in her lightning-switch pop-song collage ‘G.L.O.R.I.’, while her Snapchat-based interactive ‘Thmotes’ project (with its now-you-see-them now-you-don’t exchange of text scores) was but one example of her keen understanding of both how new forms of media operate and how they develop their own operational cultures. Inspired in part by televisual opera experimenter Robert Ashley, she’s also written miniature operas ranging from relatively serious chamber pieces about women in boxing or 2010’s focus-shifting ‘The Geometry’ to trashy X-rated soap scenarios played out by whispering, shrieking, hissing Barbie dolls.
As an intercontinental voice improviser, Jennifer’s co-run witty stunts such as the United Telepathic Improvisation Front; and for the last eleven years she’s exercised and presented a dozen different and distinct alter egos as part of the ongoing Grúpat project (a Dublin art collective of fictional “Guinness Dadaists” in which Jennifer herself creates, becomes and enacts every single artist whether exploring music, films, photography, fashion, sculpture or any overlaps between the forms – personae include grotto-builder Violetta Mahon, filmmaker Freya Birre, sculptor-of-instruments Turf Boon, psychogeographic drag queen multidisciplinarian The Dowager Marchylove and partially-fingerless concert pianist Flor Hartigan). Running through all of this (alongside of the exceptional media savvy) is a riotous stream of Irish absurdism – it’s unsurprising to discover that Jennifer cites Flann O’Brien and the “Irish openness to subterfuge” as spurs to what she does.
Her Kammer Klang performance this time involves her 2016 composition ‘There Was A Visitor’ – of which the title may be a nod to Ashley’s ‘She Was A Visitor’, and which is mostly a compression/selection from another ongoing project of spoofing/serious fictionizing, ‘Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde‘. In some ways a more historically-inclined cousin of Grúpat, ‘Historical Documents…’ is a made-up history of the Irish avant-garde, complete with its own foundation and voluminous archive of compositions, documents, academic articles and sundry ephemera. Jennifer apparently performs it within the context of “a Dadaist Halloween séance”, which she also describes as “a sort of mangled faith healer experience with optional audience engagement.”
(UPDATE, 5th February – for some reason, it seems that Jennifer’s now dropped her scheduled performance of ‘There Was A Visitor’ and replaced it with ‘Is It Cool To Try Hard Now?’, a 2016 composition “for voice, video, electronics and Artificial Intelligence”. There’s not much more information available on this one, other than that it was first premiered at the Jamjar Music Weekend in Belfast – it’s not even listed on the Milker site. If you can find out anything more about it, you’re a better, quicker browser than I am… what the hell, go along and be surprised…)
Manchester’s Distractfold Ensemble (curators of their hometown’s Cut & Splice Festival) will be presenting three pieces, including the evening’s Fresh Klang opener – a performance of Barblina Meierhans’ ‘May I Ask You Something?’. The latter is, in effect a semi-dysfunctional conversation for orchestra: an arrangement of inter-band mutters culminating in an eerie array of distracted frictional instrumental squeaks and a number of uncomfortable silences.
Of the other two Distractfold presentations, ‘Circling Blue’ is a 2010 tape piece by Swedish sound artist Hanna Hartman (for which Manifold members will be handling the sonic diffusion). Originally commissioned by Swedish radio for a themed programme on Nordic forests, it’s an electroacoustic work for the captured sounds of swirling winds and beating rain plus the recorded and stretched notes of soprano Ida Falk Winland.
The last presentation, ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Laughing’ is a piece of music theatre for amplified quartet and tape playback: a segment of Japanese-American electro-acoustic composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s five-movement ‘Sideshow’ sequence. Inspired by the crueller, more exploitative aspects of Coney Island entertainment parks (and drawing its section titles from a set of bleak aphorisms by Karl Kraus, the mordant cultural gadfly and satirist of early 20th century Vienna), the piece is “a meditation on virtuosity, freak shows, entertainment, spectacle, business, and the sacrifices one makes to survive in the world”, in which the instrumentalist perform as if they were “characters in a sideshow. The saxophonist is the Sideshow Giant, having bellow-like lungs. The violist is a sword swallower, expert with a bow sword. The pianist is the Human Spider, having been born with eight hands. The percussionist is the Stuttering Midget and Sideshow Proprietor/Announcer. Each character of this quartet has his or her uncanny double, twin, imposter, accomplice, copycat, deformed clone.”
Strange taped sounds (worked up from Takasugi’s algorithmic processing from his extensive library of recontextualized sonics) plus intense individual performer silences and motions add to the uneasy, surreal and grotesque atmosphere. Reviewing a previous performance in 2017, Stephanie Jones of ‘Sounds Like Now’ observed that it “suggested that the audience (was) masterminding a highly uncomfortable human puppet show… (which) captivated and cradled the audience on thematic pivots such as humour/cruelty and freedom/torturous restraint, while the playback ensured that the performance itself blurred the lines between illusion and fact.”
Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
“Into The Forest” Soiree: Meg Lee Chin + Keiko Kitamura + I Am Her + Kosmic Troubadour + Math Jones Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 2nd February 2018, 7.30pm – free event – information here
After a few events which were perhaps a little more predictable than we’d’ve hoped, this month’s Society Of Imaginary Friends-hosted concert moves up a gear with the involvement of “two goddesses of Earth and Heaven”. Purple twilight time:
“We take the path that leads down from the fell, over the style, over a stream and into the heart of the forest. At first it seems completely lifeless in the wood, all of its creatures hibernating deep in the ground; but as our eyes become adjusted to the dusky dark and senses atuned to its music..the rustle of a robin in the dried leaves, a squirrel’s staccato, a falling pine cone. Suddenly we are in a clearing of softest moss – a place of refuge and rest, where a clear spring rises and sunlight dances. Welcome to our “Into the Forest” Soiree.”
A mid-‘90s Pigface member (and the former frontwoman for female noise band Crunch), industrial pop/darkwave/hip hop songstress and hands-on producer Meg Lee Chin is a prime example of longstanding female creativity and independence. Having rattled cages and excited commentators with her turn on Pigface’s ‘Nutopia’, she then spearheaded contemporary home-studio recording with her 1999 solo album ‘Piece and Love’ and went on to found pro-audio community Gearslutz. Although released music has been sporadic for the last couple of decades, Meg’s kept her reputation as a fascinating, brilliant performer and composer and as an outspoken, sometimes contrary blogger. SOIF, in turn, have a reputation for coaxing people’s slumbering performance talents out of semi-retirement: if Meg’s risen to the occasion in response, this ought to be pretty exciting.
Also on hand – and in delightful contrast – is Keiko Kitamura: known for activities ranging from replaying Japanese court music to Jah Wobble’s Nippon Dub Ensemble, is a leading international koto player (in particular, the 17-string bass version) as well as a singer and shamisen player. Expect a mixture of tradition and originality.
The rest of the appropriately quirky SOIF bill is filled out by eccentric rainbow keyboard warrior The Kosmic Troubadour, poet/dramatist Math Jones (with a sheaf of forest poems) and Soiree regular I Am Her, a.k.a. ex-Rosa Mota singer Julie D. Riley (who also, with fellow Rosacian Sacha Galvagna, makes up transatlantic transcontinental electropop minimalists Crown Estate). As ever, the Society themselves are performing, presenting (presumably) art-pop forest ballads to take in with the Karamel vegan feast that’s part and parcel of a SOIF event. This time, you get an appropriately woody wild forest mushroom soup, a mushroom and root vegetable pizza and some Black Forest gateau…
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Here’s news on one of the several fundraisers for London alt.culture radio station Resonance FM, helping it to keep up its mission of broadcasting the wild and wonderful across the Smoke’s airwaves and around the world online. Even setting aside the calibre of the night’s performers, it’s pretty much worth going along for that reason alone.
Resonance FM presents:
Peter Blegvad Trio with Bob Drake Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Friday 9th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Peter Blegvad – not only for the owlish wit of his songs (including his skill as palindromist and wordplayer) and the enviable polymathic breadth of skills which means he’s also a fine experimental cartoonist, audio dramatist and commentator. It’s also because anyone who can get himself sacked from ‘70s avant/oppositional prog gods Henry Cow by outrightly twitting their seriousness at the height of their brow-furrowing Maoist phase (and apparently by writing a lyric about a woman chucking raisins at a skeleton) is a man who knows something about whistling in the face of sternness.
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t make too much of this. For one thing, despite (and because of) Henry Cow’s high-flying, generally admirable idealism, spending time there seems to have been argumentative for everyone (in particular during the period in which almost every potential action appeared to have its cripping counter-bourgeois condemnation, during which a man of Peter’s wayward questioning wit and self-declared flippancy would have stuck out like a slammable thumb in the way of a door). Once out of the mothership, though, it was evidently easier to be familial. Showing up most artistic spats and internal rock band feuds for the pique and piffle that they are, all of the ex-Cow-ers grew up (and grew past their arguments) to become a mutually supportive bunch. Threading in and out of each other’s concerts and solo careers, they rapidly learned to welcome and celebrate the diversity of their collective interests and ideas, and they’ve stayed that way.
Proving this yet again, whenever the Peter Blegvad Trio comes back together it reunites Peter with two regular Cowfriends: John Greaves (bassist and longtime ally both during and after Cowdays, from the ‘Kew.Rhone.’ project onwards) and Chris Cutler (drummer and owner of the eclectic and honourable post-Cow record label ReR Megacorp which, since 1988, has released four widely-spaced Blegvad albums – ‘Downtime’, ‘Just Woke Up’, ‘Hangman’s Hill’ and last year’s ‘Go Figure’). Thirty-seven years of on/off playing together has resulted in a relaxed, gently telepathic connection: not a mysterious communion, nor an alliance of breakneck musical stuntwork, but an easy, comfortable instinct for what’s required to frame the song and no more. As for Peter himself, if you’re unfamiliar with his work it’s best to think of someone with one foot in the sardonic-wit songworld of Loudon P. Wainwright, Leon Rosselson, Richard Thompson and Kinky Friedman, and the other in the counterflow rock camp which the Cow shared with (among others) Faust and Pere Ubu.
And that brings me to the second point – ultimately, it’s really pretty misleading to define Peter by the lineaments of Henry Cow, art-prog or Rock In Opposition. Granted, he’s spent quite a bit of time paddling away in those areas (in addition to ‘Kew.Rhone’ and the Cow work, there’s been Slapp Happy, Faust and The Lodge, as well as swing-by dates with The Golden Palominos and Art Bears). Yet if you put him firmly in the driving seat on his own, what you get isn’t hyperliterate trickery, but intelligent, light-touch, surprisingly roots-rocking songs with a smart economy of tale-telling and reflection.
He’s still got a yen for throwing up a thesis and exploring it (this is, after all, a man who once explored the roots and fears of the European Union via a teasing, erudite and baffling lyrical mirror-maze of classical borrowings), but more often than not he’ll now use a folk or country-folk form to do so, or pick a nuanced idea to polish in a few simple strokes: something a child could pick up on but which an adult might savour. From some angles you could even confuse him (via that nasal, tuneful, breathy bark of a voice) with a more relaxed Mike Scott in acoustic mode, or even with Mark Knopfler in a moment of sardonic humanism. Although neither of them would have written a love ballad as sparse and sorrowful as Shirt And Comb, honed a metaphysical gag like Something Else (Is Working Harder) or tweaked, explored and upended a common cultural assumption the way Peter does on Gold.
One of the contributors to ‘Go Figure’ (along with Karen Mantler) was the delightful Bob Drake – the erstwhile Thinking Plague and 5uu’s mainstay turned offbeat producer and solo artist. For more of my rambles on him, take a look over here. The long and the short about him, though, is that he’s a multi-instrumentalist and hedge-bard with broad and rambling ideas about just how far you can stretch and mutate an open-ended thought or song, who now regularly heads out for solo voice-and-guitar gigs (often performing, for reasons both flippant and serious, in a lovely white bear-dog suit). Like Peter Blegvad, Bob’s got a liking for complexity and warm perverse wit; but what you take away from his shows is literal shaggy-doggery: peculiar sung tales both finished and unfinished about strange mammals, haunted houses, odd habits, monster-movie scenarios and twisted eldritch dimensions.
When I originally posted this, I was under the impression that Bob was playing a solo Oto support slot, but it now appears that he’s actually beefing up the Trio to a quartet, with or without the animal suit. If you still want to see Bob in solo mode, however, you could set aside some time the previous evening for another Resonance FM fundraiser: Club Integral‘s annual Resonance tin-shaker, being held south of the river at IKLEKTIK on Thursday 8th.
Offering “thirteen minute sets from thirteen acts”, this features a wealth of music-and/or-noise-makers from the Integral playlists: improv pranksters Glowering Figs, audiovisual sculptress Franziska Lantz, ARCO composer Neil Luck, mixed-ability folk internationalists the No Frills Band, Found Drowned/Four Seasons Television guitar manipulator James O’Sullivan, sound designer/Howlround member Robin The Fog, Bob and Roberta Smith (a.ka. artist/advocate/utopian Patrick Brill) playing with his own “musical intervention” project The Apathy Band, restlessly morphing New Wave survivors Spizz, and whoever St Moritz, Two Horns, Robert Storey, Strayaway Child, Swordfish and King/Cornetto happen to be. Plus Bob – who was hoping to balance his thirteen-minute time limit with the playing of thirteen one-minute songs, but has apparently opted to settle for eleven.
(If Bob’s wily, he’ll also strap a few tentacles onto that fur-suit and go up and do a bit of busking by Camden Lock, staking out the London Lovecraft Festival that’s also taking place that week…)
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Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Evil Blizzard + Nasty Little Lonely The Underworld, 174 Camden High Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 0NE, England
Wednesday 10th February 2018, 6.00pm – information here and here
Filling in a three-cornered gap between Public Image Ltd, Poisoned Electrick Head and The Residents, hilariously distressing Preston lords of misrule Evil Blizzard are bringing their act south in order to launch their ‘Fast Forward Rewind’ single (from upcoming third album ‘The Worst Show On Earth’). Their gigs are part banging art-punk party and part horror-comedy masked ball, featuring four cranky and disparate bass guitarists; a singing, chanting drummer; and a pair of in-house stage invaders in the shape of a dancing money-chucking pig and a man running wild with a mop.
The assorted masks (hilarious and creepy) and the threatening mannequin/orc lunges may make it all look like an Auton’s cheese-dream or a riot in a Black Lodge dollhouse, but underneath the screaming horse-laughs are a rattling good party band. Over the years, they’ve won over many a psychedelic or underground festival audience and even their own musical heroes (with Killing Joke, Hawkwind and PiL having invited them on for support slots).
Also playing are stomping industrial post-punk duo Nasty Little Lonely, who provide a bandsaw-guitar set of “post apocalyptic decadence, discarded trappings of consumerism gone awry, alienation and small furry creatures with very sharp teeth.” They might possibly be tempted to dance afterwards if you encourage them enough.
Ben McGarvey, better known as ambient-torch-y folktronicist Minute Taker is heading out on a brief February tour taking in a brace of Saturdays, a Friday and four of the country’s more impressive churches. It’s in support of his new mini-album ‘Reconstruction‘ which he claims reflects “the search for new improved ways of rebuilding yourself when your world has been blown apart.”
Ben’s last pair of tours were more directly theatrical multi-media affairs, fleshing out the doppelganger/ghost story of ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ with tie-in animations, strings and extra guitars. This time, it’s just him – piano, looped harmonies, distorted Eastern-influenced percussion parts, glockenspiel and synths. In addition to the slow dream-jazz-styled songs from ‘Reconstruction’, he’ll be playing rearranged songs from ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ and his previous albums ‘Too Busy Framing’ and ‘Last Things’, plus some rethought-out cover versions from his various influences. Expect an atmosphere of drawn-out, deliciously lovelorn confessions and self-realisations set to luscious, trembling tunes, each with a core of silver-wire determination.
Also along for the ride is Greek-turned-Mancunian singer-songwriter Harry Selevos, a.ka. Runes, who has two albums of dreamy cherubic pop behind him – 2015’s ‘Orphic’ and the 2017 OP3 collaboration ‘AWSS’, sublimating his classical piano training via Asian-influenced vocals, a near-ambient synth pulse and a blissful energy (ending up somewhere between Jimmy Somerville and Mark Hollis).
Dates:
St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 1UL, England, Friday 2nd February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
St Paul’s Church, St Paul’s Square, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, B3 1QZ, England, Saturday 10th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
St James & Emmanuel Church, 6 Barlow Moor Road, Didsbury, Manchester, M20 6TR, England, Saturday 17th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Prior to the tour, Ben will be performing a couple of live-streamed concerts from home via his Facebook page on Sunday 28th January. The first, at 7.30pm, is a general one with a Q&A session; it will be followed by a bonus session for his Secret Facebook Group covering the ‘Secret Songs’ album series in which he explores cover versions and reinventions.
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Live At Zedel/Crazy Coqs presents:
Holly Penfield: ‘Fragile Human Monster’ Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, Soho, London W1F 7ED, England
Friday 23rd February & Friday 23rd March 2018, 9.15pm – information here and here
The last Minute Taker tour, in October last year, coincided with Holly Penfield scheduling time out from her ongoing reign as jazz-cabaret queen and camp icon in order to return to the ‘Fragile Human Monster’ show she’d spun into a strange and shamanic synth-pop cult-of-the-broken during the early ‘90s. Back in October – and earlier – I wrote about how the old show had a “compelling and bizarre Californian theatrical edge which variously sat in your lap and purred, wailed over your head, broke down in front of you, or made you feel less alone – always in the same set” and about how “being a member of Holly’s audience meant being enticed into shedding those cloaks of cynicism and reserve we use to insulate ourselves, and opening your heart up to the rawest kind of sympathy and honesty. The show became a part of us, as much as we were a part of it, the church of the misfits she embraced. We dropped our guard, she sang: a voice for our odd angles and our visceral fears… If you led with your sense of cool, or your cynicism, there was no chance. But at full tilt, it was unmatchable.”
Both ‘Fragile Human Monster’ and its related ‘Parts Of My Privacy’ album had been a second-stage reaction to Holly’s previous career as a blow-dried Los Angeles rock starlet (during which, in classic fashion, she’d been sidelined, ground up and spat out by the dream machine). Both had starred Holly alone but for the saxophone and suss of her partner and husband Ian Ritchie and for the evocative night-time sound of her Kurzweil sampler-keyboard. Over these, she spilled her self-composed, gloriously-sung narratives and metaphorical fantasias of collapse, vulnerability, madness and healing like an obsessive, loving, slightly deranged blurring-together of Laurie Anderson, Jane Siberry and Pat Benatar; framed by a stage set of trinkets and keepsakes which assumed the magical associations of a voodoo shrine – or, as I put it previously, “a travelogue of places been, of people touched and gifts given and received.”
It was the kind of gig into which, whether performer or audience member, you had to throw your whole self… and in turn it eventually flamed out, eventually making way for Holly’s camper (yet straighter) third stage as a knowingly decadent flaunt-it-all singer-performer of jazz and torch standards, commanding top-notch acoustic bands. It’s that latter stage that finally made her name – yet some of the willing therapeutic madness of FHM has always been present in those slinks through Fever and I Wanna Be Evil, the wigs and costume changes, the brassy fragility and the phenomenal voice. (Back in California, Holly had shared a voice coach with Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Junior. It showed.)
It wasn’t clear what was impelling Holly to bring the old show back; nor whether she was resurrecting the synths and sequencers and ditching the jazz quartet and feather boas. In any case, it was promptly derailed by her surprise leather-clad showing on ‘The X-Factor’ in full-on kook mode, teasing Simon Cowell with a riding crop during the auditions phase. She did get a market-friendly Cowell soundbite out of that – “a cross between David Bowie and Liza Minnelli” – to go with her Tim Rice citation (“more than one fine diva – she’s a whole host of them, and they all look wonderful and sound sensational”) but it also meant that the planned Vauxhall Tavern FHM shows got showbizzed, and abruptly morphed into the familiar jazz cabaret albeit with a Halloween tinge. Escape velocity lost and an opportunity missed, even if some of the FHM songs still got stirred into the mix.
Now she’s rescheduled the Monster for a couple of dates at the swish London Zedel eaterie: a luxuriant art-deco cabaret capsule. Again, not much about how she’s going to do it, or how much habit and setting is going to shape instrumentation and presentation, but I’m hoping that after last year’s false alarm this will be the real deal, and that whatever twenty years away have added to the show’s energies will add to the spice. Sadly, there’s nothing directly from the Monster on Youtube – and nothing of ‘Parts of My Privacy’ – so instead I’ll have to whet appetites one of the more Monsterous moments from the cabaret show, an excellent new number Holly posted up the other year (like a Bowie torch song for the American dream), and an FHM ballad in its original glossy LA-pop ’80s garb before Holly pared it back to an art-pop synth shimmer.
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Musica Lumini presents:
Joss Cope + Emily Jones The Cellar Arts Club, (basement of) 70 Marine Parade, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 3QB, England
Friday 2nd February 2018, 7.30pm – information here
It’s always nice to hear about a new venue, pushing back against the swelling tides of blandness and land-banking; and Worthing’s Cellar Arts Club must be a godsend for the more inquisitive characters who live in Brighton’s smaller, sleepier cousin town. I say “new”, but in fact it’s been in existence for nearly a year – a small, sprightly co-op effort providing music, poetry, stand-up, discussion and small-scale theatre and film showings. This February, it celebrates a small coup in pulling in both Joss Cope and Emily Jones for a concert.
Any discussions of Joss inevitably involve invoking (and then quelling) the shadow of his big brother – Julian Cope, the ‘80s psych-pop chart star and holy fool who spent the next three decades evolving into a garage-rock pagan shaman, a looming Archdrude and more recently a heathen-folk Biker of Ragnarok. So here I go… While there are a few shared traits (a sibling similarity in tone, including the Midlands yawp that occasionally cuts through their middle-class diction; their West Coast way with a melody; their tendency to move from proclaimer to informal intimate in a heartbeat by slipping a conversational twist into a driving lyric) they more often sound like two boys who heard the same records but went away having heard and learned different things. For all of his anarchic ways, whenever Cope the Elder yomps off on his Odinist trip, dooms Christianity or tries to brain-bugger you into enlightenment with 12-strings and Mellotrons, he always seems anxious to please, impose and impress; to garner attention from (and for) his assorted upendings and derailments. More outrightly affable, Joss may have come along on some of Julian’s musical trips, but his own are more relaxed and chatty, drawn from the confidence of one who takes more pleasure in the deft shapework of being a craftsman than in being a noisy prophet of the heath.
Ever since his emergence thirty-odd years ago (with short-lived bands such as Freight TrainSomething Pretty Beautiful and United States Of Mind), Joss has brought Cope-ular bounce and chattiness to the acid wistfulness and garage grooves. Since then, apart from a longer stint with counter-pop collective deXter Bentley, it’s been mostly innumerable multi-instrumental pick-up collaborations between Brighton and London (from Sergeant Buzfuz to Crayola Lectern). However, with last year’s ‘Unrequited Lullabies’ (recorded in Joss’ part-time home of Helsinki with a set of amenable Finnish musicians including Veli-Pekka Oinonen of the Leningrad Cowboys) he’s unveiled an album where his own voice comes clear to the surface. A luscious living-room tranche of psych-pop with a sharp wit; dappled with dextrous pop guitars, carousel prog, fake horns and laps of Mellotron, it also shows that there’s more than enough in Joss’ songwriting to ensure that it’s worth listening to him even if he just rocks up alone with an acoustic guitar. With a delivery not too far off the drowsy cut-glass musings of Guy Chadwick (and travelling through similar musical territories to or the Robyn Hitchcock or The Monochrome Set, although he’s less frivolous than either), he provides deceptive sunny reflections on our currently souring culture with its intolerance, its blame-shifting and the growing poisoning of discourse (“fell voices charm the crowd and there’s a bill for everything / Heard the claim that destiny was waiting in the wings… / Gotta get out of this cauldron before it starts to boil / there’s the frog and the kettle, pour on toxic oil”). At the same time, he’s got a healthy disregard for the idea of singer as preacher – admitting, in Cloudless Skies, that “the truth is understated, there’s no reality to be debated, / but no-one wants to hear that in a song.”
So far, the singer-songwriter work of Truronian hinterland-folkie Emily Jones (daughter of cult sixties folk singer and instrument inventor Al Ashworth-Jones) has rambled across two albums and a collection of Bandcamp oddments. In these pages, she’s mostly shown up in connection with the regular support slots she’s played backing up the Spratleys Japs revival. Opening for Joss should provide a bit more of a window for getting across her own particular songview, which layers ancient drone-lays and Sandy Denny musings with latterday and merges ancient folk tropes with latterday horrorfolk tales and strands of modern rurality, in particular the mystical fraying of reality that comes with too much time alone in a remote cottage. Picking at her songbook reveals the makings of an intriguing psych-folk visionary, with stories of strange transformations, blurrings and exchanges (from her recasting of traditional selkie tales to the peculiar trash-moth creature that flits through Hermegant And Maladine to her musings on the supernatural interplay of housework, psychic memories and ghost-hopes in Pieces Of People).
A quick pair of experimental sound pointers for the coming month in London…
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More News From Nowhere presents:
MNFN #23: Dunning/Webster/Underwood + Well Hung Game + ORE + Colin Webster Vs. The Tape Loops New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, N4 1DN London, United Kingdom
Thursday 1st February 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
Regular Walthamstow avant-gardeners More News From Nowhere travel a few train stops westwards to New River Studios, in order to present a night of improvised fury with, as they put it “four flavours of brass-heavy skronk.”
Ed Dudley and James Allsopp will provide “absolutely rinsing live electronics and baritone sax” as Well Hung Game, while “drone doom tuba” player Sam Underwood plays a set as ORE. Saxophonist Colin Webster brings along a set – billed more as a kind of sweaty, frantic wrestle – of live improvisations in tandem with pre-recorded tape loops provided through a general callout for contributions (which was answered by friends, colleagues and sympathisers including Ian Stonehouse, Phil Julian, Stephan Barrett and Marcus Hamblett). The apparent idea is to subvert the improvising process by playing against and in concord with music which is “constant, unprocessed, and to some extent predictable… this presents an interesting challenge to develop music through a one-way conversation.”
At the end of the evening, Colin and Sam will team up with decks’n’FX wizard Graham Dunning for a session of “brass and turntable minimalist patience.”
Samples below:
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Champion Version presents:
Edition 2: Adrena Adrena + Thomas Stone + James Alec Hardy IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 15th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Champion Version present the second in their new series of triple-bill concerts, with a lineup that spans ritual drumwork, radiophonics and assorted mergings and collisions within the audiovisual sphere.
“Adrena Adrena are a collaboration between Boredoms/Seefell drummer E-Da Kazuhisa & visual artist Daisy Dickinson. The duo cut a raw blend of drums, noise and organic visual work, featuring in their performances an eight-foot white sphere that hangs above Kazuhisa’s drum kit and which Dickinson maps videos onto; her work was described by William Barns-Graham of ‘Fluid Radio’ as “cosmological and transcendental, drawing attention to the wonder of the earth and our sensuality on it.” The pair completed a short film in 2016, ‘Man On The Hill’, which features E-da playing drums on fire in the mountains.
“The winner of the 2015 NonClassical Records Battle Of The Bands, Thomas Stone creates his immersive music using contrabassoon, samplers, loop pedals and activated percussion. Blurring the boundaries between electronic and acoustic sound production the music explores themes of ritual and presence. An enforced simplicity runs throughout the dreamlike sound world conjured from slowly evolving motifs using the lowest and highest notes possible on the contra’, accompanied by a hiss and murmur from the percussion and pulse-driven samples breaking to moments of fragile beauty.
“Audio-visual artist James Alec Hardy creates feedback systems as a means for negotiating ideas and simplifying complexity, which are manifested by using obsolete analogue video and audio. Sceptical of the ways in which new technology lends itself to the entrapment of minds using specialised propaganda and manipulated suggestion, Hardy creates work that subverts and repurposes old technology.
“Using obsolete analogue equipment, arrays of monitors become symbolic motifs, simple tribal shapes are interrupted and reconstructed, and video sequences are performative, produced by the physical manipulation of machines. Video acts as a physical and sculptural object rather than a virtual electronic portrayal of image and sound. Immediate and sensitive, it conveys his ideas directly in our age of high video literacy, functioning as the meditative stage for the mind and unravelling its own truth by suggesting that truth and narrative are, ultimately, subjective.”
As with the preceding Edition concert, there will be a limited edition five-copies-only 7″ vinyl single featuring music by the artists performing. Assigned by random draw, these will only be available at this event.
With eight years of noisy, complicated, wallpushing music under the bonnet, London happening-makers Chaos Theory are celebrating with a two-pm-to-two-am alldayer at the start of February, featuring the pick of their past few years of concerts.
Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
‘8 Years of Chaos: Celebrating Eight Years of Music for Open Minds’ The Brewhouse @ London Fields Brewery, 369-370 Helmsley Place, South Hackney, London, E8 3SB, England
Saturday 3rd February 2018, 2.00pm – information here, here and here
As a foundation, expect plenty of of time-signature-skipping, dynamic shifts and steely guitar work from a mass of loud experimental-progressive rock bands, mostly sandwiched between eight-wheeled prog/garage roarers The Fierce & The Dead and cunning tales-of-the-unexpected heavy post-proggers Thumpermonkey. Predominantly (if not entirely) instrumental, these include revitalised Brighton math-metallers Poly-Math, jumpy slammers Flies Are Spies From Hell and the epic goth-toned Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster, plus grand grunge/prog/metal heavies Sümer.
The earlier part of the day will see classical fusion and more experimental, free-floating performers. Mystical avant-cello darling Jo Quail will be playing a set, as will electro-acoustic post-classicalist Lucy Claire. Oliver Barrett’s devotional-drone project Petrels will make an appearance in full band format, while the festival’s opening slot goes to Prometheus & The Satyrs: a new permutation of the work of Spyros Giasafakis and Evi Stergiou (who, as Daemonia Nymphe, have been reworking ancient Greek instruments and music into new part-improvised dark-blurred pieces like an Athenian Dead Can Dance).
As the day wears on, though, things will get hairier and the music gradually heavier and more ritualistic via slots from baleful screaming sludge-metallers Wren, Kentish metalcore men Harrowed, head-against-the-wah-pedal psychedelic noise-metallers Casual Nun and hot-rodding motorik chanters Taman Shud. Towards the end, the infamous Sly & The Family Drone squad will be simultaneously on and offstage. A free-play shufflezone of border-crashing electronics, feedback and occasional horns, they hand out their drums to the audience as part of a mutual meld of inspiration and noisemaking. Drones, blares, convulsions and fragments usually ensue.
The electronics-and-drums duo who are playing as the closing act used to rejoice in the pretty hideous provocateur name of Shitwife. Since then (and post-Pussygate) they’ve grown up a bit, have opted to represent heart and community over nose-tweaking and nihilistic offence, and have been blazing on since June last year as Big Lad. From the early days as an “astonishingly brutal drums/laptop/electronics juggernaut fusing rave, death metal, noise and post-hardcore”, they’re now sleekening into a sunnier, more ecstatic outfit: still slopping out welters of in-your-face noise, but now letting their rave ethics flush through in a setful of “high octane party bangers” and in their desire to become “the band that brings the biggest, rudest party to as many people as possible… we want you to be able to meet awesome new people at the shows and hopefully start sharing important ideas about how we can combat the fuckers that are causing real damage!” It should be an ideal Chaos Theory signoff: blitzing noise meets communal joy.
While there’s a powerful taste of CT’s Facemelter and Whispers & Hurricanes nights here (the metal and the woods) there’s not quite so much from their Jazz Market side to hand. Never mind: there’s only so many hours available – and there’ll be more of everything in the coming year. There’s also a plentiful supply of live-at-Chaos-Theory event clips below, (plus a few borrowings from elsewhere) to get you in the mood…
Over five dense and rapidly-evolving years of releasing and expressing, exploring and pushing, the unification of music and words by Moor Mother (a.k.a. Philly sound art/witness-bearing hip hop interdisciplinarian Camae Ayewa) has become something terrifyingly vital, cathartic and challenging. From the smooth and simple, app-driven, almost homely patchworks of her first EPs, her soundscaping and beat conjuring has developed into a jolting, stirring, often terrifying sonic canvas. Her lightning-raddled masterpiece, 2016’s ‘Fetish Bones’ (hailed at the time as a record of the year by a sweep of critics, from the furious pseudonymous screeders on the most obscure specialised blogs right up to the ponderous proclaimers of ‘Rolling Stone’), could just as equally be record of the year now. Nothing about it has dated, from the explosive Afro-futurist industrial gumbo of its construction to the horrendously untreated, uncorrected misdeeds it chronicles and the righteous rage it swings back with.
A furious free-electronic beat investigation into the very fabric of American history from its battered black underbelly, the timbre and horror of ‘Fetish Bones’ reveals Camae as a burst but ever-renewing griot – willingly overwhelmed but still fighting the fight that needs to be fought. Her spit of ideas and incriminations are the symptom of an ongoing wound that won’t stop being burst open: “still had enough blood in my throat to gargle up nine words – “I resist to being both the survivor and the victim” – but I know the reality…” A stern, fearless presence, she rides a broken levee’s worth of dirty-historical floodwater and swirling cyclonic indictments, holding American crimes to account – male violence; systematic and institutionalised white brutality against black bodies and souls, or against the nation’s own tormented psyche. Around her voice (sharp beads of slam poetry chorused and gravelled by a flicker of concrete distortion) there’s a massed, jump-cutting collage of industrial-strength beats, chain gang and plantation songs, subway trains rattling into darkness, layered speeches of resistance, samplings of gospel ecstasy crossing into screams of operatic rage. What initially seems like a crazed searchlight, swinging pitilessly and furiously from atrocity to atrocity, rapidly reveals itself as being driven by a diamond-hard intelligence as Camae time-travels back and forth across two American centuries of wrongness, relentlessly weaving her case from aural snapshots of black culture suffering and resisting under the heel that hammers it, and never sugarcoating the price and courage of struggle (“like how mama made biscuits outa nothing, all while having a dope needle in her arm…”)
Camae’s in England next week for a couple of shows in London and in Leeds. These should be unmissable. Dates below (tickets are now down to the last fifty or so in London, though I’m not so sure about Leeds).
The Islington, 1 Tolpuddle Street, Angel, London, N1 0XT, England, Wednesday 10th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here, here and here
Headrow House, Bramley’s Yard, 19 The Headrow, Leeds, Yorkshire, LS1 6PU, England, Friday 12th January 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
In London, Camae’s supported by No Home, a.k.a. emergent blackgirl punk Charlie Joseph, who blends wounded lo-fi murmurs and nightmare dream-folk blues wails with suffocating doses of peat-bog guitar noise plus brooding sub-bassy post-punk atmospheres: all of which is a sleight-of-hand cover for the vulnerabilities and contradictions of her songwriting (as if a teenaged, slightly more fucked-up Tracy Chapman had hired in Gnod as producers). Charlie’s own cited touchstones include Mitzi’s building-a-girl narratives and the floating, questioning experimental R’n’B identities of Frank Ocean, plus the shifting roots-tronic approach of Bon Iver and the populist indie of The Strokes. Her interesting, elusive lyrics touch on current soul-aches like toxic masculinity, besieged defensiveness and post-capitalist malaise (though they’re a little too slippery to stick there).
Still a little crude and understated (in comparison to the expansive, whip-smart Moor Mother barrage she’s got to warm up for), Charlie’s only just scraped the surface of what she’s got to say. Give her time – and a few more turns in carefully-chosen, blazing-kiln support slots like this one – and I think we’ll be looking at something quite special. Right now, she’s the whispering ghost of her own future.
In Leeds, the local supports are AlgernonCornelius and Basic Switches – the former a trans-Pennine beatsmaker, the latter a one-woman/circuit-bending/voice-and-effects-pedal show by Hilary Knott (from longstanding Leeds punk-pop “idiosyncrats”Cowtown).
Taking tips from Rza, A Tribe Called Quest and J. Dilla, AlgernonCornelius has spent the last couple of years blending and waxing across a range of hip hop/IDM ideas (from his glitch-soul mangling of Minnie Riperton on 2015’s ‘Blind’ to the shimmying RSJ dub of last year’s ‘Blood Claat’). Basic Switches looks like an extension of Hilary’s other circuit-bending project, Skellingtons, in which she aims for “the harshest possible sound” from twee little Yahama and Casio keyboards plus toys, loop pedals and “broken, cheap drum machines that have previously been rejected by all self respecting electronic music makers.” Wilfully tricky to pin down outside of catching her at a live gig, this unguarded live-at-home Christmas mash-take on George Michael should at least give you some idea of how she works.
Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Scenatet Ensemble (performing Matt Rogers) + David Helbich + Joseph Houston (performing Antonia Barnett-McIntosh) Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Saturday 13th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
The year’s first Kammer Klang continues the concert series’ journey away from the more predictable rigours of contemporary classical tradition, and into areas of conceptual gesture and experiment, welcoming composers and musical enablers drawing from chance and the theatre and from the sometimes chaotic, sometimes magical diversity of human interpretation.
Pianist Joseph Houston (whose tally of experimental music collaborations and interpretations includes work with and by Christian Wolff, Simon Holt, Brian Ferneyhough, Colin Matthews, Rebecca Saunders, Christian Mason, and Klaus Lang) will be opening the show for the usual Fresh Klang sequence. He’ll be performing work by transdisciplinary composer, sound artist, performer and sometime curator Antonia Barnett-McIntosh who describes her compositional concerns and approaches as “the specificity of sound gestures and their variation, translation and adaptation, often employing chance-based and procedural operations.” Here’s a video of Joseph playing Luigi Nono, followed by one of Antonia’s pieces.
Brussels-based David Helbich is not so much a composer as a philosophical conceptualist interested in performance. In his travels, he “creates various experimental works on stage, on page, online and in public space… (moving) between representative and interactive works, pieces and interventions, between conceptual work and actions. A recurring interest is in the understanding of an audience as active individuals and the search for an opening-up of experiences in an artistically restricted space.”
In keeping with this, he’ll be engaging the venue audience in a “performative rehearsal” of his ‘No Music’ piece, guiding and suggesting their own collaborative potential soundmaking abilities into a spontaneous, instrumentless timbral noisework never to be exactly repeated. As he says, “No Music is no music, but still a musical experience. No music, still for your ears. Since 2010 I have worked on scores for pieces that could be performed right at the spot, in whatever context, as long as one could freely use both hands and had two functioning ears. The pieces offer notated situations of organised listening and simple ear manipulations. I understand this material more as a practice than as a series of composition, even though they can appear as such. Pieces appear in printed form as well as in spontaneous performances or entirely set theatrical or concert performances. These interventions are entirely personal and therefore not so much interactive as ‘inner-active’, self-performative. The reader as the performer as the listener.”
Founded in 2008, the Scenatet ensemble have enjoyed nearly a decade working in the overlapping area of live music, film, art spaces and conceptual staging, choosing to move “in a cross-genre field of music, drama and happenings towards areas with yet undefined genre… aiming to create conceptual art works where music is part of a larger whole.” Three Scenatet musicians (clarinettist Vicky Wright, viola player Gijs Kramers and cellist My Hellgren) will be premiering a new piece by British composer Matt Rogers (who, among other career triumphs, was the first composer to be commissioned by Transport for London’s Art on the Underground programme). His new piece, ‘Weep At The Elastic As It Stretches’, is a musical adaptation of ‘Prayer’, itself an excerpt of N.F. Simpson’s classic 1958 absurdist play ‘A Resounding Tinkle’.
As Matt recounts, the original text piece “takes place as a radio broadcast within a scene which is both domestic and ludicrous.It takes the form of a prayer of thanks, but the content is entirely atypical, asking that we rejoice in all manner of unexpected objects, situations and concepts, taking great delight in the most categorical of descriptions and in a complete lack of distinction between the mundane and the exotic. As is typical of Simpson’s work the effect is both ridiculous and sublime, encapsulating the ineffability of an existence somehow both arbitrary and profound. ‘Weep at the Elastic’ as it Stretches wishes to embody the attitudes and spirit of Simpson’s prayer, the final stage direction of which reads “The introductory bars of ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’ in an orchestrated version are heard from the wireless.”…”
A couple of related videos…
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After that, 2018’s first Nonclassical concert might feel like a comparative retreat to the familiar. A “Battle of the Bands” event transposed to the contemporary classical world, it’ll be judged by Nonclassical’s own Gabriel Prokofiev and Eleanor Ward (plus Dominic Murcott of Trinity Label and BBC Radio 3 controller Alan Davey), and aims to throw open some doors of opportunity for unheard or underheard contemporary composers, musicians and ensembles at the start of what might be an interesting career.
Nonclassical presents:
Battle of the Bands (performers t.b.c.) The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England
Wednesday 17th January 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
“Battle of the Bands is back! Join us at The Victoria, Dalston on 17 January 2018 as we try and find the next big artists who want to showcase new and experimental classical music. From avant-garde classics to works with electronics, spoken words or improvisation, the night will showcase some of the best up and coming talent in the alt-classical scene.
“Battle of the Bands is an open contest for soloists and groups of any size. Instrumentation is limited only by your imagination! Any combination of acoustic and electronic instruments will be considered. Playing time is from five to fifteen minutes.”
I stress that it might seem like a retreat to the familiar. In fact, they’re encouraging contributions “from avant-garde classics to works with electronics, spoken words or improvisation” in order to “showcase some of the best up and coming talent in the alt-classical scene.” If all contestants really choose to stretch the envelope, we could end up with something as left-field as the Kammer Klang event above.
In a feat of considerable brinksmanship, Nonclassical are closing the competition a slender eight days before the concert. If you’re interested in entering, you have until Wednesday 10th January to fill in the application form and link to a demo track on SoundCloud, YouTube or Vimeo.
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London Composers Platform presents:
London Composers Platform: The Candlelight Quartet performs Miguel Alonso, Stirling Copland, Bertie Douglas, Allister Kellaway, Tom Mudie, Grady Steele and others Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 14th January 2018, 7.00pm – information
In between the two gigs above (both in terms of dates and the various Hackney locations), Servant Jazz Quarters is putting on an evening of “new works for piano and string trio composed by musicians from popular and classical music backgrounds.” The Candlelight Quartet will premiere a string of new contemporary classical works by an assortment of young composers: most of them at the start of their careers, and many of them currently known for work in other musical fields, including Allister Kellaway, who leads avant-rockers The Mantis Opera), dance pop experimentalist Tom Mudie (a.k.a. Mom Tudie) and Grady Steele (who spends much of his time as singer/guitarist for young indie/art-rockers Shark Dentist, who have a couple of singles out on Ra-Ra Rok Records). Other composers with works in the mix include Miguel Alonso, Bertie Douglas and Stirling Copland (the last of whom has had at least one string quartet performed at an LCP event before). It all has a welcome air of self-starter to it.
Starting off the New Year, there’s a diverse brace of upcoming shows dotted around the country… In London, there’s the Society Of Imaginary Friends’ monthly musicians’n’poets soiree (this month, one that’s particularly heavy on the poets). In Glasgow, there’s a “feast of psych and folk wonderment” linking the folkworlds around Trembling Bells and Alasdair Robert with arch proggy steampunk songwriting. Down in Bristol, there’s “an evening of pop pleasures and wonky wonders.” Read on…
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Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
“For Those in Peril on the Sea” Soiree: Society of Imaginary Friends + Blert Ademi + Debra Watson + Stone Deep + Amy Neilson Smith + Ernie Burns + DJ Miracle Rhythm Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 5th January 2018, 7.30pm – free event – information here and here
From the Society:
“A still boat in a raging storm, our January Soiree – the month of cataclysmic cyclones battering our little island, foam fills the air, cool seagulls ride the tempest and the Society Of Imaginary Friends gather in their cabin around a crackling fire and tell stories of things past and things to come.
“We are joined by the fabulous young pianist Blert Ademi; brilliant, hard hitting poetess Debra Watson; new intriguing soul music from Stone Deep; charismatic performer, Shakespearian beauty and wonderful poetess Amy Neilson Smith; lusty, revealing super-wordsmith Ernie Burns; on the wheels of steel, the vinyl singles DJ extraordinaire DJ Miracle Rhythm; and the Society Of Imaginary Friends taking you back to a beautiful solstice evening in the Glastonbury Green Field. (More amazing performers to be announced – watch this space!) Cordon bleu vegan delights available to purchase from top chefs Kathy and Roger. Free entry. Dinner from 6pm, live performances start at 8pm.”
I couldn’t find anything on – or by – Stone Deep; but here’s a look at the rest of the lineup so far, beginning with an old SOIF track…
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A day later, there’s the Scottish event: a delightful, consensus-bucking meld of the credible, the incredible and the extramural.
Orion’s Belt + Tom Slatter + Marcus Doo Nice’n’Sleazy, 421 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LG, Scotland
Saturday 6th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Headliners Orion’s Belt are a “seven-piece behemoth” of latterday Glasgow-via-Canterbury psychedelic folk, sometimes compared to “Kevin Ayers & The Whole World with Judy Collins handling the vocals”. They’re led by singer Lavinia Blackwall, best known as the voice of Trembling Bells but a longstanding mainstay of Glaswegian early music and avant-folk. Prior to their work as Trembling Bells, she and Alex Neilson collaborated as free-improv folkers Directing Hand: outside of the Bells they still sing together (alongside Harry Campbell and Katy Cooper of Muldoon’s Picnic) as four-part a capella voice quartet Crying Lion, who blend madrigal, folk, Gregorian and Sacred Harp elements into original songs.
In comparison, Orion’s Belt sounds like one of Lavinia’s more easy-going projects but ought to be magical nonetheless. Also on board in the band, picked from Glasgow’s gutsier psych, prog and folk underground, are members of “ongoing sloth-themed rock opera” collective Sloth Metropolis, prog-folkers Big Hogg, and “neo-psychedelic ninjas”Helicon (plus perhaps a few more people from Trembling Bells). Sorry – it still seems to be too new to have generated any recordings or Youtubings yet, but as a compensation here’s Lavinia’s five-year-old version of Richard Farina’s ‘The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood’ performed with Maddy Prior, Thea Gilmore and the late Dave Swarbrick.
Originally with mid-noughties post-rockers Ancient Monsters, Highland-born singer-songwriter Marcus Doo has since made the transition to modern-day folk; initially with his own Spanish-based Secret Family, who explored the genre via their “Magpie Returned the Ring” album and scores for a Spanish Royal Theatre version of Ted Hughes’ ‘Gaudete’ and for Chema Rodríguez’s ‘Anochece en la India’. He’s been described by author Graeme Macrae Burnet as “a songwriter with a rare mastery of both melody and lyrics… his songs are satisfying as a rounded pebble in your hand, and he performs them with such passion and intensity that I would defy anyone not to be moved.” Since his 2015 return to Glasgow, Marcus has been working with sympathetic figures including Alasdair Roberts (with whom he’s recently toured), Alex Neilson and Mike Hastings of Trembling Bells, and Tom Davis of Big Hogg.
All of the latter appear on Marcus’ debut solo effort ‘Kid Wonder’, a loosely conceptual folk album about “an older man looking back at his life, towards death and in search of any Golden Apple (an old Norse emblem of eternal youth) of memory that may help him accept what has gone and what is about to come. Through various adventures to an ever-clearer destination he is emboldened by memories of places and people past, and gives thanks to them.” Other contributors to the record include Trembling Bells’ Valinia Black, various other members of the Doo family (including Marcus’ recently deceased grandfather), France-based flamenco-ist Genaro Alonso and Clova fiddler Aoife McGarrigle.
To have a listen to ‘Kid Wonder’ you’ll need to visit Marcus’ own music page, but here’s another substitute in the shape of an old Secret Family track.
In the middle of the bill is sardonic London bard-of-the-fantastical Tom Slatter, whose reliably arch and intricate songbook of weird-fiction songstories (steampunk murders, tentacled monstrosities running amok) has built up across a string of theatrical albums and EPs since the early noughties. Hailed for “epic tales of darkness and light (which) fuse the bile of Roy Harper with humour and a sharp musical mind”, he’s previously delivered them live via a single strummed acoustic guitar, but is now generally accompanied by electric guitarist Gareth Cole. Here’s the video for a particular bit of 2015 Slatter tentaculation:
In case you think that Tom sounds like an odd, forced fit in the midst of this sincere Scottish folk stew – and it’s fair to admit that a man who calls his own concert album ‘Live, Discomfiting and Overly Whimsical’ might be bringing the hurt down on himself – it’s worth remembering that (in between the Lovecraft/Sterling/GameCon rampages) his catalogue features scattered, glowing moments of unguarded psychedelic beauty such as the ‘Earthbound’ single. On top of that, Tom’s most recent solo album – last year’s ‘Happy People‘ – took an unexpected sideswerve away from the monster galleries, the top hats and the cog-driven toy theatres into a much more nuanced consideration of the human condition. Tom probably wouldn’t thank me for pointing this out, mind; and if you’re solidly unconvinced, come along and heckle him anyway. By many accounts, he loves a good heckle, especially if topped off by a dose of cunning wordplay.
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Pop Or Not Promotions and Undergrowth present:
Pop/Not: Snails, Edward Penfold, Eugene Capper & Rhodri Brooks Cube Microplex, Dove Street South (off top-left of King Square), Kingsdown, Bristol, BS2 8JD, England
Saturday 13th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
“Led by songwriter Dan Weltman and described as “eerie, beautiful, modestly majestic” by Stephen McRobbie of The Pastels, five-piece experimental pop band Snails generate moments of suburban guitar pop reverie for lonely people walking to the shops. Their sound bears the influence of ’60s folk and psychedelia with a peppering of ’90s pop. Mavericks such as Syd Barrett and Nico mingle with the likes of the Gorky’s or even Belle and Sebastian; though, having no desire to recreate the past, Snails sensitively combine a passion for classic sounds with inventive songwritting to create their own heartfelt pop music. For this unique Bristol show they will be playing brand new material from their upcoming second LP.
“Edward Penfold’s music is a blend of the old and the new, nostalgic but not dated. More than anything it sounds like now. It’s music from the heart – a hazy collection of sounds and moods, sometimes upbeat, sometimes down, but always genuine and always captivating. His lyricism reflects the eloquence and observation of a very English sort of poetry, seeing the depth in the shallows of life, the profundity in the mundane; all accepted with a matter-of-factness that is reflected in the driving impetus in every song, whether slow or fast or groovy. His new album ‘Denny Island Drive’ came out in late November 2017.
“After two years of ongoing collaboration and development, Cardiff twosome Eugene Capper and Rhodri Brooks have just released their beautiful debut LP ‘Pontvane’. Individually, both Capper and Brooks have developed back catalogues of diverse musicality and influence, incorporating elements of surf, lo-fi, Americana and psych. Their first release as a duo further emphasises this eclecticism, effortlessly stitching together disparate sonic fragments into a cohesive, compelling whole. Take a listen…”
News on an intriguing long-weekender of a festival coming up next month…
“Imagine if Bach was a jazzman, Vivaldi a folk-fiddler, or Handel a minimalist… A brand-new event from the creators of the highly successful London Festival of Baroque Music (artistic director Lindsay Kemp and manager Lucy Bending, working in partnership with LSO St Luke’s) the Baroque At The Edge festival invites leading musicians ranging from classical to world, jazz and folk to take the music of the Baroque and see where it leads them. No rules, no programme notes, no lectures: all you need to know is how to listen.”
There are three virtuoso duet concerts. The first features German recorder player Tabea Debus and theorbo lutenist Alex McCartney performing Telemann’s Solo Fantasias, alongside specially commissioned new pieces from Colin Matthews (‘Meditation’), Laura Bowler (‘TV Man’) and Fumiko Miyachi (‘Air’). The second is a part-improvisational teamup of lutenist Thomas Dunford and Persian percussionist Keyvan Chemirani, crossing and blending the sounds of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century European Baroque masters with similarly dazzling and spiritual Persian compositions. The third and last brings together Bjarte Eike (of raw folk/Baroque crossover ensemble Barokksolistene) and jazz pianist Jon Balke(of Magnetic North Orchestra).
Opening the festival, delightfully eclectic pianist, programmer and prime musical communicator Joanna MacGregor will deliver a concert “celebrating birds, ground basses and chaconnes” and consisting of nineteen pieces spanning four-and-a-half centuries – not only the Baroque (handsomely represented by Alessandro Poglietti, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Henry Purcell, Louis-Claude Daquin, François Couperin and Johann Pachelbel), but the Renaissance (William Byrd), the Romantic movement (Franz Liszt, Leoš Janáček), Modernism (Olivier Messiaen), minimalism (Philip Glass) and the fanning-out of contemporary classical (Harrison Birtwistle, Hossein Alizâdeh, Sofia Gubaidulina).
Warm, witty universal percussionists O Duo (Oliver Cox and Owen Gunnell) will be leading a family-friendly open-to-all percussion workshop with a baroque twist, while Paolo Pandolfo gives a solo viola da gamba recital embracing fantasies and popular dance-tunes of the sixteenth century, brushes with Bach, Telemann and the French baroque, and Paolo’s own captivating 21st-century improvisations.
Perhaps most absorbingly, vocal ensemble The Marian Consort (accompanied by lutenist Jamie Akers and solo actor/onetime ‘Casualty’ star Gerald Kyd) will deliver the London premiere of Clare Norburn’s concert-drama ‘Breaking the Rules‘, an acclaimed concert-drama exploring the last agonies of the seventeenth-century composer Carlo Gesualdo (a boundary-crossing influence on artists including Igor Stravinsky, Aldous Huxley, Werner Herzog and Frank Zappa). Having jealously murdered his first wife Donna Maria D’Avalos (along with her lover), Gesualdo poured his pain into deeply and unconventionally expressive music of torture and regret. ‘Breaking The Rules’ promises “(a) sound-track to Gesualdo’s mind on the final night of his life, as he contemplates his own mortality and the tumultuous events which have led him to this moment.”
Dates for ‘Baroque at the Edge’ (all other information is here):
Joanna MacGregor – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Friday 5th January 2017, 7.30pm
Tabea Debus & Alex McCartney – St James Clerkenwell, Clerkenwell Close, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 0EA, England, Saturday 6th January 2017, 1.00pm
Paolo Pandolfo – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Saturday 6th January 2017, 4.00pm
The Marian Consort: ‘Breaking the Rules’ – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Saturday 6th January 2017, 7.00pm – tickets
Thomas Dunford & Keyvan Chemirani – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Saturday 6th January 2017, 9.30pm
O Duo Family Workshop – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Sunday 7th January 2017, 10.30am
Bjarte Eike & Jon Balke – LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, St Lukes, London, EC1V 9NG, England, Sunday 7 January 2018, 12.30pm
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Much later in the month, over in a lofty Arts & Crafts Movement Anglo-Catholic church in west Kensington, the London City Quartet will be playing four string quartets: one of them an established twentieth century classic, the other three brand new works.
West Kensington Music Team presents:
London City Quartet: “Bomafescho.” St. Cuthbert’s Church (Earls Court), 50 Philbeach Gardens, Earls Court, London, SW5 9EB, England
Saturday 27th January 2018, 5.00pm – tickets & enquiries via email here or via telephone (020 7101 4479)
Programme:
Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet No. 1 David Bozzo – String Quartet No. 2 Brian Martínez – String Quartet No. 1 Peter Fender – String Quartet No. 1 (Thredony Quartet) Op. 30
There hasn’t been much more that I could dig up about this, either from the slightly bewildering WKMT homepage or elsewhere; but as appetite-sharpeners here’s a recording of David Bozzo’s previous string quartet (as played by the Billroth Quartet), a Martinez piano prelude, and a rendition of the Shostakovich by the Fitzwilliam Quartet. (Peter Fender, modestly, seems to restrict his own video output to examples of his conducting and training rather than his compositions.)
Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Ashley Paul & Ensemble (performing Mary Jane Leach) + Mette Rasmussen & Sofia Jernberg + Dawn Scarfe Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
The coming month’s Kammer Klang has only a tenuous relationship with contemporary classical, concentrating as it does on musicians who espouse either free improvisation or natural resonance.
The evening centres on an ensemble led by clattering, free-form multi-instrumentalist and composer Ashley Paul (who recently supported Powerdove further north at the Old Dentist) and featuring Hyperion Ensemble bass clarinettist/utility person Yoni Silver, cellist/Kammer Klang organiser Lucy Railton, onetime Sonic Youth guitarist-turned-ubiquitous London art musician Thurston Moore and Charcoal Owls’ multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott on piano (a man who generally brings a specifically Cumbrian twist to his playing, gizmo fiddling and use of field recordings). They’ll be playing ‘Wolff Tones E-Tude’, a cellular Christian-Wolff-inspired piece by American composer Mary Jane Leach (example performance below).
Much of Mary Jane’s work focusses on acoustic properties and how sound environments form in specific spaces with particular resonances and opportunities for difference, combination, and interference tones; in addition, how these may be manipulated by a performer, composer or editor (or by someone who’s a combination of all or some of those things). She herself will be present for the performance, which also includes a stereo-diffused playback of her 1992 radio sound piece/hörspiel ‘Kirchtraum’ (about which she says “Have you ever walked into a church, and it seems as if there is sound rolling around the space that’s been there for a long time? I created ‘Kirchtraum’ to create a sound dreamscape to create that kind of feeling. It uses the phases of a dream, going progressively further back into the past and becoming more chaotic with each phase. I used nightingales to punctuate the different phases of the dream, to differentiate between the dream and the environment…”). In addition, she’ll be present for a pre-concert workshop on Sunday 3rd December from noon until 5.00pm (giving a lecture and offering feedback on pieces any composers care to bring in) and, prior to the concert on the Tuesday, participating in a public talk with Frances Morgan at 7.00pm.
Opening in the Fresh Klang slot is Dawn Scarfe, a sound artist preoccupied with “things that seem to sound themselves, such as resonating glasses, Aeolian wires and self-opening swell boxes”, and who’s brought this preoccupation to sound installations between Cumbria and London, Exeter and Estonia, Brussels and Seoul. Her projects include the livestreamed ‘Reveil‘ “an annual crowdsourced live broadcast which “tracks the sound of the sunrise around the world for twenty-four hours” using open microphones provided by streamers around the world: she’s described it as intending “to open a space for listening to something else – especially from places where humans and not humans meet – and in the course of one earth day to provide a sketch of this emerging field.” 2017’s edition included contributions from Maputo, Tehran, New York, Kolkata, Santiago de Cali, nature reserves in Cumbria’s Walney Island and Australia’s Noosa Biosphere Reserve, and even the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. On this occasion, Dawn will be performing ‘Tuning to Spheres’, written for wine glasses, sine tone generators and turntables.
Closing the evening out will be a free experimental duet between raw Danish Trio Riot saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who works with both plain and prepared instruments) and Swedish/Norwegian singer/composer Sofia Jernberg (who works with a twisting barrage of vocal techniques including split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing)
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Fresh from some well-publicised collaborations with avant-rock godfathers Faust, countercultural Salford sound wizards Gnod are returning to their ongoing “R&D” tour. For more on their London weekender from last year, click here; at the moment, they’re stripped back down to their core duo of Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine in order to explore the next, as-yet-undecided developments from last year’s seethe of slow, dirty riffage on their bed of dub, urban discontent, psychic reportage and ritual. As part of that development, they’re throwing the stage open to volunteer collaborators on the night, “be it singing , shouting, dancing, bringing an instrument/device to the table or just simply tuning in and coming along for the ride.” Dust off your home-made Azimuth Co-ordinator or pocket Tettix Wave Accumulator; grab that Aztec death whistle from the back of the kitchen drawer; head down and dive in.
Following the Italian/Slovenian leg in November (in which they toured with Italian noise-rock guitar/voice/drums duo OvO and Godspeed-associated Montreal wallcrashers Big ‡ Brave), the British tour will see a blurring of support slot and Gnod expansion. The band’s ranks will be pre-swollen in Glasgow by drummer and oscillator king Julian Dicken (from Glaswegian psych-rockers The Cosmic Dead) and in Bristol by murky industral-technoist Tony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and drummer Dan Johnson (from jazz-punkers Run Logan Run). In London, they’ll be augmented by a five-strong gang of John Doran (head ‘Quietus‘ ranter), heavy electronicist Mark Dicker (ex-Trencher, Palehorse, Bruxa Maria), Mark O. Pilkington and Michael J. York of synth-and-bagpipe psychonauts Teleplasmiste and Teeth Of The Sea trumpeter Sam Barton. In addition, the London gig has a clearly defined support act in the shape of URUK, a teamup of bass player Massimo Pupillo (of expansive no-wave trio Zu) and synthesist/multi-instrumentalist Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualized, various Julian Cope bands). URUK originates from 2016 when mutual fans Massimo and Thipe finally got together; the resulting music, debuted on this year’s ‘I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness’ album, references both Coil and Zu but sinks deeper into the world of highly textured dark-ambient drones.
Dates:
Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England, Thursday 7th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
Broadcast, 427 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LG, Scotland, Friday 8th December 2017, 7.00pm – information
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Sunday 10 December 2017, 7.30pm – information
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Just time, too, to mention another Xposed Club incident over in Cheltenham, in which there’ll be a meet-up duo of pianist Alexander Hawkins and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (who between them have notched up work and/or leadership duties with Convergence Quartet, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Decoy and more – we also recently saw Raymond exploring the art of the graphic score in London). Also on the bill is well-respected London experimental vocalist/Resonance FM founder Sharon Gal, engaging in duo work with Ghost Mind percussionist (and Xposed host) Stuart Wilding; and a solo set from avant-garde bass clarinet virtuoso Chris Cundy who, as mentioned here some time back, “dips into everything from the philosophical experiments of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage to out-and-out improv to theatre work.”
Various tasters below:
Xposed Club presents:
Alexander Hawkins & Raymond MacDonald + Sharon Gal & Stuart Wilding + Chris Cundy The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 8th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
As a matter of course, London-based Anglo-Norwegian cello trio Tre Voci (consisting of Torun Saeter Stavseng, Gregor Riddell and Colin Alexander) sit on a triple cusp. Their work focusses on Early music, contemporary compositions (they’ve premiered work by composers including Mica Levi, Alex Nikiporenko, Bryn Harrison, Kit Downes, Peter Wiegold, Edwin Hillier and Sergei Zagny) and improvisations. Much of this early December concert (played twice in a single day, under the aegis of the Nonclassical organization) sees them explore the third of these directions, creating “meditative” new surround-sound music in combination with outstanding Iranian hand-drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. Laid out in the ICA’s performance space, it will be part gig, part walk-through three-dimensional installation, with further synaesthesic dimensions added by the live visuals from Norwegian artist Henrik Koppen.
For part of the concert’s second half, the trio will play unspecified new compositions of their own as well as teaming up with Norwegian soprano Silje Aker Johnsen to premier a new work by David Stephen Grant. In a recent interview on the Nonclassical blog, Colin Alexander states that the Grant piece will “cover the listeners in thick, interwoven layers of sound… David writes rich, warm and engulfing electro-acoustic music that will fill the space at ICA with shifting harmonies and blurred timbres. My first experience of his writing was through a duo for violin and cello with electronics that I performed with Mira Benjamin in Oslo and London. Although simple and relatively short it was incredibly effective through its nuanced beauty and delicately judged movement.”
Nonclassical & Tre Voci Cello Ensemble present:
Tre Voci: Orbits Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, Westminster, London, SW1Y 5AH England, United Kingdom
Sunday 3rd December 2017, 4.00pm & 8.00pm – information here and here
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There was a time when Keith Burstein could barely stay out of trouble. As a conductor and commissioner of New Music, he was a rising pillar of British contemporary classical music during his twenties. However, his discovery of his own composing voice – staunchly tonal, in fervent reaction to the austere high-modernist abstractions of the times – drew him into a series of vicious joustings and spats in the early ‘90s, played out first within the musical community, then in the press, in the concert hall and ultimately in the libel courts. He fought hard. The establishment he’d jilted and criticised fought equally hard. There’s not been much forgiveness on either side.
Ten years later, his opera ‘Manifest Destiny’ (which took a broad-brush metaphysical approach to the War on Terror) was performed in Edinburgh in the wake of the London suicide bombings of 2005. Further spats followed over alleged glorification of terrorism. There was another court case, and a bankruptcy. As before, Keith would argue (and continues to argue) that he was fighting not just for his own right to musical self-expression and political challenges, but for everyone else’s. Subsequent adventures have been quieter (and his rebellions subtler), but even as he approaches his sixtieth year he’s never entirely lost that self-appointed role as vehement high-culture renegade.
With all that said, the ultimate Burstein concerns and preoccupations seem more suited to metaphysical and spiritual realms rather than the political and strategic trappings of the battles he’s fought, and their scale and fervour have tended to overshadow the music: the water-pageant melancholy of ‘Requiem for the Young’, the entanglement of manners and compressed frenzy in his ‘Dance of Love/Dance of Death’ string quartet; the foreboding elegance of his choral Holocaust meditation ‘The Year’s Midnight’ and the lucid romantic panorama of his ‘Elixir’ symphony. When writing to a grander scale, he composes work that in some respects resembles the Whitehall of his beloved London – looming and aspirational; fascinated by the power of architecture and history, yet at the same open to and ownable by passers-by; his structures echoing the antique yet repurposing them to modern ends, and being buffeted and reshaped by contemporary impacts; an meticulous admixture of historicism and retrofitting.
This month’s lunchtime recital, however, provides the opportunity to appreciate his music on a smaller magnitude, at a remove from grander clutter of conflicts and history. Packing various shorter Burstein works for piano, violin and cello into its forty-five minutes, it includes assorted piano preludes and the final movement of Keith’s recent ‘Wiosna’ cello sonata (one of several recent works in which he retraces his family history back through his parents’ work as violinists with the Brighton Philharmonic and Halle Orchestra to their Eastern European roots and Russian/Lithuanian connections). Keith (on piano) is joined by notable solo cellist Corinne Morris – whose ‘Macedonian Sessions’ reached number 2 in the classical charts this year – and by violinist/composer Roland Roberts (Solaris Quartet, City of Oxford Orchestra, Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and many more). Both Corinne and Roland have worked with Keith before; the former premiering ‘Wiosna’… and the latter co-premiering the piano/violin duet Keith composed this year in honour of his late mother Barbara.
Lunchtime Recital of the Works of Keith Burstein (with Keith Burstein, Corinne Morris, Roland Roberts) 1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Monday 11th December 2017, 12.00pm – information here and here
Total Refreshment Centre and Alabaster dePlume present:
Peach #15: Alabaster DePlume + Coby Sey + Capitol K Total Refreshment Centre, Unit 1, Foulden Road, Shacklewell, London, N16 7UU, England
Thursday 30th November 2017, 7.00pm – information
The last show of 2017 for research-and-development pop evening Peach is, as ever, led by saxophonist, composer and wordslinger Alabaster Deplume. To deliver his part-improvised instrumentals (peppered with personal and political spoken-word musings and sincere gamings), Alabaster’s formed a new cross-disciplinary group for each successive Peach. This night’s band includes bass player Clementine March (of punktronica band Snapped Ankles) and Tomorrow’s Warriors violinist Rhiannon Jeffreys.
Adding to Alabaster’s band will be involvements from the other two acts on the bill, a pair of dance producers whose work steeps in and reworks elements of dub, downtempo, cumbia and more, and who cross over into live performance. Over to the Peach publicity machine for more on them:
“The dense and the meticulous combine in the voice of Coby Sey, Lewisham’s unique and powerful producer and live performer. His solo show packs a room to the inch with spirit-driven noise, with a sound matching the fine resonance of his humble character. We’ve been looking forward to presenting this man’s work for ages. An NTS DJ, and collaborator and ally of Micachu and Tirzah.
“As the skulking angel of London’s underground music scene (since 1998 according to Wikipedia) Capitol K (ace manipulator of audio and punk warlord of groove) has crossed a tapestry of styles and approaches with his own secret compass. Tonight that compass points at something in the distance, on the other side of where you’ll be sat. A multi-instrumentalist, label founder and producer, we are blessed and humbled tonight as he’ll bring us a representation of his latest work, in development in isolation in Malta.”
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Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Chiyoda Ku + Low Sun + Archelon The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 1st December 2017, 7:30pm – information here and here
Chaos Theory unleash one last convulsion of “post-metal, math rock and odd atmospheres” before shutting up shop for the year.
On tap this time are nimble yet understated Bristolian instrumentalists Chiyoda Ku (flicking between loping machine dubfunk, math timing jumps and gentle jazzy-postrock sprinkles); Low Sun (who assemble lengthy, vivid and chilly Arctic progscapes from oscillating drone-winds, catchy minimalist riffs and passionate psych-blues guitar wails); and surprisingly lucid post/sludge metal act Archelon, heavy moody rockers who, before they rear up into red-hot guitar and pagan sighing about the stars, show shades of the sullen east London urban glower of Bark Psychosis (and, stretching back even, further, even a tinge of ‘Spirit of Eden’ Talk Talk).
On this showing, Chaos Theory can still pick ’em: they’ve got plans for a delightfully monstrous all-dayer early next year, but more on that in due course…
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Fire Records presents
Hater + Pictish Trail + Dama Scout London Fields Taproom @ London Fields Brewery, 365-366 Warburton Street, London Fields, London, E8 3RR, England
Saturday 2nd December 2017 – information here, here and here
Stalwart alternative label Fire are throwing their own end-of-year party at London Fields. Headlining are rapid risers Hater – ringing, birdlike Swedish indie-poppers sitting midway between Pretenders and late Cocteau Twins (and not a million miles away from the more recent Brill Building/dream pop crossover songs of Elephant), while the gig openers are London trio Dama Scout, who visually flirt with Asian pop imagery, have the ‘90s dream pop warble of the most accessible end of Ride and My Bloody Valentine, but also possess the terser edge of a young John Lennon.
Of most interest to me, though, is the filling in the sandwich – an appearance by Johnny Lynch’s Pictish Trail, a kind of exploded singer-songwriter act which refuses to stick to one course, one sound, even one signature. Instead, Johnny follows wherever his scattered muse takes him – haunting avant-folk along the lines of Gastr del Sol and David Grubb, skewed synthpop, Momus-style experimental disco, noise-weather – and glues the whole thing together with his contradictory, intriguing persona of “svelte, intelligent, adorable balladeer trapped inside the body of an oversized, oft-bearded folk ogre”, something which gives him equal license to clown, to loom in stricken menace, or to wrench your heartstrings with his dream-logic insight.
Although he’s spent the past couple of years happily holed up as a solo singer-songwriter on the Isle of Eigg (out in the Hebrides), Johnny’s bringing down Pictish Trail as a three-piece (featuring multi-instrumentalists Suse Bear of Tuff Love and John B. McKenna from Monoganon) for what he cheerfully calls a “intimate yuletide Eigg-nog of Hebridean Casio folk”.Note that the Fire shindig is one stop on his Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour, which is also calling in at Oxford on 29th November and Brighton on 8th December. For a ‘Misfit City’ reflection on a Johnny solo appearance from a few years ago, click here – otherwise, see below for some more recent studio efforts, along with a couple of Hater and Dama Scout clips…
Jazz In The Round presents:
Jazz In The Round: Arun Ghosh + Eddie Parker (solo) + tbc The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
British-Asian jazz clarinettist, keyboard player and composer Arun Ghosh (perhaps best known for Arkestra Makara, the pan-Asian chamber-jazz orchestra which made a colourful cross-continental splash at the London Olympics five years ago) is making his Jazz In The Round debut. He’ll be leading a new band featuring saxophonists Idris Rahman and Chris Williams, guitarist Shirley Tetteh, bass player Liran Donin and drummer Dave Walsh.
The concert showcases his newest release, ‘But Where Are You Really From?’ – a keyboard-heavy album of rolling multi-cultural twenty-first century jazz-rock which not only touches lightly on the likes of Yusef Lateef, early ‘70s Miles Davis grooves and Punjabi music but also on A.R. Rahman, David Axelrod, Soft Machine and Egg as well as pulling in touches of kletzmer, hip hop and northern English brass bands (Arun was raised in Manchester). Part-pastoral and part-stirring, it’s a slow-cooking hot-pot of a record.
In the middle of the bill there’s a rare solo spot from Eddie Parker. Perhaps best known as the brilliant flautist for Loose Tubes, he’s also got years of group-leading work under his belt as well as a history of large-scale compositions, community music and dazzling guest spots. For more on what I’ve said about Eddie in the past, click here: but on this occasion, it’s just him and his flutes: no group work, no cunning arrangement, just the chance to see an undersung instrumental master bouncing on his heels, throughly self-reliant. Should be exceptional.
There’s another act yet to be confirmed (in what Jazz In The Round call “jazz lucky dip”), but it’s worth going along for these two alone. From the 7pm doors time, rooting us to past and present, there’ll be the usual Jazz FM DJ sets from event presenter Jez Nelson and his decks colleague Chris Phillips.
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IKLECTIK presents:
‘Beyond the Mask’: Flange Zoo + Isn’tses + Pranic Attack + Madonna Vagina IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here
If you’re in the mood for a more unruly kind of improvisation, something odder and wilder is stirring in Waterloo a few days earlier and providing “a night of otherworldly misrule, noise and musicality by artists with specially-made masks and costumes, bringing live art, animation, installation and lighting to your senses.”
Ready to romp are human-insectoid modular-electronic/vocal duo Pranic Attack (with their “giant life force swarm of sonic, non-Newtonian synthesis” and “cacophonous cocoon of stroboscopic ear worm sequences”); Isn’tses (who mythscape “paganism, political anger, intergalactic heroism and pop-culture parodies” via self-built synths, noise boxes, circuit-bent toys and mangled vocals amidst luminous props and costumes) and “mythical musical animal” troop Flange Zoo (playing dub-echo psych-political rants and noise-stews on theremin, recorder, free drumkit, custom didgeridoo and stylophone; plus anything else which they can ram through their bevy of effects pedals).
Lurking variously behind these masks and personae and the sonic messy-play are rainbow-rap electronicist Janine A’Bear, dark-drone crooner Listen Lisse, Merkaba Macabre’s Steven McInerney, Tim Drage of Cementimental and multimedia artists Miyuki Kasahara and Calum F. Kerr (plus at least one member of The International Wind Up Toy Orchestra). The evening’s completed by a colourful, textural live-art performance from yet another mask-and-costumerie enthusiast, Paola de Ramos (under her own “Madonna Vagina” persona, which might be referencing the blessed Christian virgin-mother-goddess or La Ciccone: she’s cheeky enough be referencing both).
FLANGE ZOO
All of this is happening at 7.30pm, with a ‘Behind the Mask/ Recreate your Face’ workshop and a display of original masks from the artists, drawings, interactive installations starting an hour earlier. Bring your own alter-egos in for fine-tuning.
Three interesting shows, all on the same evening in London – I remember when ‘Organ‘ used to do multi-gig hurtles on nights like these, and document the whole adventure. A tradition which could do with being revived, if funds and shoe-leather hold out.
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White Heat presents:
Sleep Party People The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
If, for the last seven years, your idea of fun has been an ‘80s synthpop act refracted through a rippling slowcore/dream pop prism (while dressed like nursery versions of Frank the rabbit man from ‘Donnie Darko’), then you probably already know about Danish one-man music factory Brian Batz and his Sleep Party People project: a budding cult act just about anywhere outside the USA. If you don’t know them, then here’s Brian and co. performing SPP’s 2010 breakthrough online hit I’m Not Human At All (singing a captivatingly blank song of emotional detachment in full ludicrous/mysterious bunnygarb, like the Residents might have done if they’d taken their cues from Beatrix Potter and Dick Luna rather than Moondog and Harry Partch).
Though their music was initially inspired by a battered old piano, Boards Of Canada, Erik Satie and David Lynch, Sleep Party People have subsequently been dogged by lazy comparisions to the calving-iceberg noise cascades of Mogwai and Sigur Rós. A real shame, since it hustles them into the cliched cloisters of that already overpopulated cathedral-of-sound; and it’s unfair to a band who’ve never really opted to slump enigmatically in the middle of a haze of effects pedals. This year’s new album, ‘Lingering’, shows a dramatic evolution and broadening of Sleep Party People’s perspective; Brian losing his fey leveret mewl and adopting a sweet psychedelic coo as he steps up to meet (on the one hand) the fantastically inventive pop likes of Everything Everything or Dutch Uncles, and (on the other) the dreamy rattle and moonshine musings of Pram.
There’s also something of the loping grooves of Can in SPP’s current workings, but in truth there’s a far bigger tranche of sunny wine-blurred ‘60s Europop, dressed up in new trappings of clinking, shattering piano loops and ghostly keyboards, windup bass and bell-clock tinkles. Lyrical preoccupations (blossoming from early mumbles to open-hearted singing) stay half-in and half-out of dreamscapes and betray a transmogrificational fascination with different modes of life, Bryan imagining oceans covered in flesh or himself as a thinking, feeling tree. On ‘Salix And His Soil’, the band beam and pulse like a feyer Everything Everything; on ‘The Sun Will Open Its Core’, they’re a full-on love up between New Order and The Flaming Lips. It’s captivating stuff. See and hear for yourselves as they drop by London via their current European tour.
(Update, 22nd November 2017 – it seems that there’ll be a support act: Marco Pini’s narcotically ambient downtempo electronica project GLOWS…)
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And Now What? presents
Torycore
Sackler Space @ The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London, NW1 8EH, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
Political artscreamers Torycore (or #Torycore) define themselves simply, succinctly and savagely – “bullshit Tory rhetoric + brutal avantgarde metal = #TORYCORE”. They’re made up of two theatre-makers – Lucy Ellinson (Third Angel, Deaf and Hearing Ensemble, the RSC) on bellowing vocals and Chris Thorpe (Unlimited Theatre) on scourging guitar – and one full-time musician, Steve Lawson (better known as a cuddly looping bass guitarist with ambient jazzitude and a knack for equally loopy stand-up patter, but here unleashing the roiling social indignation and sharp musical wit behind the cute moves and the granny specs… as well as indulging his love for Cannibal Corpse).
Making no bones about their loathing of Tory ethics and economics (although Steve has described the performance outcome, to his own surprise, as “weirdly non-partisan”), their performance is “part gig, part metal-recital, part exorcism… combin(ing) sludge and doom metal with the Budget speech 2015; a pounding subverbal deathgrowl with text samples from the blue suits at Tory HQ, George Osborne and the architects of austerity… a verbatim record of a government ripping society’s guts out… a fiercely political convergence of death metal and theatre, vocalising a response to Conservative Party policies through music, speeches, PowerPoint and rage. It’s a guttural, expressive experience made up of Tory doctrine, political contexts and the impact of austerity over the past seven years.”
You can find out more about Torycore’s own political, theatrical and musical ethics at Chris’ interview in ‘The Guardian’ a couple of years ago – in which he states that theatre is “a national laboratory for thinking about how we think and how we are and what we are” and that “at its most basic, making theatre is just a way of meeting people… part of an ongoing conversation that can take place anywhere.” – or in this 2014 interview for the Mayfest homepage, in which Lucy and Steve discuss the more complex concerns behind the blunt hammerblow of the music: notably Lucy’s fascination with government perversion of language, reinforced by Steve’s point that “they’ve colonised the language that ought to be used to tear down the structure that protects them. So everything from ‘fairness’ to ‘democracy’ has been corrupted. Hence the need for a project like this, that throws those words back, stripped of all the pomp and bullshit that parliamentary process wraps around this rarified implementation of fascism-lite.” Lucy, meanwhile, fleshes out her mirror-method condemnation: “I’d like them to be sent to their run-for-profit detention centres. To be “visited by Atos”. To spend time with the families of those people who have killed themselves rather than fall further into fear and poverty. “We’re all in this together” right?”
The #Torycore event is part of the Roundhouse’s And Now What? season of shows between enquiry and protest which also includes contributions from, among others, Wax Lyrical and The Guilty Feminist.
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On a considerably lighter note…
Diego Brown & The Good Fairy present:
Clerkenwell ARTSlab: Diego Brown & The Good Fairy + Hannah Lovell + Maya Levy + Streatham Common (Station) + Alys Torrance + Parenthesis
Upstairs @ The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Rd, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 3BL, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 8:15pm – information
The evenings which evolved into the raffish, absurdist Clerkenwell ARTSlab events were originally run by beloved performance poet/proto-antifolker John Hegley. Although they’re now run by “twisted folk” band Diego Brown & The Good Fairy, much of Hegley’s sense of fun has stuck to them: they’re ongoing salons of “mind-bending song, stories and weird stuff… comedy and cha-cha from the kings and queens of all that”.
As usual, Diego and co. headline with their spooky, surreal, pointed London chansonnerie (puppets and automata optional), but also rolling up are three other songwriters. Parenthesis is a “prince of smooth-talking, forward-thinking, backward-walking electronic pop”. New Yorker-turned-Londoner Maya Levy, when not acting or otherwise making theatre, turns to the piano to write darkly funny folk/classical/theatre crossover songs either for herself or her band The Kitchen Quartet, (covering “medieval werewolves to Pocahontas to crazy teachers”). Hannah Lovell delivers soft-spoken, almost conversational portraits of domestic life and then hangs them askew – the solicitous hatred of one’s partner, the mental breakdowns over cooking the perfect Italian meal.
On the more overtly theatrical side, storytelling clown Alys Torrance will deliver her story of “the amazing feats performed by Stanley Gibbons’s’s’s Amazing Stamp Collection (bring binoculars/reading specs).” Somewhere in the middle is the Julian Fox/Bob Karper collaboration Streatham Common (Station): fifteen minutes of offbeat theatre songwriters Julian Fox and Bob Karper, “accordions and beats, deadpan and dance, songs and maybe film.” (The latter are still too much of a elusive fringe phenomenon to have much web presence, but I’ve included a Julian song below: a Kraftwerkian one about designing airports).
Brooklyn contemporary percussion quartet Sō Percussion (a.k.a. Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting) are travelling to England in late November to tour a particular commission around various churches in the heart of former coal country. More information below:
“Sō Percussion present an audio-visual exploration of the social history of British coal mining in ‘From Out a Darker Sea’. For two centuries, the coal industry formed the backbone of many towns and cities across England. Entire communities sprang into existence as fervent mining activity fuelled the industrial revolution. Integrating art, narrative, photography, film and an original musical soundscape performed live, Sō Percussion – known for their innovative and original productions – capture the environment, personal stories, and aspirations of a community fighting against industrial decline.
“Born out of a collaboration between the quartet and Amber Films, ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ is inspired by the reinvention of East Durham after the crushing loss of its mining industry. Combining live performance with community education programmes, Sō Percussion are bringing ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ to sacred spaces in former coal mining areas, from Derby to Deal, this Autumn.”
‘From Out A Darker Sea’ was originally initiated by East Durham Creates and premiered back in August at St John’s Church in Seaham, East Durham – in the heart of the region which inspired the original work. The original show dressed out the church interior with an immersive audio-visual installation created by people of the region, and incorporated personal stories and memories contributed by local residents including students from East Durham College.
Regarding the other visual content, Amber Films comment “we’ve wanted to make a film with Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photographs of The Coal Coast since the completed exhibition was premiered at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art back in 2003. We’ve also been talking about doing a live score film project for a while. When Forma/East Durham Creates suggested a possible Coal Coast collaboration with Sō Percussion, we were more than happy to meet up with them. Sitting round a table in a cafe in Seaham, both Amber and Sō felt the collaboration could work… Sirkka set to digitising her negs, expanding the range of the imagery. We experimented with timelapse video and the rhythms it generated. We exchanged material with Sō Percussion, who were writing pieces back in New York. In the middle of this we were drawn to the storytelling of Easington ex-miner Freddie Welsh. We’re currently working on the standalone film – watch this space!”
See below for band and audience responses to the Seaham show, plus a discussion between Sō Percussion and EDC’s Nikki Locke:
Dates for the autumn tour:
Derby Cathedral, 18-19 Iron Gate, Derby DE1 3GP, Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here
Fresh off a September tour with ex-Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Mr Jukes (and an October one with actor-folkie Johnny Flynn and Holly Holden Y Su Banda), one-man experimental pop orchestra Cosmo Sheldrake is finally gearing up to release his debut album. He’s celebrating with an entirely premature string of headlining dates in England, Germany, France and Switzerland during the second half of November.
They’re only premature in that the album’s still at least a season away, but why stop when you’re on a roll? “Am soooooo happy to announce my debut album ‘The Much Much How How And I’ is finished… it has been a very long time coming. Three years in the making! I’m very excited and can’t wait to have it out in the world.” Though this isn’t happening until 6th April 2018 (on the Transgressive label), pre-orders are here if you’re already intrigued – and meanwhile, you can take a peek at the hilarious, macabre Josh Allott-directed video for one of the tracks, Come Along, which “explores the experience of both having head lice and being a head louse. Microscopic worlds expand and consume the world of the large. Human heads become continents, scalps become landscapes, salons become solar systems. Come along now.”
With its skewed but loosely unified focus on nature, myth, science and intuition, both song and video are typical of Cosmo’s work – an generous and omnivorous corpus enveloping traditional folk and glitch mashups; hipster chic and novelty records; Bjork, Bobby McFerrin and the Fariñas; process music, Partch and prog; rhymes, reels and street parties; old Lomax recordings, beatboxing and Edward Lear. Cosmo himself is an extraordinary collagist and multi-instrumentalist whose roster includes thirty or so instruments (from guitar and piano to samplers, euphonium and duduk topped off with the distinct, lilting and mustardy twang of his vocals) and who’s spurred by a restless urge to reinvent anything he touches and any place that he plays. He’s been rumoured to pursue extinct animal recordings in order to get the noises and voices he wants, so not even death is an obstacle to curiosity. Of course, as one of the children of therapist and vocal shaman Jill Purce and of rebel biologist/parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, he’s long been growing in interesting soil. In many respects, it’s hardly surprising that he’s turned out the way he has.
As the further video clips below show, Cosmo is not someone whose talents and ideas are best contained by a support slot. It’s best to see him when he’s more in command of the evening, even if he’s just up on a little stage somewhere rather than out there subverting a swimming pool or model village, capering in front of a brass band or preparing to keelhaul an accordion.
Fresh news in for the London gig – as well as a DJ set from Gentle Mystics (like Cosmo, unpeggable underground everything-ists whose own records yaw wickedly and knowingly between Balkan folk, Brit-hop, 2 Tone, Eartha Kitt and occasional world/prog/folk re-arrangements of Stravinsky), there’ll be support via a performance of Jenny Moore‘s ‘Mystic Business’, emphasing just how far Cosmoworld stretches from the average pop show. A member of drum-heavy art/femme/punk/party trio Charismatic Megafauna, Jenny works across a variety of performance art fields from radio show to performance installations, turning up live investigations of artistic responsibility, sexual “humanifestos“, proposals for rock operas and more.
‘Mystic Business’ is one such project: originally a set of communal workshopped songs for percussion and voices which explore and shows off a range of expressio. These range from single-voice-and-slapped-thigh rap to involved group-drumming chorales and minimalist loft-music singalongs (like post-Riot grrrl echoes of Philip Glass and Arthur Russell). Topics explored include body politics, doubts/immediacy/questioning, ripples of revolt, premature ejaculation and marimba-assisted paeans to feminist science fiction hentai. See below for a five-minute excerpt (a kind of post-structuralist spiritual/canon) and for the full forty-two minute version. I’ve no idea how this might work in the more structured context of a formal gig, but I’m sure that Jenny will come up with a new twist.
There’s a pair of interesting female-focussed gigs coming up over the next two weeks in two of London’s more creative music corners, mingling elements of latterday folk, post-punk, Rock In Opposition, experimental noise and avant-garde pop…
Partly due to the pressure of time, and partly due to the eloquence of the press releases, I’ll let them speak for themselves…
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Club Integral presents:
‘Anonymous Was A Woman’: Anne Garner + Mary Currie + Lis Stewart IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 9th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
“A night of music by women. Three very different sets from three extraordinary artists.
“Anne Garner‘s lyrical work is inspired by curiosity and a sense of wonder, a hunger to explore and explain the emotional inner life. The magic lies in the ambiguity, in the unanswered question and the breath between notes. It’s in poetry and harmony that Anne finds her safe space, in enveloping and beguiling moods, a place from which to speak the unspoken. Anne will be performing music from her upcoming album, joined by Jack Hayter on pedal steel guitar, Nick Samuel on saxophone and James Murray on guitar.
“Mary Currie is a singer perhaps best known for her work with Gareth Williams (This Heat). Williams and Currie recorded a limited-run cassette-only album, ‘Flaming Tunes‘, in 1985, which over time has become a classic of the lo-fi DIY underground. Since Gareth’s death at forty-eight from cancer, Mary has worked with several collaborators including Howard Jacques (These Records, Bermuda Triangle Test Engineers) and Mick Hobbs (Officer!) in folk group Bucket, and with Mick, Howard and Monica Ruud on a project called Whole New Concept. Mary will be be singing with Alison Craig (Shötley Crüe) – essentially traditional sea songs and modern folk songs.
“Lis Stewart plays mostly folk music on a 1918 Lachenal 55 key Maccann Duet concertina. She plays from time to time with south London folk collection The No Frills Band. For Iklectik, she will be performing English, French and Scandinavian folk tunes, both traditional and modern. Expect driving rhythms and haunting melodies.”
Pickled Egg Records presents:
Tom O.C Wilson + Eley Williams + Beetles Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 22nd October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Until recently operating as Freeze Puppy, Tom O.C. Wilson is now venturing out under his own name with ever-more-intricate and compositionally complex conversational songs, venturing into hitherto unexplored territory between (to pick a few loose examples) Stephen Sondheim, Frank Zappa, Neil Hannon, Django Bates and The Carpenters.
‘Tell A Friend’ – his debut album as himself – is “lovingly crafted, infectiously playful arthouse pop… a frothy, colourful twelve-song collection that pushes the raw materials of pop into dazzlingly surprising shapes, from the polyrhythmic fervour of Give Yourself Some Credit to the Steve Reich-meets-Motown stomp of The Ones. Yet as with similarly cerebrally-minded pop acts such as Field Music, Max Tundra and Dutch Uncles, the intricacy of the music is coupled with an unusually high hooks per-minute quotient — these are songs to sing along to as much as ponder.” While previous records have revelled in a certain literary playfulness, each song on this one is based on Tom’s own life and friendships. It’s in keeping with Tom’s decision not to hide behind kooky project names any longer: he’s never likely to create a standard-issue confessional album, but this is explicitly “a celebration of human interaction” in all its richness. Judging by the tone of start-up single The Ones, it’s predominantly positive.
Tom was originally providing his own support as half of his other band Beetles, but they’ve had to pull out. Fortunately, a more-than-worthy replacement’s been found in the shape of singer-songwriter Kept Cairns, a mysterious pseudonymous friend and fellow traveller from Tom’s Bristol days. His songs (which he himself describes as “gradually accret(ing)” rather than being written) “sketch and explore the unseen world of interiority: mental health, transcendence, relationship breakdown, the limits of communication, ambiguity, time and love.” Generally that’s a recipe for broken-handed strumming and murky lo-fi mumbles; so it’s surprising to find percussive, intricate acoustic guitarwork (recalling Michael Hedges and John Martyn) and carefully-drawn lyrics and vocal lines as crisp as new book pages (detailing complicated and frequently unresolved situations but describing them with an immaculate grace and economy). To see what I mean, you’ll need to take a trip over to his music page: bar a quiet presence on Spotify, he’s so far underground that gigs like these are the only other chance to get the measure of him.
Appropriately for an evening of literary pop, the middle act on the bill is a writer. Eley Williams is an acclaimed prose-poet of confusions, mental transformations and fairytales whose stories sweep across their settings like an investigating light passed over text. Here she is in action:
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The following day, Chaos Theory will be vibrating the rafters as they take over St Pancras Old Church and shake out its more shadowy corners for a particularly ambitious gig. Expect an evening of dark drones and noises, Euro-American cloister-folk and cinematic/industrial music textures, filled with dark-refracted Catholicism and a decidedly ecclesiastical tone.
“Original Swans member Jarboe joins forces with Italian occult propagators of insight-through-terror Father Murphy, as they perform a single set in three parts. Father Murphy will open with their avant-garde dark creations, to be joined by Jarboe to perform their new collaborative EP (which came out on Consouling Sounds on 22nd September). Jarboe will then perform her own material, with Father Murphy providing their own twist to her sounds as her backing band.
“Ambient darkness will be provided before and after the performance by producer Metalogue, who will create a whole new set for the evening and release it as a new album. This will be an experience like no other.”
There’s a couple of classical concerts at the end of the month: not necessarily groundbreaking in what they play (although there is one premiere involved) but interesting in how they arrange their programme or in how they perform it.
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Conway Hall Ethical Society presents:
Music-in-Motion Ensemble & Gildas Quartet, directed by John Landor Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1R 4RL, London
Saturday 28th October 2017, 3.30 pm & 7.30pm; Tuesday 31 October 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Following his powerful staging of Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ with the Gildas Quartet at Conway Hall last May, John Landor returns with the quartet and the newly-formed Music-in-Motion Ensemble of thirteen string players to present an eclectic programme of music from Purcell to Pärt.
“Immersive, visual and theatrical, Music-in-Motion brings a bold new aesthetic approach to the traditional classical concert. Turning the whole auditorium into a “theatre of music”, the musicians become embodied channels of the musical drama, dissolving boundaries between performers and audience. You are welcome to sit, stand, or even lie down pretty much anywhere during the performance, so you can bring your own cushion or mat, or use ours. It’s a social event too! At the evening concerts, you can bring in drinks from the bar, and everyone is invited to the ‘after-party’ where audience and performers can mingle and discuss the performance, or indeed anything else!”
What this means in practise is the exploding of the orchestral positioning and of orchestral uniformity – while retaining the hidden discipline of the orchestral units, the musicians wander out on their own across the performance space and through the audience as individuals rather than remaining en bloc, with each performer free (and encouraged) to act out the emotionality of the music. The set’s a selection of well-known repertoire war horses: the presentation and implications are less familiar.
Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G BWV1048
Antonio Vivaldi – Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro in B minor RV169
Arvo Pärt – Fratres
Leoš Janáček – String Quartet No. 1 ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Henry Purcell – Chacony in G minor
Edward Elgar – Introduction and Allegro Op. 47
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The Ligeti Quartet present “Remembering the Future: Tradition and the Contemporary String Quartet” IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 28th October 2017, 7:30pm – information
Since their formation in 2010, The Ligeti Quartet (violinists Mandhira de Saram and Patrick Dawkins, viola player Richard Jones and cellist Val Welbanks) have commissioned multiple new works and collaborated with artists from all types of musical backgrounds including Anna Meredith, Elliot Galvin, Kerry Andrew (Juice Vocal Ensemble, You Are Wolf), Laura Jurd, Meilyr Jones, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), Seb Rochford (Polar Bear), Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming), Shed 7 and Submotion Orchestra. They are currently working on a long-term project with Ernst von Siemens prize-winning composer Christian Mason to create a series of ‘Songbooks’ for string quartet, based on overtone singing traditions from around the world.
For this performance, the Ligeti Quartet are performing traditional (20th century) and contemporary pieces. These include two Bach related works (a Sofia Gubaidulina tribute and a Birtwistle rearrangement of fugues, , a revival of the debut composition by http://www.plusminusensemble.com Plus-Minus Ensemble co-leader/Cut and Splice curator Joanna Baillie (originally written for Apartment House, and performed here in its 2006 string quartet version) and a brand new piece by former Unthanks member/ Streetwise Opera composer-in-residence/Timeline Songs director Stef Conner (whose body of work as a composer has revealed her as a walker and crosser of fine lines between classical, folk, jazz and antiquity).
Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr. Harrison Birtwistle) – Three Fugues from the Art of Fugue
Anton Webern – String Quartet, Op. 28 Joanna Baillie – Five Famous Adagios (2006 string quartet version) Stef Conner – (LQ Commission, title tbc) (premiere)
Igor Stravinsky – Concertino for String Quartet Sofia Gubaidulina – Reflections on a Theme B-A-C-H Georg Friedrich Haas – String Quartet No. 2
There’s an imminent brief English tour for acoustic fusion guitar ace Pierre Bensusan this month. Here’s what I said about him last time:
“World music’s an often-abused term, especially when you can see crude joins within it. Yesterday’s exotic-record discovery shopped and slopped onto whichever beats selling; or the sound of one particular city’s overbearing acquisitiveness, engulfing and pickling the music of its immigrants rather than fostering it. Pierre’s music is an example of how you can revitalise and justify the term.
“I’ve spoken before about the French-Algerian-Sephardic background which gave him a head start as regards polycultural vision, but perhaps what he actually embodies is the mixed grain of musical acceptance: the travelling tunes and the more intangible freight of cultures soaking and blending into his playing without strain. Neither jazz nor folk nor Spanish classical, neither rai nor chaabi, nor flamenco (old or new), it nonetheless contains all of these – a translucent, fully-realised and seamless chamber-acoustic melange, played softly and without affectation.”
As before, among the venues Pierre is playing are some out-of-the-way ones which it’s a pleasure to find out about. Full tour dates below:
Chapel Arts Centre, St. James’s Memorial Hall, Lower Borough Walls, Bath, Somerset, BA1 1QR, England, Thursday 12th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Ale House, Mill Lane, Colwall (near Great Malvern), Hertfordshire, WR13 6HJ, Friday 13th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
St Mary’s Church, Alveley Village (near Kidderminster), Shropshire, WV15 6ND, England, Saturday 14th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Half Moon, 93 Lower Richmond Road, Putney, London, SW15 1EU England, Tuesday 17th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Greystones, Greystones Road, Sheffield, Yorkshire, S11 7BS, England, Wednesday 18th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
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Meanwhile, back in London, there are a number of jazz or jazz-inspired dates this month at another undersung out-of-the-way venue – Kentish Town’s MAP Cafe. I’ll just run through them below…
Abstract Word MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 12th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“A chance to see a unique blend of music & spoken word fused with vocal and poetic verse… A night of music & rhythmic words featuring performers from the Abstract Word collective, as well as a range of performance poets and spoken word artists crafting their words to a rhythmic backdrop provided by longtime Jazz Jam collaborator Oliver Staines on eight-string guitar plus trombone and saxophones provided by Richmond “Journeyman” Trew and other horn players. Also a songwriter and performer, Richmond is the spearhead of Abstract Word and has been providing his unique “abstract rhythmic” style since 1995.”
Alexander Dubovoy/Eli Bown MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Friday 14th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“While attending Yale University, Alexander Dubovoy and Eli Brown played in the quartet Newspeak. They are featured on its debut album Machinery of Night, recorded by 11-time Grammy-winner Jack Renner. After touring domestically and internationally, Newspeak put its work on hold after its older members graduated.
“Now, Dubovoy and Brown have moved to London – having played at top New York venues and toured internationally, Alexander’s first piano-and-songs solo album ‘Portraits Drawn Without You‘ was released in summer 2017, while Eli is currently a student in the conducting department at Royal Academy of Music (while remaining active as a trumpet player focusing primarily on new and Early music). The two will be performing their first gig together in the UK at MAP, playing improvised duo music (including old and new repertoire) as part of this reunion.”
Jazz In Cinema MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Saturday 21st October 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Germana La Sorsa and Joe Boyle come together as Jazz In Cinema. In this harmonious Italian/English duo they bring you the finest jazz music as written for, or used in, movies over the course of the last century.
“The interesting arrangement of just voice (Germana) and double bass (Joe) creates some interesting textures, from wistfully open to tense and sinister, with bountiful experimentation and freedom. Neither, however, strays too far from the roots of the music or the mood they create.”
Grain Of Sand MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 26th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“The fruits of excessive people-watching, eradicating anonymity one tale at a time. From the flaneûr’s eye, humorous characters, drenched in poetic language, retell their adventures. Accompanied by the finely tuned fingers of pianist Alexi Bromsky, maestro prose performer Alex Glendinning graces these sketches with his musical mystique.
“Investigating the fantastic potential of the city, the stories give reign to the bizarre and hopeful conjectures of everyday observation – the passing glance at the bus stop, the sombre couple in the coffee shop – and delight in its quotidian beauty, discarded daily amongst the infernal throng. With piano and bass, an hour of snapshot stories awaits. Drop in and out as you like and enjoy the stories with a crowd’s fluidity. Imagine the face, as you brace the morning commute, which recalls a lost lover, beloved brother, or terrifying sister. The glimmer of bewilderment, terror, or joy in those fleeting seconds, swept away in the tube’s slipstream, now becomes a seed for reflection.
“These stories are also a sentimental conversation with the whims that we deem trivial. Lively, satirical, laced with romance and introspective nostalgia, they are performed through the eye of a brash, sharp romantic, lavished with mortal pathos.”
Next week in London, a window on some nascent opera work…
Second Movement present:
Rough For Opera #16: A Scratch Night For New Opera
Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, London NW8 8EH
Monday 9th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
“…’Rough For Opera is a performance platform for composers to share new work and opera in progress. Each event is a snapshot and celebration of contemporary opera making, with most work being brought from page to stage for the very first time. With an informal and intimate atmosphere and a Q&A following each performance, Rough For Opera is a great way for audiences to engage directly with opera makers and for composers to get invaluable feedback about their work at an early stage in its development.”
This month’s edition features the following short opera performances (between ten minutes and half and hour apiece):
Over the course of October (and at the beginning of December), a labour-of-love musical staging of the life of classical and folk singing legend Kathleen Ferrier is touring some of the more out-of-the-way venues in England. From the sound of it, it’s a pretty portable show, so if you’re interested in booking it for your own venue, drop the production company a line.
“This new one-woman play with music tells the story of the great English contralto, whose voice and recordings are treasured to this day. Kathleen Ferrier was one of Britain’s phenomenal women of the twentieth Century. ‘Whattalife!‘ tells her story from her debut as a singer in 1940, her meteoric rise and her tragic death in 1953. ‘Whattalife!’ is the first staged dramatisation of Ferrier’s life, evoking the spirit of the war and post war years. Just like Kathleen during her short but full life, the show has a great sense of fun and talks straight from the heart.
“Professional actress and contralto Lucy Stevens has researched and created a unique and totally engaging performance. The play is written in Kathleen’s own words taken from her letters and diaries. Sung music with piano accompaniment from her repertoire is woven through the text.”
There’s a ‘Guardian’ article on the piece here, in which Lucy reveals how the piece was put together and throws light on the life, moods and artistry of a strong-minded and talented woman who went her own way during a time when such things weren’t so readily accepted.
Cooper Hall, Selwood Manor, Frome, Somerset, BA11 3NL, England, Thursday 26th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
Anthony Minghella Theatre @ Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight, PO30 5BD, England, Friday 27th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
Dorchester Arts, Corn Exchange, High East Street, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1HF, England, Sunday 3rd December 2017, 2.30pm – information
And purely to indulge myself, here’s Jocelyn Pook‘s mid-’90s setting of a Ferrier loop as part of her minimalist song-cycle ‘Deluge’: best known as the theme for a mobile phone advert (and, as the video image shows, as fodder for numerous new-age compilations), it’s a little classic of minimalist fusion.
Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Thumpermonkey + The Fierce & The Dead + Ham Legion The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 6th October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
There’s still a few grab-’em-while-you-can tickets for this friendly clash between these three varied exemplars of British art rock. I keep posting odds and ends about them and always fear running out of something new to say, but here goes…
Described, this time out, as a “merry band of loony pronk heroes”, Thumpermonkey are better pegged as arch New Weird rockers, or as geeks-made-good. Bright, sharp, literate tale-tellers and brain-twisting scenarists, they roll out blistering tales and portraits of strange perspectives and stranger goings on festooned in kinked, scree-slipping riffs and grand declamatory vocals with an ever-present tinge of dark laughter. Unpicking the puzzlebox machinery of a typical Thumpermonkey song is a route to mingled glee and frustration, since singer, lyricist and concept director Michael Woodman packs in tight multi-dimensional digressions and inferences with the skill of a master.
This gig is a launch party for Thumpermonkey’s new EP ‘Electricity‘, inspired by “the luminous magnificence of human foolishness” and the story of “Victorian MP and visionary Lord James Badger… atomized by technology he hoped would transform the canals of the Euphrates, all because he followed the instructions of an angelic visitation.” The particular genius of Thumpermonkey is that they can unroll these kind of parodic slipstream plots without ever toppling into cute whimsy. If you’re looking for the missing link between Mastodon, Zappa, China Miéville, Van der Graaf Generator, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the harder end of the Mighty Boosh (and God knows that if you’re looking for something like that, you’re pretty specific), you’ll find it here. Clever bastards.
Currently riding along on the scaly back of their recent live album ‘Field Recordings’, The Fierce & The Dead are heading towards their seventh year as an imposing, boundary-squatting instrumental rock band, forcibly blending post-hardcore, instrumental prog, post-punk immediacy and experimental noise. Despite their music being sweetened by the inclusion of tuneful loop-guitar honeybear Matt Stevens in the lineup, they sport a brutal, angular, drawer-popping rifftastic sound which variously resembles Led Zeppelin and Black Flag simultaneously shaking down a post-rock band, a hotel kitchen getting a forcible mid-meal remodelling by Archaos, or a carhenge attempting to twerk along to highlife. Have a listen to Dancing Robots below for a dose of their live crunch and down-to-earth banter – or, if you prefer, there’s a free Bandcamp download sampler available.
Intermittently active Brightonian trio Ham Legion will open the show with a set of their cramped, restless heavy art-pop, matching the other two bands blurt-for-blurt and switch-for-switch.
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If all of the above is not for you – or if your Friday funds only stretch to a Tube journey and a drink – cabaret art-poppers Society of Imaginary Friends are putting on another free soiree in Wood Green (see passim). As ever, there’s a theme and a new bit of performance art jiggery-pokery from the Society themselves.
Society Of Imaginary Friends present:
Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree: “It’s Our Home County Amateur Dramatic Class Soiree” (featuring Society Of Imaginary Friends + Beth Jones + WondRwomN + Martin Wakefield + Cian Binchy + Lord Buckley + Ted Sawyer/Frank Frenzy DJ sets) Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 6th October 2017, 8.00pm – free event – information
“From Tring to Crawley, Amersham to Reigate, the dusky Downs resound to the sound of dramatis personae… for this is the time of preparation… the drawing-in of the nights can mean only one thing to these outcasts… Panto season is approaching.
“Our October Soiree is dedicated to London’s cultural refugees who dwell beyond the M25 where things are quite different… in a quiet cul-de-sac of the mind they float… there is no music other than ’80s power-synth ballads or Gary Numan… the Am Dram village hall is at the centre of the Home Counties mock-Tudor universe… As a mark of deep respect for this tradition, Society of Imaginary Friends will be performing the premiere of their ‘Home Counties’ song cycle featuring their cosy pub classic Please Put That Hammer Away and It’s My Home Counties Amateur Dramatic Class.”
Also on the bill is the usual swirl of other words and music – bluesy singer-songwriter Beth Jones; poet/raconteurs Martin Wakefield and Cian Binchy, emerging Tottenham groove goddess WondRWomN with a cocktail of psychedelic soul, funk, rap and “grit pop”; and the “deranged and strange”Lord Buckley (presumably a tribute act to the hipsemantic beat standup from the 1950s, unless SOIF have mastered necromancy this year and brought us back the real thing). There’s also a double DJ helping from Ted Sawyer (Northern Soul) and Frank Frenzy (that 1980s power disco sound mentioned earlier) plus Karamel’s usual prizewinning vegan food (this time “reimagining the ’70s classics like prawn cocktail and Boeuf Bourguignon as a death free feast”).
See below for the Society’s poperatic tribute to social media, a harmonica-laden song about infidelity from Beth, and a couple of drum-and-‘bone-assisted joints from WondRwomN…
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
Misfit City 