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May 2021 – single & track reviews – Craig Fortnam’s ‘Ark’; Gabriella Smith/Gabriel Cabezas’s ‘Bard of a Wasteland’; LEYA’s ‘ABBA/Mary’ (Christina Vantzou remix)

“If you are lonely, I’ll be lonely too. / Find yourself a wall and I’ll hang next to you. / It won’t be easier hanging there that way / but we can be a diptych for the light of day…”

Craig Fortnam has spent two decades building a distinct style, both with North Sea Radio Orchestra (leafy, nostalgia-toned English chamber music drawing ever closer to lucid, Canterbury-esque psychedelia) and with Arch Garrison (slimmed-down duo/trio songwriting with more upfront personal concerns and a ranging freedom). It’s not surprising that his first solo material (at least, the first released under his name alone) falls close in tone to both of his previous projects. It’s also still very much a family affair, with the Garrison’s James Larcombe contributing piano and a delicately shrunken raft of other NSRO members adding strings, reeds and vibraphone.

‘Ark’ (the title track of Craig’s forthcoming album) is still redolent with dark walled-garden curlicues of NSRO bassoon and cello, gently astringent viola, bumble-bee monosynth and twinkling glockenspiel; all of it pumping away like steam-workings under the naive strum of guitar and Craig’s unaffected Wyatt-ish drone of vocal. Impacted by his loves and losses in the past few years – not least the death of his mentor Tim Smith – it’s downbeat, uneasy and self-effacing in a particular English fashion (a way that still throbs and flows on beneath current aggressive Brexit blustering). As a song, it’s in part a retreat and an admission of fear in ominous times. Craig’s never looked as vulnerable as he does in the video, fumbling around his rehearsal room, gazing anxiously through thick glasses, gently contorted around his guitar or haltingly reassembling broken-down instruments.

However, it’s also a frail but faithful statement of empathy and loyalty in times of threat – a recognition that trust can be rebuilt in the face of despondency. An unexpected coda with a new hint of furrowed darkness suggests that Craig has swapped some of those NSRO green leaves for a bag of tougher, tarter limes; but he’s shored up the delicate song-line, made strengthening bulwarks to share. “Two by two, I’ll paint the people in” sings Craig, “with all my deepest longing.” The clouds may be fat and dark, the cliffs may be crumbling, lights may be going out in the little houses everywhere; but community starts with two, and then another two.

When much of California went up in relentless wildfires last year, blotting out much of the Pacific seaboard in a broil of toxic brown smoke, it left scars – economic, geographical, psychic. Singer/composer Gabriella Smith might live mostly in Marseille these days, but her roots are thoroughly Californian, emotionally entwined with the hiking trails through forests and over rocks in the wild places, now little more than ash and scorching. Composed on the hoof as she paced helplessly in the Bay Area, unable to stop the despoilment from the raging fires, ‘Bard of a Wasteland’ is the first part of a fierce lament over the wrecking of her countryside.

Rage pushes at the roots of Gabriella’s soft conversational soprano, beginning to unweave its politeness, swooping through its steel-guitar pitching and murmurs. Meanwhile, her collaborator (the genre-flexing New York cellist Gabriel Cabezas) makes his cello sound like – and do – everything else. Jazz swoops and purring, fretless Mediterranean bass lines of the Mick Karn kind; quivering tremolo ornaments to the vocal melodies; staccato thumps and strums; subtle screeches of desert birdcall; reedy drones and a rainfall pattering of fingertip percussion.

All of this is layered into flexing rhythmical and methodic song-loops, perhaps owing something to Arthur Russell’s cello-beat, to African cycles and Italian tarantellas, in which Gabriel explores the rub and the push of instrumental voices while Gabriella digs into root causes of neglect and responsibility, of strip-mining the future and impoverishing the present. “You left us with fire / and we let it burn / You lined your pockets with the breath of your children,” she sings. “All you leave is a wasteland / And we’re fighting to breathe on.” As music, it’s pretty thrilling, it’s rhythm teasing your ankles and hips into dancing. As a story, it’s unresolved and inconclusive: as it has to be, as Gabriella starts to piece together her own emotions, to find out what her new place is, and where she sits on the chain of responsibility (if not the roster of blame).

“Lost time. / Another lick of the tide, / another loop in a line…. / Far enough from the slaughter, / close enough to the dam, / I lost the dream of a daughter / to be the bard of a wasteland.” It’s a reminder that protection of a landscape comes with sustaining one’s own awareness of and connection to it. Gabriella is performing the start of a war dance on hers, to remind those who failed their duties that this kind of failure matters.

On ‘ABBA/Mary’, ambient-classical composer and onetime Dead Texan Christina Vantzou effects a two-on-one remix of eerie New York post-classical rebels LEYA, whose threnodic conflations of violin, harp, unusual intervals and porously melancholic male-alto vocalising have enthralled various freak-pits, noise-dens, art-porn movies and other liminal performance spaces ever since they formed. The originals sound like weeping shroud-cloths peeled off the sleeping bodies of castrati. They’re disturbingly beautiful, their lyrics indistinct and parched, and they’re also deliciously unmoored from time, from strictness of gender, from tone-temperament. ‘ABBA‘ is a meeting of undulant string fades and detuned harp; ‘Mary‘ is more slanted towards traditional balladry and baroque continuo.

The Vantzou blending produces quite a different hybrid. Swimming in on a tide of fluting, falling vocal samples, its shifting spine is built from gentle alteration to ‘Mary’s harp continuo. Of the vocals, Marilu Donovan’s wispy backings are moved more upfront and given their moment in the spotlight; while Adam Marciewicz’s alto is further detached from its blurred storytelling role, now echoing protracted yearning syllables in distant corridors. Throughout, gentle background interruptions prod and nudge LEYA’s original building blocks as Vantzou mixes in computer blips, finger cymbals and insect chirps and the kind of electronic glissandi you’d expected to hear in vintage psychedelic science fiction.

Building assertively on LEYA’s taste for detuning, Vantzou also brings regular and unsettling shifts in pitching, progressing the music from chord to subtly dissonant chord. You’re never entirely sure where you’re being led, other than down a staircase in which the steps are each of different, treacherous sizes. There is no particular ending or straightforward resolution: the component fragments fray and ghost out together, the last sigh of a spectral tape.

Craig Fortnam: ‘Ark’
Onomatopoeia Records (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download-only single
Released: 14th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp (free download with album pre-order), Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Spotify, Shazam

Craig Fortnam online:
Facebook, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, Amazon Music, Shazam

Gabriella Smith/Gabriel Cabezas: ‘Bard of a Wasteland‘
Bedroom Community Records (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 14th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp, ‎Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon Music

Gabriella Smith online:
Homepage, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon Music

Gabriel Cabezas online:
Homepage, Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Instagram, Amazon Music

LEYA: ‘ABBA/Mary’ (Christina Vantzou remix)
NNA Tapes (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 17th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music

LEYA online:
Facebook, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music

Christina Vantzou online:
Homepage, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Vimeo, Deezer, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music

Tags: Adam Markiewicz, Arch Garrison, Berkeley (California - USA), Brussels (Belgium), Christina Vantzou, Craig Fortnam, LEYA, Marilu Donovan, Marseille (France), New York City (USA), North Sea Radio Orchestra, Salisbury (England), The Dead Texan

May 2021 – single & track reviews – Loud Women’s ‘Reclaim These Streets’; Penelope Trappes’ ‘Blood Moon’; Spellling’s ‘Boys at School’

17 May

The personal, and the political. Flip a coin next time you walk out of doors. If it falls the wrong way, imagine that at some point you’re going to be the target of some kind of abuse while you’re out there – aggressive attention, or being boxed in, or physically assaulted. Possibly murdered.

Loud Women: ‘Reclaim These Streets’

If you’re male (and if you’re taking this seriously), you’re probably feeling slightly paranoid at imagining this sort of a world. If you’re female, you don’t even need me to tell you that you’re already dealing with it – often the actuality, but always the ever-lurking fear and concern, and the rage that comes because of the way that this situation just grinds on and on forever… and of how it not only stalks the street, but seeps into the home, smothers the protest, blocks the initiative.

Spurred into action by two particular deaths, those of Blessing Olusegun and Sarah Everard (two outcroppings of this collective outrage, the first of which has highlighted the relative dismissal which the deaths of black women receive; the second how gynocidal murder can be dealt out even by those who are duty-bound to protect), a choral swarm of female musicians have come together under the umbrella of the Loud Women collective for ‘Reclaim These Streets’. In part it’s a well-deserved fund raiser for Women’s Aid. In part, it’s a righteous kick against this horrible cloud of threat and complacency.

On top of all that, as a protest song it works both in message and in form. Written by Loud Women founder Cassie Fox (of Thee Faction and I, Doris) it sits tight in the crossover pocket of punk and guitar-pop, with perhaps Deb Googe’s ferocious dragster-thrum bass as its prime component. Pounding along, fiercely and hungrily, it simultaneously finds room for a whole spectrum of female thinking, emoting, flavourings and positioning. The assured and assertive whomp of punk protest to the bruised-but-unbeaten notes of confessional; the hookiness of girl-group vigour and the whisper-to-gale push of the female chorale; the empowered party zest of women in solidarity; through to the roar of collective rallying.

As for the words, they’re forthright in their abraded, angry sketching of trepidations and injustice (“From the age of thirteen / I’ve known the fear of dark streets. / I’ve known my body’s danger / – can he hear my heart beat?.. / From the age of thirteen, / been told that it is my fault. / Blamed for male violence, / better watch where I walk… / Every woman’s got a story, / breaks silence with a whisper… / Text me you when get home; / keys between your fingers; / staying close to streetlights – / fear of shadows lingers…”). They’re equally forthright in their call for something better, something more just. “We have a right to safety / She was just walking home / Too many women share a story / You are not alone… / Daring to tell her truth / Calling to her sisters… / Till every woman’s safe from harm in her own home / Till every woman’s safe to live her truth / Till every woman’s safe to walk on every street.”

Perhaps its strongest impression, though is the coming-together – the commonality – of so many female musicians from across nearly five decades. A tranche of 1990s indie queens include Debbies Googe and Smith, Salad’s Marijne van der Vlugt and journalistic ground-breaker Ngaire Ruth; Brix Smith adds a gawky-but-gutsy rap in the middle;. latterday rock journeywomen Charley Stone and Jen Macro serve as guitar backbone. Elder voices (with lippy and lippiness) include Siobhan Fahey and that steadily-evolving, she-punk/polymath-auntie Helen McCookerybook.

As for the extended hand-to-hand patchwork of the Loud Women community choir, it contains among others MIRI, Lilith Ai, Laura Kidd (of Penfriend/She Makes War), Julie Riley, Lee Friese-Greene, Estella Adeyeri (Big Joanie) and Cassie’s I, Doris bandmate Abby Werth; plus dive-ins from assorted members of fierce female and female-slanted bands (such as Dream Nails, The Pukes, The Tuts, Desperate Journalist, Gender Chores, Slut Magic, Deux Furieuses, Berries, Muddy Summers & the Dirty Field Whores), all of them asserting and persuading together. It’s a reminder that few things are as naturally formidable – as naturally authoritative – as adjacent generations of women in full agreement, and who are forcefully letting it be known.

From material certainties to something metaphysical. In ‘Blood Moon’, Penelope Trappes imagines herself as Isis (protecting goddess of women and children, divine healer) but also as struggling against present-day burdens which have grown too heavy, too deadening. In the Agnes Haus short film which accompanies the song, a silver car pulls skittishly into a multi-story car park at night and Penelope-as-Isis (tumble-haired, teary-eyed, all too human in her distress) drags the unresponsive body of another woman across the concrete. The other woman’s face is unseen. Her leopard-print coat is snagging, her mass a dead weight.

There are flickers of power in Isis yet – she summons lightning and snow from her fingertips, and is dogged in her hauling efforts – but the film ends unresolved. Having dragged her burden all the way to the moon-shrouded docks, and with both the lifeless other body and her own wig of blonde curls now discarded on the roadway, the exhausted goddess stares angrily into the camera in a smear of kohl and sweat. Around her, the world continues, part-asleep, part-unregarding; a freight lorry cruising slowly past as if all too aware of damaged and brutalised women, and indifferent to them.

Visually, it’s all a bit didactic: besides Penelope’s goddess-role, there’s the fact that that anonymous dragged woman is eventually identified only as “societal expectations” (like something out of a mummer play for …feminism) It makes up for this with its mingled air of dread, fear, resolve and resentment as Isis shudders, pulls together strengths and repurposes fear, tries to function in the face of a massive injustice which billows between the mythic and the material. Likewise the song, which sounds as if it’s been stitched together from shreds and rags of weariness and resolve. The beats are like sparse, distant artillery; the piano sounds as if it’s been dropped from a great height before Penelope could pick a tune out of it.

Her own voice is a denatured wisp heard round a corner, delivering shadowy ambiguous lyrics. Groundings and splinterings mingle with prayers and protest and, somewhere, deep down, the shards of a mangled love song.“Centre body and guide, /show me what to do. / Serve grace with trebles eye, / turn must push on through. / I , I won’t lose. / I’ll tear up our love… Blood moon rising above… / Lover remember / repurpose fear within / along heated lines. / Can’t hear if you are fine. / I’m strong enough, / I’m strong enough…” The picture never becomes entirely clear. Perhaps it’s something which is felt over time… or in a pull-back. Too many congregating factors which rip a hole in the side of strength. Too many furious stitchings-up.

Bay Area baroque popper Spellling delivers a clearer message, somewhere between the fulsome protest of Loud Women and the abstracted one which Penelope favours, but hovering with purpose in a place of her own. You’d think you’d know what’s coming with a song called ‘Boys from School’ – either girl-group coo left as it is or flipped over to express rage at classroom and playground sexism. Spelling touches briefly on the latter (“I hate the boys at school / They never play the rules,”) but she has bigger fish to fry.

It’s not just the boy-runts who are failing her as a person. Admittedly, there’s a hint at dealing with disinterest and thwarted desire with “the body is the law and I’m only human after all / Wanted to bе the one that you need…”. But mostly it’s the whole institution that’s failing her as she drifts, purposefully, through its corridors while gradually disconnecting from its expectations and requirements. “Take me to the Lord before the boredom takes me over.” she hiss-whispers. “I am waiting on his move. I’m going under the floor. / What am I waiting for? / Floating down the hall / through all the voices, through all the walls. / Thought you could be the one to set me free.”

As a song, it’s in keeping with the genre-fluid approach that Spellling’s shown before: it’s a theatrical, near-orchestral shape-changer incorporating gusts of New Orleans funeral jazz, Kate Bush keenings, blended-in Chinese motifs, glam-prog riffs and chilly synthpop flourishes while always keeping to the pace and poise of trip hop soul. As a manifesto, it’s playful but forceful – an out-and-out rejection of being shaped, not just from the outside but also by pressures coming from the inside. “Tomorrow I turn sixteen years and I don’t want to grow older” sings Spellling, a black Pippi Longstocking; turning a retreat, rejection and revolt against adult expectation into a biting political resistance, ‘Tin Drum’-style. She’s called this a “step back into my younger self, my teenage self to voice my angst, desires and disillusionments,” and she’s taking this all the way, unfinished edges and all.

There’s ambiguity here, for certain, but she wields it with deliberate intent. “Shut out the sun until I’m small again,” she demands, embracing the need for aloneness and self-reliance. “I’m way too tired to climb out of bed. / Four walls is all I need of friends.” Yet there’s also no self-pity here, and she’s always completely clear and centred. “I’m meaner than you think, and I’m not afraid of how lonely it’s going to be./ If I change my mind I’ll go walking outside, / just to see how the law is in place still.” Blending ambitious art-pop with a dose of that original black-girl wokeness, it’s a prologue to further choice and action; a kind of witchy taking-stock. It’s very rewarding.

Loud Women: ‘Reclaim These Streets’
Loud Women (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 14th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp, Resonate, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify

Loud Women online:
Homepage, Facebook, Twitter, Bandcamp, Instagram

Penelope Trappes: ‘Blood Moon’
Houndstooth Label (no catalogue number or barcode)
Format/other format item type
Released: 17th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp, Deezer, YouTube, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Napster

Penelope Trappes online:
Homepage, Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Vimeo, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, Instagram, Amazon Music, Napster, Qobuz

Spellling: ‘Boys at School’
Sacred Bones Records (no catalogue number or barcode)
Streaming/download single
Released: 11th May 2021

Get/stream it from:
Bandcamp, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music

Spellling online:
Homepage, Facebook, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Last.fm, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, Instagram, Amazon Music

Tags: Abby Werth, Angela Martin, Bananarama, Bec Jevons, Berries, Beverley Kills, Big Joanie, Bows, Brazen Hussy, Brighton (England), Brix Smith, Bugeye, Caroline Gilchrist, Cassie Fox, Charley Stone, Cowboy Racer, Curve, Debbie Googe, Debbie Smith, Desperate Journalist, Deux Furieuses, Dream Nails, Dungareen Jean, Echobelly, Elis Sarv, Ella Patenall, Emily Eagle, Emma Sky, Erika Severyns, Estella Adeyeri, Feral Five, Gail Something-Else, Gemma Cullingford, Gender Chores, Georgie Willsher, Girls Rock Indiana, Gold Baby, Hadda Be, Hagar the Womb, Harriet Doveton, Helen McCookerybook, Her (Julie D. Riley), Holly Carter, Hot Sauce Pony, I Doris, IDestroy, Jade Ellins, Janey Starling, Jen Macro, Jo Bevan, Joyce Raskin, Joyzine, Kat Five, Kel, Kelly Chard, Kimmi Watson, KNM, Kristina Stazaker, Laura Kidd, Lee Friese-Greene, Lilith Ai, listening to women, Liz Hayward, London (England), Lorna Tiefholz, Loud Women, Marijne van der Vlugt, Michelle Marti, Minni Moody, MIRI, Molly Energi, Muddy Summers & the Dirty Field Whores, My Bloody Valentine, Nadia Javed, Naz & Ella, Ngaire Ruth, Nicki Mirage, Noise Noir, Oakland (California - USA), Ode to Sleep, Patsy Stevenson, Paul Maps, Penelope Trappes, Penfriend, Petrol Girls, Priya, Rabies Babies, Ren Aldridge, Ros Cairney, Roshi Nasehi, Rowanna Chown, Salad, Sam McCann, Shakespears Sister, She Makes War, Shona MacMillan, Siân Alex, Sink Ya Teeth, Siobhan Fahey, Slut Magic, Snowpony, Spellling, Stevie B, Suteki Hegg, T-Bitch, The Empty Page, The Fall, The Pukes, Umbilica, women of heart and mind

August 2020 – single & track reviews – ReMission International’s ‘TOS2020’; Derw’s ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’; The Forever Now’s ‘Reciprocals’

28 Aug

ReMission International: ‘TOS2020’

You can tease The Mission all you like, but you can’t deny that they’ve got heart… not least because Wayne Hussey is usually waving it at you on the end of a long stick. Even during their full booze’n’powders youthful phase, they had an avuncular, endearing air about them, partly due to Wayne’s effusive need to be loved. Over thirty years later, they’re able to settle into the role more comfortably.

Even though ‘TOS2020’ isn’t quite The Mission in itself – it’s performed by Wayne with a small army of friends and allies under the ReMission International banner – it’s pretty much Mish at heart. Tower of Strength was always the key Mission tune, and it stays timeless when it’s building on its key elements: that elegant spidery twelve-string guitar riff (like a slithering slow jig midway-morphed into a belly dance); that knee-patter of a drum pattern; and, finally, Wayne’s voice (showing less of the cavernous keen of old and more of the intimate warmth underneath it). Drawing on mystic Mediterranean drone, its distant kissing-cousin relationship to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, and presumably Wayne’s childhood memories of old Mormon hymns, it’s a spirit-lifter; an admission of weakness, an expression of gratitude, an affirmation of faith.

This particular version is a covid/healthcare fundraiser for frontline workers, with its profits to be spread globally across a wealth of charities. The array of contributors include longtime Hussey boon companions Billy Duffy, Miles Hunt and Julianne Regan (the latter slipping smoothly back into her old Queen Eve role), plus assorted characters from Gene Loves Jezebel, including the long-estranged Aston brothers. Other Goth-tinged old-schoolers contributing are Kirk Brandon, Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins, ex-Banshees/Creatures drummer Budgie, Lol Tolhurst, Martin Gore and Gary Numan. Also on board are Midge Ure, metal/fusioneer Steve Clarke, Smiths bassist Andy Rourke, Guns N’ Roses guitarists Robin Finck and Richard Fortus (the latter reworking the faux-Hindi string parts), Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and (representing the neo-dark side of things) both Evi Vine and James Alexander Graham of noise-folkers The Twilight Sad. Various packages include a tribal-Goth remix by Albie Mischenzingerze and a lullaby- synthwave one by Trentemøller.

Most all-star collaborations lumber along like a tired old tailback, and you’d expect this one to be the same. Instead, it manages to coast like a streamlined train; a persistent smooth swap-over of duties from voice to voice, guitar to guitar, kit to kit. In its middle age, Tower of Strength seems to have evolved from an individual prayer into a communal round, from lighter anthem to campfire hymnal. The Mission always wanted to be luminous in the darkness. Despite the Goth-y star cast, there’s less glitz in the glow this time around, and it’s all the better for it.

Derw: ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’

Having opened up with the expansive piano pop of ‘Dau Gam’ during early summer, Welsh-language chamber poppers Derw are rapidly going from strength to strength. There was a dash of Celtic soul and sophisti-pop to ‘Dau Gam’; they’ve kept all of that for ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’, but have incorporated it into an ornate slow-building confection which suggests a Cymrification of various sources including Clannad, Queen and Brian Wilson, with both a contemporary pop dusting and a hook into the past.

Derw’s particular dynamic remains the creative triangle comprising the songwriting partnership between Daffyd Dawson and his mother Anna Georgina, and Daffyd’s overlapping musical and performance partnership with singer Elin Fouladi: two different definitions of family which seem to have combined into a larger one. The Welsh title for the new single translates into English as ‘Where Did You Come Down’; the core concept is apparently Welsh hiraeth, or nostalgic homesickness.

Combining with Elin’s own part-Iranian roots, a sense of place pervades the song: more particularly, a sense of place adrift. Elin’s clear, fresh voice zigzags over rolling piano landscapes, a powerful melody skylarking its own way over plenty of places to land but always restless, as if looking for a new locale in which to renew old feelings and to build anew. Stuck in my limited Anglophone world, I’m probably overcompensating, trying to make up for missing out on the Welsh lyric which unfurls alongside the music; but you don’t have to know the Welsh to catch the mood. This is potent stuff; if it’s Celtic soul, it’s of a new, post-insular, hybrid-futured kind, and it’s very welcome.

The Forever Now: ‘Reciprocals’

Mutuality is on the mind of The Forever Now, right now. It’s a little unclear as to where and what they are. Known as Winchester up until last year, previously associated with Toronto but now based across the icy seas in Copenhagen, they’re a duo who seem to be a little reluctant to be a duo. If you take The Forever Now as a solo act, then it’s Monty de Luna; Lauren Austin, however, is the “frequent collaborator” who seems to be something of a fixture and stands to the fore on the cover art. Musically speaking, it’s all a bit friends-with-benefits.

This is probably a bit misleading; but these kind of thoughts are provoked when a song like ‘Reciprocals’ surfaces. With a ruminating electric piano ballad at its core, it’s also a duet with no solo spots (Monty and Lauren sing in strict unison and harmony throughout). Contemporary pop choruses come at us in a rush of synthy planetarium twinkle; but the verses drop, line by line, into bitten-off spaces graced by click and patter, tinkles and rattle-rushes. Monty admits, straight out, that it’s “an honest and naked statement about the end of a relationship” as well as “a metaphor for broader statements about the world”. With his group in flux geographically, nominally and practically, it’s difficult not to read the song as a musing on changing terrain of all kinds.

If you’re looking for direct answers in the lyrics, there’s enough here to suggest a rationale for an honest break – “If we’re honest, I’ve been here before. / If we’re honest, I can’t see a way forward. / If we’re honest it’s not worth the fuss, / and if we’re being honest, you know I never wanted this much.” But it’s also about wordplay; masking full disclosure with abstractions and constructions, and (as Monty points out elsewhere) blurring the language of love with those of analytical equations. “So if you’ve got the time, then its time we go, / and if you’ve got the lines, then it’s time we draw them. / Because in another life I’d never let you go, / but I’ve been spending mine on reciprocals, on reciprocals.”

You don’t need to know or think about any of this, of course, and you might be more comfortable not knowing.

ReMission International: ‘TOS2020’
SPV, SPV 243541 LP/SPV 243542 CD-EP/SPV 24354D (no barcode)
Vinyl/CD/download single
Released: 28th August 2020
Get it from: buy/download from ReMission International store or Beauty in Chaos store; stream via YouTube
The Mission online:

Derw: ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’
CEG Records (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 28th August 2020
Get it from: download from Amazon Music; stream via Soundcloud or Spotify
Derw online:

The Forever Now: ‘Reciprocals’
Symphonic Distribution (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 28th August 2020
Get it from: download from Bandcamp; stream via Soundcloud, Deezer, Google Play or Spotify. This is also the lead track from the ‘Reciprocals’ EP.
The Forever Now online:

Tags: Andy Rourke, Bauhaus (band), Billy Duffy, Budgie, Cardiff (Wales), Copenhagen (Denmark), Depeche Mode, Derw, Evi Vine, fund-raising, Gary Numan, Gene Loves Jezebel, Guns N' Roses, James Alexander Graham, Jay Aston, Julianne Regan, Kevin Haskins, Kirk Brandon, Laura Austin, Leeds (England), Lol Tolhurst, Martin Gore, Michael Aston, Michael Ciravolo, Midge Ure, Miles Hunt, Rachel Goswell, ReMission International, Richard Fortus, Robin Finck, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Steve Clarke, The Forever Now (Winchester), The Mission, The Twilight Sad, Tim Palmer, Toronto (Canada), Trentemøller, Wayne Hussey

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Categories 2020, art pop, baroque pop, chamber pop, club music, electro-pop, Gothic rock, hard rock, pop, psychedelic rock, reviews, rock, single reviews, sophisti-pop, synth pop

December 2019 – Arch Garrison and Emily Jones on tour together around England – folk, psychedelia and other familial connections featuring The Steven Morricone Tyranny, We Are Muffy, Libbertine Vale, Little Robots, Berlin Horse, Chlöe Herington, Ian A. Anderson and Pete Aves (11th to 17th December); plus a Jones and Garrison contribution to Spratleys Japs’ Winter Wonderland show in Brighton with Panixphere, Matthew Cutts and Hot Sauce Pony (21st December)

2 Dec

Craig Fortnam’s most recent surfacing (as North Sea Radio Orchestra) was a Robert Wyatt tribute event back in June, accompanied by assorted European Canterbury-scene aficionados and former Henry Cow-ers. Increasingly, that Wyatt connection’s cleaving more and more closely to his own work. It’s not that he absolutely takes on board that Wyatt whimsicality, the covers work or the delightful melting song-rambles: it’s more something about the lack of pomp, in particular in the tone of voice. Like Wyatt, Craig sings in an unaffected, unperformed manner – a delicate cupboard-voice, a step up from speech or chat, allowing itself to be frail but unsilenced: a singing style that’s like a confidence quietly shared in the back booth of a pub.

While this has been evident in Craig’s vocal moments with NSRO, it’s always been more present in his smaller-scale singer-songwriter work as Arch Garrison, in which he’s less sheltered behind chamber woodwinds and strings. Originally a trio including bass, subsequently trimmed to the two-man interplay between Craig and the delightfully welling, psychedelic-chapel keyboard work of James Larcombe, the upcoming English tour sees AG as Craig on his own – just his voice and artful nylon-string guitar, fingerpicked in a way which suggests a British answer to John Fahey’s American Primitive style while drawing from classical, flamenco, African stylings and intents. New songs are promised, adding to Craig’s existing repertoire of soft pushings and reflections on family, geological time, bereavement, and contact with one’s surroundings.

Craig’s tourmate is Emily Jones – a singer-songwriter who’s a little further underground, with only a single 2014 debut album to her name compared to Craig’s batch of projects (although she’s also made marks via a split woodland-folkadelic album with The Rowan Amber Mill). That said, she’s been making progressively bigger splashes this year; emerging from cottages in Cornwall and Salisbury for a growing number of concert appearances. This tour will be her biggest effort to date – six shows up and down the country bringing her feathery songs of hauntings and lovings which blur in and out of folk mythology and present day magic, accessible and human with a gentle wash of acid dreaming and folk baroque.

Along the way, there’ll be various other meetings. In Hexham, it’s just the two of them playing; but in Weston-super-Mare, they’re part of the Winter Warmer event at the Sunfold Hotel, the Weston-super-Mare guest house which is emerging as an occasional local stronghold for music (thanks to the affable-evil presence of Steven Morricone, the more gonzoid of the two Scaramanga Six frontmen, as co-owner). Not only is Steven playing host, he’ll also be spending time onstage maltreating the piano with his Steven Morricone Tyranny solo project, indulging self-confessed “straw man with a fist of ham” tendencies with a clutch of assorted Scaramanga songs (presumably his own more psychobilly offerings, though he’s recently been straying into more obscure and theatrical art-rock set pieces with assorted flavours of Faust, theatre and radio art), plus some new solo stuff and the odd cover.

Also playing are Brum-born but Cornwall-settled duo We Are Muffy, in which The Lilac Time’s Nick Duffy and Ambassadors Of Sorrow leader/frontwoman Angeline Morrison conjure up “poetic narratives of remembered and imagined pasts, combining vocal harmonies with unexpected instrumentation” – somewhere at the country-folk end of the Witchseason sound, with American banjos and fingerpicked guitar dissolving into more British concerns and storytelling styles.

In Hereford, Craig and Emily are playing with spooky sometime Omnia Opera/7shades singer Libbertine Vale, who sets aside the psych/prog electric trappings of her bandwork in favour of macabre a capella renditions of melancholic folk songs about oppression, cruelty and general perishing, albeit with “seeds of renewal”. You don’t get to see much of Libbertine outside of Birmingham and Herefordshire (where she contributes to the county’s growing reputation for psychedelic folk and sundry hauntological business by co-running Unorthodox Paradox), and she spends much of her time on subversive textile art rather than on music, so it’s best to catch her when you can. Especially since her solo act has, so far, resisted the pull of the internet – so no videos or soundclips here.

The Garrison/Jones booking at a Buds and Spawn night in Sheffield is supported by guitar-and-banjo-toting female harmony trio Little Robots. Though the latter have been going for about a decade, they’re busy women with a host of other activities and a commitment to the moment, so actual recordings are intermittent. You can scoop up what there is from their Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages: doses of impeccable Appalachian/Yorkshire fusion.

In Oxford, the support act is “singer-songwriter-psychedelicatessen” Adam S. Leslie, as his Berlin Horse project, wrapping spiky, silly absurdities, Ray Davies echoes and moments of quirky beauty in unalloyed Pepper-flavoured lushness (like an old Puffin Books joke anthology with extra swirl, wit and Lowrey organ colour)

London is the only date for which Arch Garrison will be a twosome, with James Larcombe returning to the fold. They’ll also be meeting up with Chlöe Herington. Temporarily disengaged from pumping regal bassoons and saxophones into the psychedelia of Knifeworld and Hirvikolari, from celebrating Lindsay Cooper in the Songbook project and from the three-headed avant-femme art-music project that her onetime solo outlet VALVE has become, she’s promised to occupy herself in “rebirthing some very old stuff (the vaults have been unsealed!) and reworking some more recent.”

There are no questions about the folky character of the Salisbury gig – it’s being played with Emily and Craig sandwiched between Ian A. Anderson and Pete Aves. Ian’s credentials are impeccable – a veteran British folkster of five decades standing, continuously active since the mid-60s, he’s led the field in acoustic country blues, had a long spell as head of The Village Thing acid folk label, has been a concert promoter and a critic (in particular, as the leading light of ‘Folk Roots’ magazine. Now in his seventies, for the last couple of years he’s been writing and playing solo again. This year’s ‘Onwards’ album compiles, in his own words “fifty years of deathfolk, blues, psych-fi, trad and world twang.”

As for guitarist/banjoist Pete, he too has been returning to solo work after the drying-up of work as regards his role in the currently slumbering High Llamas (and, more seriously, the uprootings and traumas of a divorce and spell of homelessness). Inspired by his recent travails, he’s now turning out simple songs of reproach, road life, and thumbnail character sketches, mostly in an Anglo-American country-folk vein.

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Both Craig and Emily will also be heading down to Brighton on 21st December to play “little guest sets” at the Winter Wonderland concert headed up by Spratleys Japs, featuring yet another joyfully incestuous array of the British psychedelic stew that bubbles around Cardiacs (see passim…).

The event’s already entirely sold out; but assuming that you can manage to prise a ticket from the cold, dead hand of a Cardiacs fan or an eager Brighton psychonaut, what you’ll be seeing apart from Emily and Craig includes the “lo-fi arty ska” of Hot Sauce Pony, a raucous Brixton four-piece with a lineup including the Gilchrist husband-and-wife couple (singer Caroline and bass player Steve, the latter better known as Stephen Evens, as the “Stuffy” in stuffy/the fuses, as a one-tour Cardiac or as the kit-thrasher behind Graham Coxon) and onetime Rat The Magnificent guitarist Ross Davies. They’ve been touting around a Steve Albini-recorded debut album this year. North-western art pop duo Army Of Moths may have had to cancel, but another longterm Cardiacs affiliate, Matthew Cutts, will be spouting some kind of poetry.

Probably the big draw this year, though, is the resurrected Panixphere – the elusive Cardiacs-family thrash-rock band who’ve surfaced occasionally over the past four decades to play a frustrating brief handful of blasting sets and then immediately dipped back underground. Inasmuch as they’ve had much consistent about them, it’s been Bic Hayes – the intermittently active, sputtering jewel of a guitarist/singer whose juddery, effects-laden playing (like Keith Levene invading a fiery Hawkwind lineup) has graced recordings and concerts by Cardiacs, ZOFFF, Levitation and Dark Star, Pet Shop Boys, Heidi Berry and Julianne Regan’s short-lived Mice. In Panixphere, though, he’s off the leash and free from the big concept or the psychedelic ritual. Historically, it’s been a band in which to drink too much beer and play music much too fast, in snotty punk-metal tradition (albeit while test-bedding or providing an alternative vehicle for assorted Cardiacs and Levitation material, as well as crunchy cover versions of songs by XTC, Nomeansno and, if suitably distracted, early Genesis).

Now, however, Panixphere seem to be taking things a bit more seriously, announcing their return with a swishy verbal fanfare and too many capital letters. “A Three Piece. Three timelines. Formed in 1984. Re-imagined in 1992. Returning in 2020. Experience The Past, Present and Future, simultaneously, in PANIXPHERE – appearing LIVE for the first time in 25 years – preview titles from the FORTHCOMING album ‘Cryptic’, currently under construction and to be unveiled in 2020. This Show Is A Beginning.”

While the lineup has previously included (at various points), Craig Fortnam, Cardiacs capo Tim Smith, Bic’s Levitation/Dark Star bandmate David Francolini and mysterious south London 1980s festi-freaks “Little Hicky” and “Flat Hat’, the revived version is a power trio including singing/shouting bassist Jon Poole (back for a second stint) and Cardiacs drummer Bob Leith. Here’s a clip of an earlier Panixphere, complete with Tim Smith, banging about onstage in 1993. Whether they’ll be any less unruly a quarter-century further on – well, it’s possible but not guaranteed. All this talk of an album, though, suggests that for the first time ever they’re thinking beyond the present, or following through on plans which have previously stalled in a shower of rude fat sparks.

As for the headliners, read here for a more in-depth account of Spratleys Japs’ original life as a Tim Smith/Jo Spratley parallel-to-Cardiacs weird-pop studio project, half-hearted disguised as bizarre pond-scummed Anglo-American swamp rock; and of their recent Tim-less/Tim-blessed live revival, with Jo now fronting a selection of Brighton psychedelic luminaries. Still reanimating the original Smith material, they’re now broadening out with their own new work as well as a couple of unheard Smith treasures.

With Jo now handling all of the vocals – and with Tim’s fuming-friendly/baleful-brotherly presence restricted to an affectionate memory – the band have indubitably lost some of their original charismatic quirk and danger. In return, though, they’ve gained a greater access to the beauty behind the music’s peculiar angles and gurgles, which refracted elements of glam, imaginary folk, tastes of post-Bostonian punkaroo (think Pixies, Throwing Muses, Breeders) and celestial Mellotron-classical through a skewed Smithian prism… and which still does, dropping it all off into a murky forest pool surrounded by tea-lights, traces of spontaneous ritual and the odd piece of trash. They’re a warmer proposition than they were before – now unrestricted by that Cardiacs tradition of onstage aggro and awkwardness, Jo’s now playing things more as a dancing priestess than the punkette muse she might have been before, blossoming even as the music does.

If all of this still seems compelling despite your lack of a ticket, word’s coming through that the whole shebang’s going to be live-streamed worldwide, in order to raise further funds for Tim Smith’s palliative care. More details on the event page, with the streaming link here.

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Dates:
Arch Garrison/Emily Jones tour:

’Winter Warmer’ @ The Sunfold Hotel, 39 Beach Road, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, BS23 1BG, England – Wednesday 11th December 2019, 7.30pm (with We Are Muffy + The Steven Morricone Tyranny) – information here
’Weirdshire’ @ The Babar Café, 31 Union Street, Hereford, Herefordshire, HR1 2BT, England – Thursday 12th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Libbertine Vale) – information here
The Vault, 22-24 Hallgate, Hexham, Northumbria, NE46 1XD, England – Friday 13th December 2019, 8.00 pm – information here, here and here
’Buds & Spawn’ @ The Dorothy Pax, Arch 17, Wharf Street, Victoria Quays, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S2 5SY, England – Saturday 14th December 2019, 8.00pm (with Little Robots) – information here and here
The Library, 182 Cowley Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX4 1UE, England – Sunday 15th December 2019, 8.00pm (with Berlin Horse) – information here and here
The Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, London, WC1H 8JF, England – Monday 16th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Chlöe Herington) – information here
The Winchester Gate, 113-117 Rampart Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 1JA, England- Tuesday 17th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Ian A. Anderson + Pete Aves) – information here and here

Wonderful Winter Wonderland Special 2019 (featuring Spratleys Japs, Panixphere + Hot Sauce Pony + Army Of Moths + Arch Garrison + Emily Jones + Matthew Cutts)
The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton, BN1 4FQ, England
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 5.30pm – information here and here

Tags: Arch Garrison, Army Of Moths, Brighton (England), Chloe Herington, Emily Jones, Hereford (England), Hexham (England), Hot Sauce Pony, Ian A. Anderson, Jo Spratley, Libbertine Vale, Little Robots, London (England), Matthew Cutts, Oxford (England), Panixphere, Pete Aves, Rat the Magnificent, Salisbury (England), Sheffield (England), the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Lilac Time, The Scaramanga Six, The Steven Morricone Tyranny, Tim Smith's Spratleys Rats (Spratleys Japs), We Are Muffy, Weston-super-Mare (England).

June 2019 – assorted upcoming London gigs – Block4 and Lynda Beckett’s multi-media recorder concert (15th), Arch Garrison, Charles Bullen and Kavus Torabi play Clapham Library (15th); cellotronics-and-percussion improv with BirdWorld at Wigmore Hall (18th June); North Sea Radio Orchestra, John Greaves, Annie Barbazza and others reinvent Robert Wyatt in ‘Folly Bololey’ (27th)

11 Jun

Classical/experimental recorder quartet Block4 (featuring Emily Bannister, Lucy Carr, Katie Cowling and Rosie Land on a variety of instruments from bass to sopranino) are offering a mingled kids’ workshop and multi-media live concert – ‘The Art Of Sound’ – this coming Saturday down in Lewisham. Exploring links between music and visual art, the ‘Stargazing’ concert is a live collaboration with line artist Lynda Beckett, who’ll be creating spontaneous artwork (pursuing “sensual, the rhythmic and the non-binary” via line art in which “the glitch and the eternal return are welcome”) during the course of the show.

While I’ve not got much info in terms of a programme, the music will be in keeping with Block4’s wide-spanning approach to genre, which in the past has mixed Renaissance and Baroque music with reinterpretations of Jimi Hendrix, “contemporary consort” ideas involving electronics, and more. It will include a new piece by Andrew Crossley, a composer whose inspirations include Zen Buddhism and a sheaf of hybrid forms of criticism (so expect something with plenty of silences and digressions, perhaps). Here’s an earlier electro-acoustic minimalist piece which Andrew wrote for sub-great bass recorder (travelling from borderline-subliminal low register to a resonant temple-horn call and back again), along with a couple of examples from Block4’s existing repertoire.

The workshop, taking place in the morning, ties in with the concept – allowing kids (from six-year-olds upwards) to “explore music performance, composition, drawing, and (to) creat(e) their own unique work of art to take home.” Best to book early for that one.

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The timing of the Block4 events also gives you time to slip across London (from the south-east to the south-west) on the same day, in order to take in one of the Lambeth Readers & Writers Festival gigs taking place in the atrium at Clapham Library. Back in April, they hosted the Peter Blegvad Quintet. This month, even as Craig Fortnam limbers up his North Sea Radio Orchestra for an upcoming Café Oto show, he and fellow NSRO-er James Larcombe slip on their guise as the Arch Garrison duo and head down Clapham-wards.

Arch Garrison take the implied baroque in folk baroque and draw it fully out into the light. Craig’s amplified gut-strung fingerstyle acoustic guitar playing has as much Spanish classical to it as it does bullish John Martyn counterpoint (though he’ll more readily cite African-Arabic inspirations like Ali Farka Touré), while James’ dextrous post-classical work on vintage-sounding monosynths makes joyously assured connections between chapel organ studies, progtronic flourishes and psychedelic sound webbings. The Garrison have sometimes been compared to Robyn Hitchcock and Nick Drake, and draw from Tim Smith’s eccentric, unlikely folk wellspring, but they don’t sound like anyone nearly as much as they sound like themselves. The songs, sung in Craig’s soft demotic Wyatt-esque sprawl, start with a lone walking man and travel downwards into conceptual strata of history, geography, familial relationships, art and ageing.

There will also be sidestepping solo support sets from Gong/Knifeworld expostulator Kavus Torabi (continuing to mine the unsettled psychedelic angst of his dark-sun guitar-and-harmonium solo EP ‘Solar Divination’ and a related upcoming solo album) and from Charles Bullen, one of the triumvirate behind Camberwell proto-punk experimentalists This Heat during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s (and, more recently, behind the band’s recently-retired latter-day reimagining This Is Not This Heat). I’ve no idea whether Charles will be singing; whether he’ll be playing along with guitar, viola, a mess of programmed samples or his clarinet: whether and how the music will connect to This Heat’s experimental jazz-prog collage polemics, the pocket-dub work he explored with Lifetones or the bright and mellow synth-rock sparkle of his Circadian Rhythms project; or even whether he’s going to be starting anew with a completely fresh slate. Anticipate anything.

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Returning to Craig Fortnam – and indeed, to Robert Wyatt – his North Sea Radio Orchestra concert is on 27th June. It’s the live British debut of the NSRO’s ‘Folly Bololey‘ project, which also incorporates Henry Cow bassist/art-rock chansonnier John Greaves and rising prog/art-ensemble singer Annie Barbazza.

‘Folly Bololey’ has been around in one shape or form for half a decade, being played at arts concert and Rock In Opposition events in continental Europe, but has only just now crossed the Channel to be performed in Britain. Gently picking up, re-arranging and re-performing various Wyatt works (centring on a complete performance of the ‘Rock Bottom’ song cycle), it sets Wyatt’s flowing, unspooling songs of love, grief, plaintive nonsense and recovery against the pastoral raincloud tug of NSRO’s alt.crossover sensibilities. The results are an interesting blending of Wyatt’s mouth-music jazzing and his deliquescing, playfully vulnerable search for meaningfulness against NSRO’s own softly-yielding Anglo-pastoral formalism (which in turn echoes the open-to-all concert music of another Fortnam forebear, David Bedford).

With Craig acting as master of ceremonies on guitar and Farfisa organ, rounding out the ensemble are NSRO reed and cello regulars Nicky Baigent, Luke Crookes and Harry Escott plus Greaves band member Laurent Valero on strings and recorders and William D. Drake (the former Cardiacs keyboard wizard who turned into a touchingly surreal, avuncular chamber-folkster). Handling the tuned and untuned percussion are Gong drummer Cheb Nettles and vibraphonist Tommaso Franguelli (from Piacenza percussion group Tempus Fugit).

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On Tuesday 18th, cello/electronics/percussion duo BirdWorld are playing an informal set at the Wigmore Hall’s Bechstein Bar. (When I last touched on them here, they were playing the Frome Festival three years back – too long ago.)

Migrating between twin home-bases of London and Oslo, BirdWorld are cellist/effects twiddler Gregor Riddell and drummer/percussionist Adam Teixeira. For a while, guitarist Alex Stuart was also in the picture; but it’s always been about the core duo, who met in Canada, discussed electronic/acoustic blendings and built from there. Aspects of improvisation, jazz, field recordings and cross-cultural music – plus experimental rock and classical and a battery of kalimbas – wing lightly in and out of their work, which has included film scoring and radio work; and (as of this year) their five-year-delayed debut EP ‘TING TAR TID’, released (in keeping with BirdWorld’s folkloric leanings) on the vernal equinox.

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All dates:

Block4 & Lynda Beckett: ‘The Art Of Sound’
St Mary the Virgin Parish Church, 346 Lewisham High Street, Lewisham, London, SE13 6LE, England
Saturday 15th June 2019 – children’s workshop 10.00am, concert 3.00pm (concert free for under-18 year olds) – information here

Lambeth Readers & Writers Festival presents:
Arch Garrison + Charles Bullen + Kavus Torabi
Clapham Library, 91 Clapham High Street, Clapham, London, SW4 7DB, England
Saturday 15th June 2019, 7.00pm – information here and here

BirdWorld
Bechstein Bar @ Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 2BP, England
Tuesday 18th June 2019, 6.15pm – information here and here

North Sea Radio Orchestra/John Greaves/Annie Barbazza play ‘Folly Bololey’ (Robert Wyatt’s ‘Rock Bottom’)
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Thursday 27th June 2019, 7.30pm – information here and here

Tags: Adam Teixeira, Andrew Crossley, Annie Barbazza, Arch Garrison, Birdworld, Block4, Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward, Cheb Nettles, Craig Fortnam, Emily Bannister, Gregor Riddell, Harry Escott, James Larcombe, John Greaves, Katie Cowling, Kavus Torabi, Laurent Valero, London (England), Lucy Carr, Luke Crookes, Lynda Beckett, multimedia, Nicky Baigent, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Robert Wyatt, Rosie Land, Tempus Fugit Percussion Ensemble, This Heat, This Is Not This Heat, Tommaso Franguelli, William D. Drake

January 2019 – upcoming London gigs – Monelise, Laura Victoria, Paul Reynolds and Paul Go free in Peckham; Amy Balog at the Poetry Café; The Osiris Club, Kavus Torabi and ANTA in Camden (all 9th January)

4 Jan

Three for next Wednesday…

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A free gig down in Peckham showcases four independent songwriters, with recent Goldsmiths graduate Monelise at the head of the bill. Positioning herself in the dreamy, arty end of pop, she tosses leading comparisons and tells around like chiffon scarves – David Lynch, Kate Bush, her own synaesthesia – and the talk-up seems to be working so far, with her videos being played in Topshop and a Pledgemusic campaign working hard at getting her debut EP completed (and her live shows up and running across a Mediterranean living-room tour and an Edinburgh Fringe fixture). She’s clearly as much a visual artist as a musical one, with her final degree show at the Deptford Albany last December already featuring screens, visuals and drifting snatches of 1920s opera shellac as well as a four-piece band.

I admire the ambition and industry, even if I’m not yet sold on the output. The influences Monelise is citing have the ability to reach down into your deep dreams and jar you. In comparison, she herself still seems content to drift along on the surface of a dusk dream, sounding pretty and basking in moonlight. I can only go by what I’m seeing. It’s possible that Monelise’s keeping her cards close to her chest as regards what she’s put out so far, and perhaps the live show’s the only current way of appreciating her in full. Available evidence shows two versions of her – the managed one (who releases slick spiritual-couture videos and tracks which blend contemporary pop and trip hop into seamless, depthless musings), and the far more interesting and unpolished live Monelise (who strives and juggles simultaneous singing, keyboards and theremin, and who might be shakier and more erratic at the moment but who also offers possibilities of growing, learning and interacting which her hermetically-sealed recorded persona currently doesn’t).

There are no such abstractions or evasions in the music of Laura Victoria. A onetime scion of Tyneside youth folk ensemble FolkESTRA North, she belts out punchy songs of life and love drawing from English folk, acoustic pop and Americana, accompanying herself on cello and leading a three-piece band featuring drummer Josh Wolfsohn and fiddler/banjoist Jo Cooper. Now up to her third album, and having been a regular presence on folk scene gigs up and down the country for twelve years, she’s confident and fully formed: what you see is what you get. I see sunniness, vigour and empathy in equal measure. In addition, she runs folk singing classes at Morley College and IKLECTIK, and has done at least one sprightly, ramshackle Joan Jett cover, if anyone’s interested…

Paul Go is another transplanted Northumbrian folkie, although of a very different order and style to Laura. His only available song so far is soft, shy and sweet – a gentle, momentary folk-pop sketch with brush drums, donkey-ride fingerpicking and fiddle contrasting awkward human reclusiveness with the unconscious confident grace of animals. Of the other two tracks he’s released, one’s a skittish, part-broken guitar improvisation designed to make use of the acoustic space of Ealing’s Vestry Hall. The other shows an unexpected interest in Chinese music, featuring the slithering sigh of an erhu fiddle, chimes and a guest narrative in Mandarin. Hopefully some of these other sides of Paul will bleed through in the concert: soft suburban musing and amiability are fine, but extra dimensions are better.

That’s something which already holds true for Paul Reynolds. Sometimes part of triple-threat modern folk trio Vespers, he plays bass for his own projects and for various other people, but graduates to piano for his own solo songs and for spacious, introverted instrumental improvisations (sometimes artfully jarred by odd tunings and by interspersed sound effects and electronics). I’m guessing that the songs will take preeminence this time around. Evidence so far suggests that they’re in the classic vein of chamber-folk touched with elements of classical and chanson, and thrumming behind a patina of English reserve: a mixture of craft and of carefully harboured emotion. Paul’s also got a sideline in little sonic experimental dramas such as The Brading Experience, suggesting a quietly uncontainable musician and aural imagination behind the meticulous skill.

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All right – in advance of her spoken word/musical set at the Poetry Cafe, here’s Amy Balog‘s opening statement:

“The hungry vulture of feminism is circling in the grey sky above the dying Femme Fatale. She’s being tortured to death by girls who don’t understand her power, thinking it somehow makes them weaker. Her admirers are collecting her sweet, priceless blood in vintage crystal flasks, trying to preserve at least this one colour still left in a humourless and passionless world. But she’s still breathing, and it’s not too late to save her from a cruel demise…”

I’m not sure quite what to make of Amy yet. She’s a Hungarian Londoner infused with Gothic prose and horror erotica; a refugee from science journalism who carried out a moonlight flit into the world of speculative fiction and dream psychology. Having reinvented herself as a novelist and poet, she’s now (at the age of twenty-seven) standing up in front of audiences to deliver a performance-poetry manifesto exploring “the nature of femininity and feminine power from a perspective critical of contemporary feminism… other themes include political correctness, identity politics, religion and mental illness.” As part of the process, she’s struck up an alliance with jazz-psych guitarist Carlos Ferrao, who brings a splintery musical soundscape to her recitations – hollowbody chugs, echoes and grumbles, deliquescing now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t riffs.

Heh. I’ve never much trusted anyone who scorns and decries “political correctness” and uses that ire as a rallying call. Having watched or suffered losses and setbacks related to mental illness, I’m suspicious of anything which politicises or potentially celebrates madness; and the fact remains that if you’re a woman arguing against feminism, you’re basically aiming an axe at your own ankles. That said, there’s more to Amy than flashy reactionary advertising or self-indulgent apologism. By her own admission, there’s plenty of Camille Paglia in her work, plenty of Jung, Nietzsche, Poe and the Comte du Lautréamont – the bloodwork of surrealism, expressionism, contrarian thought, like a kind of Goth take on Lydia Lunch.

Don’t expect measured, objective consideration here. Amy’s interested in transformative apocalypses, irrational dream quests and night journeys, the truth implicit in the fluid and contradictory power balance between artist and muse, or about the flip side of objectification. Her female narrators may be thwarted or humiliated or imperilled, but they’re also resistant and strangely bulletproof, with a core of self-will: heroic archetypes determined to establish their own concept of femaleness. Core to this is Amy’s own perception of beauty as a force in its own right – it threads through her words, and her Gothic redhead looks and sensual witchy Tori Amos presence are an integral part of her work; the vessel for the wine.

Perhaps it’s best to allow for the fact that feminism, by its very nature, is a broad church with room for multiple perspectives and considerations; that there are many pathways to female assertion and that none of them should be readily shouted down; and that Amy’s still in the early stages of her night journey. Despite her determined stance, at the moment there are more questions and challenges in place than answers. It may be interesting to see where she goes.

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A heavier, more masculine psychedelia gets an airing up at the Black Heart, where record label Old Empire are putting on a night of darker and/or harder sounds, headed up by occult post-punk/progressive metal metallers The Osiris Club.

Originally formed with the intent of fusing horror film soundtracks with instrumental avant-metal, the OC has now swollen to a full-on song septet. The changes seem to be resulting in accessible, gloomily elegant tritone epics of tingling guitar and droning indie vocal; as if The House of Love had thrown their hands up in the air and confessed to having been fantasy comics fans all along (while various members of Fantômas grinned and egg them on in the background). That said, for epics such as A Winter’s Night On Sentinel Hill the Club pull out all of the Hawkwind oscillators and Van Der Graaf/Iron Maiden declamations, unveiling a Lovecraft-prog grandeur in full glorious/ghastly melodrama.

No such code-switching games for ANTA – described by Chaos Theory as the purveyors of “velvetine cosmic textures delivered as a hammer blow to the soul”, they open the show with their own enthusiastically convoluted, heavy-prog brain-tangling rock swing. Sandwiched in the middle is Kavus Torabi. Having recently exploded the Garage at the helm of his psychedelic prog octet Knifeworld, he returns to the sullen, trepidatious, post-nova ember-glow of his solo work; trawling through shimmering webs of harmonium, effected drones and knell-clangs of acoustic guitar, exploring a forbidding hinterland of vulnerability and permeable spirit-space.

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Dates:

Monelise + Laura Victoria + Paul Reynolds + Paul Go
Rye Wax, 133 Rye Lane, Peckham, London, SE15 4ST, England
Wednesday, 9 January 2019, 7.30pm – information here

The Poetry Society presents:
Amy Balog: ‘The Dying Femme Fatale – An Evening of Poetry and Music’
The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9BX, England
Wednesday 9th January 2019, 7.00pm – information here and here

Old Empire presents:
The Osiris Club + Kavus Torabi + Anta
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Wednesday 9th January 2019, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Amy Balog, ANTA, Carlos Ferrao, Jo Cooper, Josh Wolfsohn, Kavus Torabi, Laura Victoria, listening to women, London (England), Monelise, Paul Go, Paul Reynolds, The Osiris Club, theremin music, Vespers, women of heart and mind

October 2018 – singer-songwriter album launches in London and Wales – Hazel Iris (25th October), Emma Lohan (25th, 26th October)

21 Oct

Looking for events with singer-songwriting women in London? This coming Thursday, you can go big or go small.

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If you’re going for the bigger option, there’s Hazel Iris’ album launch in Smithfield, at St. Bartholomew-the-Great, no less. It’s an event that sprawls across the entire church: its varied acts located in different places within the building, like a cross between a miniature festival and a stations-of-the-cross procession. In one corner, two classical musicians – Katrina Sheppeard and Jayson Gillham (who between them have racked up appearances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, ENO, Melbourne Symphony and the Sydney Opera House) will provide a piano-and-soprano duet performance of Richard Strauss’s ‘Vier letzte Lieder’ – the composer’s last work, a four-song death-and-transfiguration sealing of his legacy, composed during the dusk of the Romantic era. Next, in another corner, Kate Arnold – usually to be found as frontwoman for dark classical-folk fusioneers Fear Of The Forest – will be playing solo and acoustic with hammer dulcimer, violin and voice, providing a set of songs reflecting her folk, medieval and Middle Eastern influences.

And so to the headliner, who’s recently been making a name for herself as a standout performer at the Blind Dog Studio evenings. Hazel Iris is a storyteller with an overwhelming musical streak; her tales drawn from her travels, her own musings and her borrowings from the great stewpot of mythology and folklore. California-born and London-based but world-honed, her songs blend indie-folk habits, vaudeville brassiness, operatic training, lieder romance and a dash of country.

Bringing her brand-new ‘Nine Sisters’ album to life at St Barts is a similarly broad-based nine-piece band. The rhythm section – drummer Fred Harper and double-bassist Twm Dylan – come from the London and Leeds jazz scenes, while Winter Quartet violinist Aurora Del Río Pérez and French horn player Jessica Cottis are both established in the classical world (the latter, notably, as a conductor – she’s returning to a childhood instrument for this performance). Harpist Tara Minton straddles both jazz and classical worlds. Rounding out the ensemble is cellist and screen music composer Matt Constantine, classical accordionist Aine McLoughlin (Hazel’s regular collaborator at previous Blind Dog gigs), and up-and-coming guitarist Myles Peters (who plays anything and anywhere he can).

Also integral to the show will be the puppets of Alicia Britt, artistic director for Wondering Hands Puppet Theatre. Her usual gig involves using puppetry of all kinds for the entertainment and nourishment of all ages, with an undercurrent of healing, conversation and a restoration of our human nature: work that ranges from carefully-thought-out fairy tales of bereavement and development for children to bawdily sexual puppet-cabaret for adults. Quite possibly all aspects will be making a showing in her support work for Hazel. I’ve no idea whether huge rod-guided creatures will be leaping through the church or whether the puppetry will be on a smaller, more human scale with creatures the size of lutes or horns, but it should add an extra level of story texture.

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Speaking of smaller, more human scales – if all of the above sounds too grand, then on the same London night another songwriter – Emma Lohan – is launching her own debut album up in the south end of Hackney. ‘Black Atlantic’ pulls together Emma’s own particular blend of Irish hometown influences (she’s a Galway woman), pop leanings and traveller’s scraps, drawn from her footloose global roamings. Impressions and stories, a kind of global coast-combing or, as I put it last time, “beautifully-constructed cloud-tossed songs imbued with the flicker of constant motion.” The album itself is a small, quiet-reveal treasure imbued with a bouncing, soft-chatting liveliness. There’s jigs and kalimba, there’s age and youth, there’s plenty of story to unspool.

She’s doing it all again the following night in Wales – in an unusual display of synchronicity, at a puppet theatre in Cardigan – in a puppet theatre. Elusive ska band Julian’s Reluctant SKAfterparty are in support: no more info on them, I’m afraid. (Update, 24th October – sadly the Cardigan show has had to be cancelled, but they’re promising to reschedule it soon…)

All dates:

Hazel Iris + Kate Arnold + Jayson Gilham & Katrina Sheppeard – St Bartholomew the Great, Cloth Fair, West Smithfield, Clerkenwell, London, EC1A 7JQ, England, Thursday 25th October 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Emma Lohan – NT’s Bar, 1 Westgate Street #207, London Fields, London, E8 3RL, England, Thursday 25th October 2018, 7.00pm – information here
Emma Lohan – Small World Theatre, Bath House Road, Cardigan, Ceredigion, SA43 1JY, Wales, Friday 26th October 2018, 8.00pm (with Julian’s Reluctant SKAfterparty) – information here and here

Tags: Aine Mcloughlin, Alicia Britt, Aurora Del Río Pérez, Cardigan (Wales), Emma Lohan, Fear Of The Forest, Fred Harper, Hazel Iris, Jayson Gilham, Jessica Cottis, Julian’s Reluctant SKAfterparty, Kate Arnold, Katrina Sheppeard, London (England), Matt Constantine, Myles Peters, Richard Strauss, Tara Minton, Twm Dylan, Wondering Hands Puppet Theatre

September 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – Rumour Cubes, Agathe Max and Dream Logic in London (14th September); Major Parkinson’s European autumn tour (various dates, 26th September to 6th October)

9 Sep

Like progressive rock before it, post-rock ended up disappointingly short of genuinely inspiring exponents. The blueprint was all very well: retaining rock’s technology and what remained of its countercultural drive while dissolving its rigid methods, its predictable narratives and textures and its conservative exclusions In practise, few could reach (or be bothered to reach) the heights of the movement’s most inspired figures and their new paths: such as Tortoise’s integration of jazz, dub and electronica; Slint’s taut, grinding refusals; Godspeed’s sprawling/brooding scapes of punk-cinema-versus-conservatoire-grandeur; Talk Talk’s mendicant, increasingly hermetic passage from synth-pop to a dissolution of blues, prog and folk into distressed noise and silence; Moonshake’s abrasive post-everything groove and careening samples; Disco Inferno’s angst-ridden music concrete and social challenge. Most post-rockers, then and now, have stuck with a glowering reduction, a boiling-out of rock posturing leaving a glum muted residue of passive riffs and patterns… actually, more of an opt-out than a boil-out; in which say, the impact of Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’ is much-cited but rarely remembered in terms of how it can inform and colour the music, much less for the intimations it can throw up.

Though they’re not overturners – at least, not in the tradition of the bands I’ve cited above – third-generation London post-rockers Rumour Cubes are a welcome exception to the procession of drab refuseniks that make up the bulk of the post-rock movement. It’s probably partly because they’re proud and self-confessed “counter-revolution(aries)”, founded from the start around violin, guitar and electronics and obtaining their rock instrumentation later rather than using and rebelling against it from the start. Their origins, too, stick in post-rock’s teeth. Violinist Hannah Morgan lied about her knowledge of the genre in order to bluff her way into the starting lineup, while guitarist/main composer Adam Stark and drummer Omar Rahwangi were already impatient with its dour restrictions. In an interview with Chaos Theory, Adam’s stated that “as a band we are painfully aware of how boring post-rock can be… what we are trying to do is take what we find amazing about those bands that have influenced us and that are part of our community, and do something new with it.”

What Rumour Cubes have done is in as much in the in the lines of good prog rock as good post-rock – opening the gates to a variety of ingredients and described as a “luminous re-imagining of very many constituent parts” by ‘Louder than War’. As with underrated Aussie unit Apricot Rail, the toned-down interweave of guitars and the Krautrock groove bass often aim for a slow-building pastoral ecstasy while the band seeks a sweet spot that’s more country and roots than graphs and laboratory. The dancing interplay, in particular, between Hannah and viola player Terry Murphy ducks lemony-minimal string textures in favour of something that’s more country hoedown or folk fiddle. Rumour Cubes often hit their own delightful merge-point between the rustic and the highly technological, performing on bowed banjo and (the ubiquitous) post-rock glockenspiel in addition to the guitars, strings, keyboards and percussion, adding brass and harps where they can, and regularly bringing in instruments like the gestural technology of mi.mu gloves, new uses for joystick controllers, software-synchronised video displays and a battery of custom effects pedals to create new textures. Their gigs are, in consequence, joyous and open-ended experiences: collaborations, on and offstage with poets and filmmakers result in the music never stagnating.

Following two years of silence, and four without new music, Rumour Cubes return to live work via a gig at the Underdog Gallery near London Bridge, in order to premiere a batch of new music (including upcoming single ¡No Pasarán!, which will be out in a few week’s time). Meanwhile, here are some previous bits of Cubery to whet the appetite.

A couple of other acts are joining the show – firstly, amplified French acoustic violinist Agathe Max, who fled classical music around twenty years ago in favour of improvised sonic textural music and electrically-enhanced string-drones. Currently playing with Kuro and Mésange, she’s appearing alone on this occasion in order to offer a set of solo violin works. Secondly, Dream Logic: the recent solo project from Adam Fulford (previously known as the guitarist for Bristolian post-rockers This Is My Normal State) It’s pealing, cool-busting stuff which sees Adam all but drowning his own plagent piano lines, guitars and basses in eager tides of yearning orchestral strings and feverish noise clutter, bringing him comparisons to Nils Frahm and to A Winged Victory for the Sullen. This is Dream Logic’s third show (following previous support slots for Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment’s rulebreaking alter-ego the Night Shift and for rebranded ambient post duo VLMV (previously ALMA) and live arrangements usually involve a string quartet: let’s hope he comes up with the goods on this occasion, too.

Echoes And Dust presents:
Rumour Cubes + Agathe Max + Dream Logic
The Underdog Gallery, Arch 6, Crucifix Lane, Southwark, London, SE1 3JW, England
Friday 14th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

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A little later in the month, jumpy and unpredictable Norwegian art-rockers Major Parkinson are dipping into England as part of an autumn European tour presenting their new ‘Blackbox’ album (and which also includes Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands). A jaggedly muscular alternative pop proposition, Major Parkinson’s music recalls a host of eclectic forebears such as The Monochrome Set and Faith No More: most notably, they’ve become a hit with the sometimes partisan (and often hard-to-impress) Cardiacs fanbase, who appreciate unrestrained complex melodicism and truckloads of energy, and have been up and yelping about this band for a while now.

I can’t really top this for an intro…

“Major Parkinson write tunes. But with influences from across the rock and classical genres (from The Beatles to Cardiacs) and a warped vision of the musical world, their tunes are like no other. You may hear a snippet of an East European folk song, a nursery rhyme, a stage musical, even a rock anthem, all played out on a range of instruments that a symphony orchestra couldn’t muster – synths, strings, old typewriters, brass and reputedly a decommissioned jet fighter engine. The musical scores behind their songs are both monumental and breathtaking – explosive synth and guitar sections that pound at your heart and then instantly make it melt with beautiful choral harmonies, and then drawn in you will dance and sing along as if centre-stage in a West End show.

“With songs too that cover subjects as diverse as Pavlovian hounds to ducks in the pond, the sheer scale and absurdity of the Norwegian band’s extraordinary musical world can only be truly appreciated by seeing their seven-piece stage performances live.”

All of the upcoming shows appear to be solo flights for the Major, other than London, Berlin and St Gallen. No news yet on the Berlin guest, but in London support comes (bizarrely, but delightfully) from Sterbus, the quirky Anglophile Italian art-popper similarly beloved of Cardiacs fans and who’s sitting on what promises to be one of 2018’s sunniest and most enjoyable rock albums: he’ll be playing with a band including longterm woodwind-and-vocal sidekick Dominique D’Avanzo, Pocket Gods’ keyboard wizard Noel Storey and Cardiacs drummer Bob Leith. In St Gallen, the gig’s being opened by bouzouki-toting Dutch psych-exotica rockers Komodo, whose music also draws on raga, hip hop, desert blues, rumba and ’60s harmony pop and surf rock.

Full dates:

The Hare & Hounds, 106 High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7JZ, England, Wednesday 26th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Thursday 27th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
The Water Rats, 328 Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8BZ, England, Friday 28th September 2018 7.30pm (with Sterbus) – information here and here
Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1DF, England, Saturday 29th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Hafenklang, Große Elbstrasse 84, 22767 Hamburg, Germany, Monday 1st October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Cassiopeia, Revaler Str. 99, 10245 Berlin, Germany, Tuesday 2nd October 2018, 7.30pm (with support t.b.c) – information here, here and here
Backstage München, Reitknechtstr. 6, 80639 München, Germany, Wednesday 3rd October 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Grabenhalle, Unterer Graben 17, 9000 St.Gallen, Switzerland, Thursday 4th October 2018, 7.30pm (with Komodo) – information here, here and here
Orange Peel, Kaiserstraße 39, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Friday 5th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
ProgPower Europe 2018 @ Jongerencentrum Sjiwa, Hoogstraat 1a, 5991 XC Baarlo, Netherlands, Saturday 6th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Agathe Max, Baarlo (Netherlands), Berlin (Germany), Birmingham (England), Bob Leith, Dream Logic, Frankfurt (Germany), Hamburg (Germany), Komodo, London (England), Major Parkinson, Manchester (England), München (Germany), Noel Storey, Rumour Cubes, Sterbus, string quartet, violin music

July 2018 – some post-Doran thoughts on smaller music festivals; and next week’s EppyFest in Cheltenham (27th & 28th July)

21 Jul

John Doran of ‘The Quietus’ wrote a pithy, on-the-nose article a while back about the ongoing corruption of big music festivals, lambasting them as “unsatisfying money hoovers designed to deplete your bank account for minimal return… a heavily branded and patronisingly over-mediated experience – with little in the way of the rough round the edges, unexpected, challenging or genuinely exciting experience that makes being a music fan worthwhile; just a massive spoonfed dose of the ubiquitous, the hyped and the monolithically popular.”

As a follow-up punch, John slashed a hole in the backdrop in order to expose the ethics behind the festival business: how, even as you’re frolicking in a ludicrously overpriced facsimile of countercultural free-spiritedness, your ticket money wriggles its way into the war chests and “shockingly regressive campaigns” of suspect billionaires intent on crushing any genuine counterculture that’s little more than a cheery mask on a product, funding a host of life-killing causes including anti-LGBTQ, anti-union and anti-immigration initiatives. Unsurprisingly, he concluded “personally I’d sooner go to a smaller, more grass-roots independent festival and have a clutch of genuinely odd, uplifting, joyous and memorable experiences on a smaller, freer scale.” He lists plenty of smaller, more conscientious festivals which might better suit your ethics or your conscience – Supersonic, End of the Road, many more. Modestly, he didn’t mention ‘The Quietus’s own efforts .

I might lack John’s edge, but I’ll still say amen to all that. There’s also always the option of going further off the map, seeking out festivals beyond the tents’n’burgers belch. I’ve covered some such here… Marchlands’ annual musical/theatrical celebration of reaching across borders and understanding history; the composer-driven London New Wind Festival; New York’s wonderfully brainy and diverse Ecstatic Music Festival. On a more domestic level, there’s next month’s Whole World Window 2 in Preston, raising urgent money for psychedelic hero Tim Smith’s health care while also functioning as a focussing lens for assorted rock and pop acts existing in a rowdy, complex continuum outside ot the mainstream. The staunchest supportive and communal ethics, unsurprisingly, still hover around punk events, those pass-around-a-donation-bucket battles for big values in small places (I might often be bored by the music, but I profoundly admire the commitment and the generosity of spirit).

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As regards the coming week, Gloucestershire’s EppyFest – just a week away now – is the epitome of a pocket festival. Now heading in its seventh year, it also pretty much defines “boutique”. Its amiably knitted-together selections of psychedelic rock and pop, folk, electric and acoustic chamber music and accomplished instrumentalist is undeniably cosy, but in the right way – unashamed and unaggressive, slightly specialised while toting an inclusive audience ethic. There’s a rosy English glow to it, alright, but not the kind which shoulders out differences while indulging a truculent and moneyed bucolic fantasy. The Eppyfest England is one which is comfortable in itself, but not too smug to look outwards: mostly white, but not bleached and angry. In the best sense and intimation, it’s a liberal parish.

The Friday lineup, starting in the evening – is the briefer concert, with just two sets of performers. The headliners are the current and ongoing version of cosmic-rock libertine troupe Gong, still romping along after the death of founding holy prankster Daevid Allen. This isn’t the first time there’s been a post-Allen Gong: percussionist Pierre Moerlen floated a de-hippified mid’-70s jazz-rock version around Europe which had little to do with Allen’s mischievous space rock parables, while the band’s original feminine-mystiquer Gilli Smyth led a sporadic Mother Gong version at points in the ’80s. This, however, is the first Gong that’s been a direct continuation of Allen’s work: thumbing its collective nose at his departure from music and from life, and mourning him by celebrating his ethos.

This Gong iteration is helmed by delightfully wayward, larger-than-life Anglo-Persian prodigy (and ‘Misfit City’ favourite) Kavus Torabi, who established himself as one of the premier, most open-eared British psychedelic talents while with The Monsoon Bassoon and Cardiacs, has continued it with Knifeworld and Guapo, and who has in effect been rehearsing for Gong leadership for the whole of his musical life. Expect the same applecart-overturning riffs, the mingled brass and electric strings, the space-dust party atmospheres. The old firm’s still a family.

In support, Liverpudlian guitarist Neil Campbell is arguably one of the most gifted musicians still unknown to the general public. An omnivorous stylistic polymath, he’s mastered contemporary classical, progressive rock, jazz and assorted other styles to the point in which he can pass seamlessly between and through them; and he comes trailing awestruck references from guitar scholars and crossover music master musicians alike. Working off nylon- and steel-strung acoustic guitars (with a chain of echoes, loop pedals and other processors) he creates detailed, fiery electro-acoustic tapestries when playing solo: given the opportunity, he’ll also roll out orchestral concerti, small ensemble pieces, vital building-block contributions to the larger works of other, and site-specific concerts in venues of all kinds.

North Sea Radio Orchestra headline Saturday’s seven hours of music – as ever, they draw together Anglo-pastoral classical, a stolen kiss or two of folk melody, crossover chamber music and English art-rock. (They’ve covered Robert Wyatt, as well as old Christmas carols and Vernon Elliot). Sixteen years in, they’re a little smaller and tighter than they used to be – the choir is long gone and the ensemble streamlined, with most of the Victorian poetry settings consigned back to the bookshelf in favour of more personal lyrics of chalkhills and children, lost loved ones and the make-do-and-mend of life.

They’re still a quietly enchanting proposition, gently webbed together by a deceptive fragility, a village-singer tone and Craig Fortnam’s elegant compositions, and they grow ever more comfortable in themselves as the years pass. From German kosmische, they bring in that cosmic powerplant throb: from Frank Zappa and Canterbury, the somersaults of harmony and tinkle of xylophone (with the lyrical coarseness and silly whimsy gently steered out of the picture); from English chamber music, the gentle green ache. All soft borders, all subtle mind.

Second down the bill is Doris Brendel. The Vienna-born multi-instrumentalist daughter of concert-piano legend Alfred Brendel, she originally made her mark in ‘90s neoprog and underground AOR providing vocals, guitar, sax and flageolet to The Violet Hour: when that didn’t last, she applied herself to whatever was going while cultivating her own records in her own time. She’s refined her earlier approach, but what you get now is still pretty much what you got then – a singer who can go from a dream-folk murmur to a gutsy rhythm-and-blues blast, who puts on an assured show of muscular rock and costumed pizazz. An old-school rock chick, but one who’s taken control and honed it to excellence. There might be differences in tone, but latter-day ladyrockers like She Makes War and Ciara Clifford might look to her and immediately see a spiritual older sister.

Via a shifting gambler’s hand of interrelated projects – and a proven ability to survive practical and artistic disruption – the persistently thoughtful Oxford prog-rock collective Sanguine Hum have explored music for nearly twenty years now. In many respects, they’re a back-to-first-principles prog-initiative. Rather than constructing vast vanity pieces (as if to impress their aspirational Mellotronic forebears), the Hum are based very much in a lush’n’lambent ’70s pop mode – as least as much Neil Young, Steely Dan or David Bowie as Genesis, Zappa or Canterbury – which they can then wilfully and logically expand to bigger and broader things (engulfing and building upon later influences such as Boards Of Canada along the way).

For this acoustic-slanted EppyFest slot, lead singer/guitarist Joff Winks and keyboard player Matt Baber (the latter fresh from last month’s release of his “ambient prog minimalism” solo album ‘Suite For Piano and Electronics‘) will play as a duo; exploring at least one track from each of the project’s scattered albums and personae, with new material as a bonus.

Electric chamber group Firefly Burning were to have held the middle of the bill but had to pull out. To replace them, in comes a harder noise in the shape of the explosive wit, ominous chording and multi-layered songwriting of London’s Thumpermonkey. I described them a while back as “the missing link between Peter Hammill and Neal Stephenson”: a tag which they really seemed to like, so let’s run with it. A motley crew of brainiacs, meticulators and fast friends with their heads in lofty places and their toes sunk in dirty post-metal, they have the kind of esoteric preoccupations (and the wherewithal to communicate them) which encourage interest rather than eye-rolling and detachment. Unshamedly weird-fictional, the songs have covered Nigerian email fraud, Aztec hauntings, bizarre medical conditions and Victorian explorers amongst many other topics, all via a rich filter of literary and cinematic techniques and dark, sophisticated humour.

As for the music, Thumpermonkey play within that increasingly rare strata of hard rock in which there’s room to breathe, think, listen and explore beauty as well as nail down a predatory riff. Michael Woodman sings like an athletic college don moonlighting as an operatic priest, while his cohorts Ben, Sam and Rael construct a moving fortress, observatory and interdimensional vessel for him to stand on. They’re the kind of band that either make you proud to be curious, or will magnetize your brain into a state of curiosity. In effect, they’re the ‘Infinite Monkey Cage’ of British post-prog and we’re bloody lucky to have them.

Bristolian progressive-grunge rockers Lord Of Worms cite Meshuggah, Soundgarden, Tool and Ufomammut as influences, and there’s certainly some roiling springy punktone bass and restless post-hardcore rhythmic shifts in the mix. Their folk lilts and Zoie Green’s burnished-silver vocals simultaneously tie them into a tradition of female-fronted folk-rock acts like Renaissance and The Morrigan. Judge for yourselves…

Like Sanguine Hum, Dutch/American crossover prog poppers Fractal Mirror will be playing under reduced circumstances as regards personnel, but probably not in terms of the music. While the band can rely on the assistance of Echolyn polymath Brett Kull, among others, in the studio, this live date will just feature their core duo of singer/guitarist/keyboard and recorder player Leo Koperdraat and lyric-writing drummer Frank Urbaniak. Expect intimate expansions on their recipe of dove-soft Mellotronics and pastoral post-Porcupine Tree moods, with their hidden freight of darker, reflective lyrics.

Sonic Bond Promotions & The Epileptic Gibbon Podcast present:
EppyFest 7: North Sea Radio Orchestra + Gong + Neil Campbell + Sanguine Hum + Doris Brendel + Thumpermonkey + Lord Of Worms + Fractal Mirror
St Margaret’s Hall & Annex, Coniston Road, Hatherley, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL51 3NU, England
Friday 27th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Saturday 28th July 2018, 1.00pm – information here and here

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It would be stupid of me to represent EppyFest as some kind of absolute template for festivals. It’s its own little Gloucestershire gem, it has its context and its taste-palette, and while it’s a fine refresher there’s far more to contemporary music – to a nourishing cultural diet – than even a thoughtful slipped-weekend like this one can provide.

What I am advocating is a spreading of its care-filled cottage ethos; its preference for building a relatively equal, mutually supportive community of performers and audients in a warm and humble space, rather than driving a rush of drainable, soakable human cattle through the money-mill. Events like this are worth the seeking-out, worth the effort that goes into their creation. Go find some. Go make some. Come tell me about them.

Tags: Brett Kull, Cheltenham (England), Craig Fortnam, Doris Brendel, Echolyn, Eppyfest (event), Firefly Burning, Fractal Mirror, Gong, Joff Winks, John Doran, Kavus Torabi, Lord Of Worms, Matt Baber, Neil Campbell, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Preston (England), Sanguine Hum, Sharron Fortnam (Sharron Saddington), Stroud (England), The Quietus (publication/event/label), The Whole World Window (event), Thumpermonkey

July 2018 – upcoming avant-pop gigs – Liam Singer in New York and Catskill with Sontag Shogun, Alexander Turnquist and Tim Mislock (12th, 13th July)

6 Jul

Bar his efforts in assembling a performance of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ under the Brooklyn Bridge last year, not enough has been heard from Liam Singer since he released his gorgeously limpid ‘Arc Iris’ album in 2013. In fact, he’s quit New York City and moved upstate to Catskill, where he’s now co-running HiLo – a combined cafe, bar, art gallery, and performance space. New responsibilities, however, haven’t stemmed his musical flow. Two imminent shows (one at HiLo and one in his old Brooklyn stomping grounds) mark this month’s release of his fifth album, ‘Finish Him‘, on Birdwatcher Records.

Centred on his piano and the sweet murmur of his voice, Liam’s previous records brought in strings, glass harmonicas and spectral studio reverb; the clink and clatter of gamelan and prepared instruments, Morton Feldman namedrops, and women’s voices shading into birdsong. They sketched out a sharply etched dreamworld which seemed to take place in and on the towns, roads and headlands of a permeable New England coastline – one in which ancient mythology and personal headspace interpenetrated, and danced their way up and down from the seabed to the constellations. Either that, or they evoked loft life in an idealised, slightly antiquated boho New York or upscale university town – Art Deco bannisters, rumpled stockings discarded by elusive free-spirited lovers; mannered speech, books on the Harlem Renaissance.

It was pop, but pop over which Steve Reich and the aforementioned Feldman presided as occasional guardian angels (as did Henry Cowell and Shaker music), amidst a papery flutter of old books and wallpaper witnessings, and of dust being blown off enthralling junk-shop discoveries. Longtime co-producer Scott Solter likes to link it to “Edward Gorey and the Brothers Quay“. The descriptions may sound precious, but the songs aren’t. No showboater, Liam is nonetheless one of those singers whose tones gently, subtly shift and refract between wonder, melancholy, wry self-deprecation and ecstacy: a caster of light upon things, rather than a hoarder or showcaser. The folding of literary and mythical references into his songs – and their subtly eclectic instrumentation – may bring him comparisons to Elliott Smith (especially in terms of the intimate delivery) and to Sufjan Stevens; but to me he’s a far more gentler character, bringing a human fragility and self-awareness to his steps in and out of a numinous music realm. A bit like an American William D. Drake, perhaps; though minus the occasional overt music-hall flourishes.

That said, ‘Finish Him’ (described as “a coming-out party”) sees Liam changing tack. Now he’s fully, publically embracing influences he’s previously only hinted at – predominantly colourful 1980s art pop “from a time when traces of the Baroque and avant-garde began to seep into the margins of the mainstream alongside the iconic synths, gated reverbs and big hair.” The science-fiction bacofoil-meets-CGI video, drum machine and layered synths of pilot single Test Tone determinedly sets out this new stall – like Wes Anderson simultaneously taking on ‘Tron’ or one of those Saturday afternoon space operas – and while new tracks like The Devil and I Want To See Sparks are less immediately brash, they’ve set aside some of the diaphanous sound of previously-on-Liam in favour of grander, brighter colourings, scrim-sweeps of noise, and bolder narratives about the struggle between selfishness and connection, the booting over of applecarts.

If there’s a new parallel, it’s the latterday work of Paddy McAloon – the revealing of extra bite and sharp points behind the musical meringue, the emergence of perspective and bone-deep feeling that comes with age and gravity taking more of a hold. The magic and mists are still there, just with a little more lightning.

Main support at both shows comes from Liam’s friends in the “lullanoise” project Sontag Shogun, who travel the world and bring back armfuls of noise and aural capturings of different places and times, only to re-knit them into ambiguous/meaningful post-minimalist mood pieces of piano and soundscape. Evoking or manufacturing memories filled with beauty and displacement, they produce music which is part hypnagogic tape, part four-dimensional postcard or souvenir.

For the Brooklyn show, the core Shogun trio (pianist Ian Temple, laptop/field recordings manipulator Jesse Perlstein and tapesman/oscillator operator/microphonist Jeremy Young) are “reformatting and outfitting” the band with a string quartet (thus forming the Sontag String Ensemble) and are playing “all new music, marrying improvisational and experimental sound with composed string arrangements by Ian.” For the Catskill show, they’re reverting to the trio format.

Each of the two shows will be bolstered by another instrumental set, each by a different guitarist/composer. In Brooklyn, it’s Alexander Turnquist, whose instrumental reflections on nature and philosophy blend virtuosic twelve-string acoustic fingerstyle with studio-based electronic noise aesthetics, producing a melodious state-shifting thunder of folk baroque/New Acoustic stringwork and reverberant processing which perhaps makes him the heart of an imaginary triangle between Michael Hedges, John Fahey and Jim O’Rourke.

Alexander’s counterpart at the Catskill show is Tim Mislock, whose use of simple electric figures and slow, ebbing ambient-country pulses… renders him more similar to Britain’s Rob Jackson or to a Nashville-saturated Robert Fripp, while also dipping into the lonesome romantic post-rock minimalism of Explosions In The Sky. His current album ‘Now Is The Last Best Time’ is “a heartfelt ode to (his) mother, who over the course of the past decade, has been the primary caregiver to her husband and Mislock’s stepfather; as he slowly fades into the ever-present silence of Alzheimer’s disease.” It’s a project encompassing love, regret, compassion and drift, and you can feel all of them in every note.

Dates:

Liam Singer + Sontag String Ensemble + Alexander Turnquist – Wonders Of Nature, 131 Grand Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York 11249, USA, Thursday 12th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Liam Singer + Sontag Shogun + Tim Mislock – HiLo Catskill, 365 Main Street, Catskill, New York 12414, USA, Friday 13th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here

Tags: acoustic guitar music, Alexander Turnquist, Catskill (New York State - USA), electric guitar music, Liam Singer, New York City (USA), Sontag Shogun, Tim Mislock

July 2018 – two eclectic London music evenings – SOIF Soiree with Society Of Imaginary Friends, Jennifer Bliss Bennett, Dekay Ex, Stone Deep, Outre Dan Steele and William Summers (6th July); Rude Mechanicals with John Callaghan, Hypnotique and Rotten Bliss (13th July)

3 Jul

The last Society Of Imaginary Friends Soiree for the summer is cartwheeling into view. I smashed two or three of their Beat-y burbles together to bring you this:

“Friday 6th July is our 21st Century Avant Garde Soiree at Karamel, N22. We have in store for you a magnificent exploration of 21st Century new and experimental music with incredible performers already lined up. The fabulous, supremely talented Jennifer Bliss Bennett will be performing master composer Martin Gaughan’s pieces for voice and bass viol: a must hear. There’ll be an appearance from the one-and-only Dekay Ex (queen of the underground urban music arena, virtuosic battle rapper superstar) with guest musician Gerard; and brand new dark intriguing soul music from Stone Deep.

“The multi-talented Darren and Isobel Hirst will be performing as the fascinating, spellbinding duo Outre Dan Steele, and the amazing William Summers (Circulus, Princes In The Tower, Mediaeaval Baebes and innumerable period/Baroque ensembles) will be performing 20th century recorder music. Plus us, the Society Of Imaginary Friends, and that’s just for starters. Delicious vegan food and unbelievably free entry.”

Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
21st Century Avant Garde Soiree: Society Of Imaginary Friends + Jennifer Bliss Bennett + Dekay Ex + Stone Deep + Outre Dan Steele + William Summers
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 6th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

A few examples of the evening’s entertainment:

* * * * * * * *

There’s no August Soiree (since the Society will be either on holiday or concentrating on their appearances at the Green Gathering festival in Chepstow), but there should be more of these evenings in the coming autumn.

However, you can make up for their upcoming London summer absence with an evening of music and video hosted by Cos Chapman’s Rude Mechanicals, and taking place in a onetime Dalston dance school turned into arty pub and hangout space…

“The art-rock inspired Rude Mechanicals have been compared to Nick Cave, The Tiger Lillies, early Roxy Music and Can and described as post-punk, swamp blues and dark cabaret – altogether creating a music that was best be described by Tom Robinson (on BBC6) as “wild, wicked weirdness… a little bit Flying Lizards, a little bit Native Hipsters and a great deal like nothing you’ve heard before…” The evening will feature the premiere of MHG Music Videos’s animated video for Rude Mechanical’s ‘Paperwork’.”

Meanwhile, here’s something a little older…

“Originally hailing from Birmingham, John Callaghan is an unusual songwriter and performer of thoughtful and spiky electronica. His self-directed video for ‘I’m Not Comfortable Inside My Mind’ aired on MTV. His live performances are energetic and imaginative, and range from one-man auto-karaoke shows to specially-written dancefloor sets. Recent well-received shows have included London’s Spitz, Ginglik and Electrowerks, Cambridge’s Portland Arms, Crystal Palace Bowl and last year’s jaunt around Germany, including Berlin’s Club 103 and Bar 25 and Hamburg’s Golden Pudel. He is 173cm tall, weights 73kg and has a blood pressure of 110/60Hg.”

“Hypnotique is a thereministe, electronic musician and auteur based in London whose lyrical subjects range from the apocalypse, post-feminism, erotic narrative and allotments. She’s performed solo shows at Edinburgh Fringe, worked with Gong and The Heliocentrics, toured the Amazon and annoyed Simon Cowell. She’ll be performing her live sound design for Georges Méliès 1902 film ‘Voyage de la Luna’ (‘Trip to the Moon’)…” …which she’s previously and recently also done at a Colliding Lines film evening: find out more about that here.

“Described last year as “a thing of disquieting dark beauty rolling in through a ghostly fog on timeless ripples whose ebbing wash peels back the years to reveal a vintage crafted in archaic folk tongues” by Mark Barton of ‘The Sunday Experience‘ (and, by ‘The Wire’ as a writer of “coarse and beautifully heavy songs (betraying) hallmarks of folk, metal and classical without subscribing to any particular tribe”), Rotten Bliss is the violent, warm and weird visions of London based avant-garde electric cellist and vocalist Jasmine Pender. Equally inspired by the wild physicality of Jacqueline du Pre and the shrieking glory of a cello played through FX pedals, Rotten Bliss packs diverse influences into an elemental voyage of outer-limits FX-laden drones, weird folk and sound art, raging from tender a capella lyrical fantasies through to ecstatic nihilism.

“Jasmine performs regularly around London, also playing in 11th Hour Adventists (with Jowe Head, ex-Swell Maps) and False Echo (with Tim Bowen, ex-Chrome Hoof) and has toured England, France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Her debut album, ‘The Nightwatchman Sings’, was released in October 2017 on the Reverb Worship label.”

Also on hand for the inbetween bits are DJs Enri, Blue and MJ Ultra, and Rude Mechanicals are bribing any advance tickets buyers with the promise of a “free unique, special edition CD and badge”.

Rude Mechanicals present:
‘Paperwork!’ – featuring Rude Mechanicals + John Callaghan + Hypnotique + Rotten Bliss + DJ Enri + DJs Blue & MJ Ultra
Farr’s School Of Dancing, 17-19 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England
Friday 13th July 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

Tags: cello music, Cos Chapman, Darren Hirst, Dekay Ex, electric cello, Gerard, Hypnotique, Isobel Hirst, Jennifer Bliss Bennett, John Callaghan, Kabaret @ Karamel (event), London (England), Martin Gaughan, Miss Roberts & Rude Mechanicals, Outre Dan Steele, recorder music, Rotten Bliss (Jasmine Pender), Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), Stone Deep, William Summers

July 2018 – upcoming London singer-songwriter gigs – Ana Silvera’s ‘Oracles’ at the South Bank (4th July) and Holly Penfield’s ‘Fragile Human Monster’ in Piccadilly (9th July)

1 Jul

‘Oracles’ – the BASCA-nominated song-cycle by Anglo-Portuguese singer-songwriterAna Silvera – already has a seven-year history. Created more or less in parallel with her debut album ‘The Aviary’ (and originally a choral piece for the NEC choir at the Roundhouse), it’s now returning this month, freshly re-arranged for Ana and small vocal/instrumental ensemble, for a full album release and the first of two 2018 live shows.

A response to the pain of intimate family bereavement, ‘Oracles’ “draws on folk tales and myths to chart a transformative journey from profound grief to tentative acceptance.” In some senses it’s a wide-spectrum take on adult pop without a trace of that genre’s unnecessary blandening: an as-it-happens assessment of the dramatic personal shifts in position following the loss of both loved ones and of the relationship one has with them while they’re alive.

What I’ve heard of it so far suggests a similar vivacity as her songs elsewhere on album or in her theatrical work – vividly characterised narratives of internal reflection and of landscapes both physical and emotional, mingling detailed, nakedly honest personal verbal imagery and an influx of Portuguese folk feel in a way which makes her sound a little like an Iberian Jane Siberry.

For the live performance, Ana’s six-piece band features her co-arranger – Listenpony curator and singing multi-instrumentalist Josephine Stephenson – plus a wealth of folk-jazz talent in the shape of the string trio of Jasper Høiby on double bass, Alice Zawadzki on vocals and violin, and Alice Purton on vocals and cello, plus Will Barry on piano and percussion.

The concert will feature “specially arranged new songs” for the first half and a full run through ‘Oracles’ for the second: the latter including a specially commissioned dance film by Royal Ballet/’Random Acts‘ director/dancer Kate Church and art director Alice Williamson.

Ana Silvera – ‘Oracles’
Purcell Room @ Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, Waterloo, London, SE1 8XX, England
Wednesday 4th July 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here

* * * * * * * *

From where she’s standing in her life right now, Holly Penfield can reach out in both directions to touch the passionate, large-lunged ingenue singer of her youth and the salty life-loving veteran she’s transforming into. Of course, she’s got a longer, bolder reach than most. Once tagged as “David Bowie meets Liza Minelli” by a surprised and wrongfooted Simon Cowell, she’s a classic torch-pop singer with a stunning voice who’s also both blessed and cursed with an upsetter’s drive. These days, as she rebounds from twenty years as a leading international cabarettier in order to return to her own songs, it’s more of a blessing.

Raised in San Francisco (and a veteran of the 1980s LA pop scene with the scars to prove it) Holly spent much of the ‘90s writing and performing the psychodramatic one-woman pop show ‘Fragile Human Monster’ in London and elsewhere. A show with such troubled and intense undercurrents that it eventually blew itself apart, it’s now spawned a return… but under very different circumstances. The whirling mirror-glass synths and saxophones of the old days have been replaced by a gritty post-Americana rock band (which growls, gnaws and struts through her songs like a Cash or Waits ensemble) while Holly herself has mostly forsaken standing behind a keyboard (except for when a grand piano ballad calls for that set of skills).

It’s funny, sad, uplifting and stirring all at once. Once the very embodiment of storm-tossed waif and precarious survivor, Holly’s now a wiser and much happier woman. She still absolutely owns the stage, though, helping herself to a big dollop of the jazz and blues flavourings which shaped her initial development, playing a dash of ukulele and engaging in some zestful shimmying (and some delightfully ludicrous party outfits, worn with wit and flair – it seems as if her recent steps away from cabaret involved at least one sly step back).

What hasn’t changed is the quality of her singing, and of her songs. While old FHM standards like Misfit, The Last Enemy, puddle-of-grief ballad Stay With Me, and slinking fingersnapper You Can’t Have The Beauty Without The Beast have shed skins and made the transition to the new show, Holly’s also been dipping into a trunk of neglected and mostly previously unheard work, including the tremendous state-of-the-world song Confessions (based around a lyrical hook she once dangled in front of an intrigued Joni Mitchell) and the vivacious Tree Woman (a more recent effort in which she vigorously embraces both her own ageing and the resilience that comes with it).

Holly Penfield’s Fragile Human Monster Show
Crazy Coqs @ Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, Soho, London W1F 7ED, England
Monday 9th July 2018, 9.15pm – information here

Tags: Alice Purton, Alice Williamson, Alice Zawadzki, Ana Silvera, Holly Penfield, Jasper Høiby, Josephine Stephenson, Kate Church, listening to women, London (England), Will Barry, women of heart and mind

June 2018 – upcoming London rock gigs – H0nkies, TomZack, Aeddan and Stal Kingsley (14th June)

11 Jun

If you’re in London on 14th June (and not already heading for the Lost Crowns show in Dalston), you might consider this free event.

Friends Serene presents:
H0nkies + TomZack + Aeddan + Stal Kingsley
The Lock Tavern, 35 Chalk Farm Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 8AJ, England
Thursday 14th June 2018, 7.30pm – free entry – information here and here

As you might have noticed in previous posts, I’ve got an ambivalent relationship with Americana: but while H0nkies dabble in it (the official line is that their work is “Americana, bluesy, post-punk country cuts”) they don’t pay it much undue respect. They pick it up, drop it on the floor, and then drunkenly gum it back together with added noise and clatter and hooty keyboards.

Here’s ‘Pagans’, their half of a recent split single. It’s a punky-tonk, a little as if The Libertines, Tom Waits, Jim White and Madness had collaborated in a round of happy mutual arse-kicking. Their singer keeps peering out of the racket (and out from beneath his own looning bawl) as if to wink at us, as if we were in on the gag. I think I like him.

In the space of a year, Tottenham art-rock/post-punk quintet TomZack have travelled from the industrial dance feelers of their debut single Too Much To Love to the theatrical flair of their current incarnation, delivering peculiar badlands singalongs and rumblesongs on record. A band with at least one parallel life, they’re also working on a live soundtrack to the upcoming theatre version of ‘The Forbidden Zone’ (Oingo Boingo’s cult 1980 film showcasing the early work of Danny Elfman amid a riot of transgressive cartoonish imagery, as if John Waters had transformed ‘Alice In Wonderland’ into American burlesque). Expect the latter, plus the debut TomZack album, in the autumn.

Meanwhile, here’s current single Caroline (Still In Love With You): a mordantly downbeat piece of grinding melancholy (again with that Waitsian tone) unmoored to fly on a strange junk/space-opera background narrative of starship troopers, gender wars and time-travelling bereavements. Either they’re writing their own bit of long-form twisted steampunk, or they just like bamboozling people with their press releases.

Wrapping up the bill are a couple of solo songwriters. Aeddan Williams (or just “Aeddan”) fits firmly into that line of singing multi-instrumental play-and-record-everything craftsmen: the one which includes Roy Wood, Karl Wallinger and other blokes who’ve either shaped, or paid glorious expansive tribute to, British pop. His debut album has shades of The Move, World Party, Kinks, Small Faces and the usual jaunty suspects. The album and EP he’s popped out so far have been filled with songs of kooky chicks and small adventures, indie protest songs about racists, and (just under the bonnet) subtle little twists which reveal that craft doesn’t blind him to ironies and changes in perspective.

Stal Kingsley, on the other hand, is already well embedded into that skewed-perspective zone. A lo-fi pop aficionado with an ear for the grand gesture, he enjoys but can’t quite stay slouched in his tape rumble; and chooses instead to bring his eccentricities out into the light of the mainstream. Comparisons to Ariel Pink and Cleaners From Venus abound; his live gigs apparently stretch out into performance art (with “live drawing countdowns”, filmed ad breaks and the backing band on an old tape cassette); but I think that what he really wants is to bring his music into your sitting room, even if it’s not quite the right size to fit through the door, or keeps sliding off your sofa.

Tags: Aeddan (Aeddan Williams), Friends Serene (promoters), H0nkies, Stal Kingsley, The Lock Tavern (venue) - Camden Town - London, TomZack

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Categories 2018, alternative pop, alternative rock, Americana, art punk, art rock, baroque pop, DIY music, experimental/avant-garde rock, folk-pop, industrial rock, pop, post-punk, previews, rock, singer-songwriter

June 2018 – upcoming New York gigs – Charlie Looker debut solo album launch at National Sawdust, with full ensemble and Daisy Press (14th June)

8 Jun

If you’re in New York on the 14th, consider checking out Charlie Looker’s release event for his first solo album.

Over a decade of various bands and projects, Charlie’s made a reputation for himself as a singer and songwriter blending the personal preoccupations and melancholia of prime alt.rock angst posterboyhood with other forms. The precision and force of heavy metal has been the other main component – when working with Extra Life this has merged with classical influences and art-pop; when Charlie’s been part of the Psalm Zero duo, it’s been extra industrial touches and an ’80s synthpop twist; with The Zs, avant-jazz; and with the more recent Seaven Teares, the metal’s been mashed up with Early and Renaissance music.

Whatever the extra ingredients, the results have been very much a product of the New York kiln (with a few extra ghosts of the hell-in-a-handbasket No Wave times, when the city was particularly inspired but a lot nastier). Band names notwithstanding (and bar well-received stints as guitarist for Dirty Projectors and Tyondai Braxton), Charlie’s generally always led. ‘Simple Answers’, however, is the first record formally going out under his own naked name. Commensurately, he’s stepped up his development to deliver “a highly ambitious concept album, written for seventeen-piece chamber orchestra, singers, and electronics”, over six years in the making.

While ‘Simple Answers’ was initially planned as something much more extreme – “the vocals were going to be more irregular, the compositions unfolding really asymmetrically, dealing with the flow of time and events in a really unpredictable, modernist-classical-music kind of way, like Nono or Lachenmann or someone” -the final form of the record is a refinement of the dark pop that’s always underlaid and informed Charlie’s work. Coloured and transformed by the influence of late-twentieth/early twenty-first century classical music (most notably the Spectralists) and informed by a contradictory intertwining of French feminist psychoanalyst/philosopher Julia Kristeva and the late American comedian Patrice O’Neal, it explores the rise of fascism via themes of “power, masculinity, Jewish self-hatred, addiction, brainwashing, and the occult.” Along the way, it incorporates “drones and dissonance… dramatic post-punk vocal hooks, lush nineteenth century romanticism, medieval choral beauty, horror film score cacophony, and even some rhythms and textures from trap rap and R&B, all com(ing) together in dark, cinematic epics.”

Here’s Puppet, the first song from ‘Simple Answers’ to go public back in May…

The concert itself will feature the album’s full ensemble (including personnel from New Music groups Mivos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, plus pianist Kelly Moran, sopranos Daisy Press and Megan Schubert) and conductor David Bloom of Contemporaneous. Special guests Doug Moore (of Pyrrhon) and Zohra Atash (of Azar Swan) will each also take the helm in turn to perform “radically re-imagined cover versions (of) beautiful complex songs” arranged by Charlie for the occasion.

As well as singing in the ensemble, Daisy Press will also be playing a support slot blending her own preoccupations as a leading American experimental classical singer, a synergistic voice teacher, prime mover of cross-cultural healing ritual Voice Cult, a former electro-funk backing singer/dancer for Chromeo, and extravagantly tattooed principal vocalist at House of Yes (Brooklyn’s fabled “temple of expression”). She’ll be performing a solo set of twelfth-century songs by Hildegard von Bingen, mystical mediaeval polymath and feminist icon (whose work was also recently reflected upon and interpreted in a Filthy Lucre night back in London during February, into which Daisy would have fitted right in…)

Meanwhile, here’s Daisy performing some Hildegard in an empty swimming pool (apologies for the slender little image), plus a performance of her own ‘Treebreathing’ piece for HOY a while back.

Charlie Looker presents:
Charlie Looker + Daisy Press
National Sawdust,80 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York 11249, USA
Thursday 14 June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

Tags: Azar Swan, Charlie Looker, Chromeo, Contemporaneous (ensemble), Daisy Press, David Bloom, Doug Moore, Extra Life, Hildegard of Bingen, International Contemporary Ensemble, listening to women, Megan Schubert, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Mivos Quartet, New York City (USA), Psalm Zero, Pyrrhon, Seaven Teares, The Z's, TomZack, Voice Cult, Zohra Atash

June 2018 – upcoming London rock gigs – gloriously complex experimental rock evenings – The Mantis Opera, Barringtone and New Born Animal (8th June); Lost Crowns with Sharron Fortnam and Kavus Torabi (June 14th)

27 May

Several of London’s more convoluted art-rock genii are emerging from the woodwork to play live in the early part of June, accompanied by assorted fellow travellers and burlesque pop sympathisers. Read on…

* * * * * * * *

If you’ve wondering what a band might sound like if it fused Henry Cow, Battles and early Scritti Politti, you’re in luck… and, to be honest, probably pretty marginal. Come over here and sit next to me.

Stemming from solo work by guitarist, singer and electronics meddler Allister Kellaway, The Mantis Opera now delivers his stirring, challenging constructions via a full electro-experimental synth-rock band, voicing a collection of “avant-garde grumbles” via a multiplicity of synth sounds and colliding pop tones. If this sounds inaccessible and snooty, it isn’t. It’s just that the tunes arrive in complicated cascading splinters, many parts urging in parallel towards an out-of-sight coda, while a dreamily precise atmosphere prevails: avant-prog keeping watch from under a dream-pop veil.

The pieces themselves display an ambitious, orchestral thinking – Reykjavik, for example, is less a guitar clang with lofty ambitions and more of a cerebral/visceral string quartet piece transposed for rock band. Allister’s winding, philosophical lyrics, meanwhile, are very reminiscent of Henry Cow and of Rock in Opposition preoccupations, dissecting as they do themes of resistance, logic, language and compliance with the air of a man trying to bring intellectual rigour to the pub, grabbing at the misty answers before the closing bell rings.

Assuming that recent reports of a broken-wristed drummer haven’t entirely torpedoed their availability, Barringtone should be in support, continuing their live drive towards the release of their debut album on Onamatopoeia this summer. Released songs have been sparse over the past few years; but enjoy this new-ish brainy little post-power-pop conundrum, exhibiting Barry Dobbins’ own ambitions as he moves up from the band’s previous wry, ornamented motorik drive into much more castellated, conversational proggy territories while keeping their knuckly XTC-inspired edge intact.

Seven-piece big-pop band New Born Animal complete the lineup at this Friends Serene gig. Headed by singer/songwriter/arranger Thomas Armstrong, they’re a sonorous wall-of-drunken-sound effort who sound like Blur (during their music-hall period) dragging the Walker Brothers into a dressing-room tipple too far. If so, they also sound like the stage before it all turns nasty: slightly discombobulated singalongs where self-consciousness is just rags in the breeze, the emotional valves have been opened up and everyone in the room is temporarily your lifelong friend. If this in turn sounds sloppy, then I’d suggest that there’s a lot of craft going into something which sags and collapses so gloriously and visibly, but which never disintegrates. There’s longing, wonder and helpless laughter all brimming at the back of this.

On top of this, the whole evening’s free if you turn up soon enough…

Friends Serene presents:
The Mantis Opera + Barringtone + New Born Animal
The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Shacklewell, London, E8 2EB, England
Friday 8th June 2018, 7.30pm – free entry – information here and here

* * * * * * * *

The following week, Richard Larcombe’s Lost Crowns spearhead “an evening of songs with a lot going on in them”. In many respects, it’s a re-run of their triumphant London debut at the same venue back in January. No Prescott this time, sadly (though their instrumental ping-pong twitch would have been welcome), but Kavus Torabi is back with a guitar, a hand-pumped harmonium and more songs from his ongoing solo project. Launched the other month with the ‘Solar Divination’ EP, this might be a holiday from the jewelled and roaring intricacies of his main gig with Knifeworld, but it’s certainly not an escape from the psychedelic shadows which nightwing their way through the band’s apparently celebratory rainbow arcs. For this isolated, darker, more grinding work, Kavus strips the flash-bangs away and leaves us with the droning echoes: the meditative bruises, fears and queries, many of which nonetheless contain their own seeds of determination and a kind of celebratory acceptance.

As for the headliners, last time I anticipated Lost Crowns as likely to be (deep breath) “a rich, unfolding master-craftsman’s confection… complex, artfully-meandering songs built from delightfully byzantine chords and arpeggios that cycle through ever-evolving patterns like palace clockwork; accompanied by rich, lazy clouds of hilarious, hyper-literate, wonderfully arcane lyrics; all sealed by an arch, out-of-time English manner which (in tone and timbre) falls into a never-was neverworld between Richard Sinclair, Stephen Fry, Noel Coward and a posh, Devonian Frank Zappa.”

A tall order (even it was based on what Richard’s delivered in previous projects), but I wasn’t disappointed. With Lost Crowns, Richard’s created the most dynamic and surprising music of his career.

As before, the rest of the band’s lineup is a cross-section of London art-rock luminaries: Charlie Cawood, Nicola Baigent, Rhodri Marsden, Josh Perl, drummer “Keepsie”. Certainly the influence of Richard’s brother and usual collaborator James is missed (his genial, warm, embroidering effect on Richard’s work is underrated) but his absence allows both Richard and the band to stretch out in different directions – fiercer, more crammed, sometimes brutal in their complication.

A vortex of influences funnel around Richard, including Chicago math, witty Daevid Allen psych rampage, contemporary classical music and skipping, tuneful folk singalongs. Shaped by his particular persona and thought processes – as well as his innate Englishness – it all emerges as a kind of prog, but one in which the fat and the posturing has all been burned off by the nerves and the detail, and in which his dry, melodious wit winds around the work playing mirror-tricks, theatrical feints, and the conspiratorial winks of a master boulevardier. As much at home playfully slagging off the precious venerations of synaesthesia as they are with nine-minute epics with titles like Housemaid’s Knee, Lost Crowns are a delightful self-assembling puzzle.

Frustratingly, with Richard still keeping everything close to his chest (outside of Lost Crowns’ welcoming gig environment), I’ve got nothing to show you. No embedded songs, no videos, nothing but those words and these words. Richard’s likely to keep everything culty, so the best way that you can find out whether I’m just lying through garlands here is to go to the gig yourself.

Originally this was to be a double-header with Lost Crowns’ other friends and allies, the revived psychedelic-acoustic band Lake Of Puppies (re-teaming North Sea Radio Orchestra’s Craig and Sharron Fortnam with William D. Drake, in order to build on the bouncing life-pop they cheerfully hawked around London together in the late ‘90s). Sadly, the Puppies have had to pull out of the show following Bill’s collision with pianist’s RSI in early May. Instead, Lost Crowns will play an extended set with Sharron woven into it as a special guest; while Kavus will be stretching out his own set, covering the remaining time that’s not taken up with snooker-ace-turned-avant-rock-uncle Steve Davis on DJ duty.

Lost Crowns (with special guest Sharron Fortnam) + Kavus Torabi + DJ Steve Davis
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Thursday 14th June 2018, 7.00pm – information here, here and
here

Tags: Allister Kellaway, Barringtone, Charlie Cawood, Craig Fortnam, Ed Bernez, Friends Serene (promoters), Henry Nicholson, Josh Perl, Kavus Torabi, Keepsie, Lake of Puppies, London (England), Lost Crowns, Louis Crump, New Born Animal, Nicola Baigent, Rhodri Marsden, Richard Larcombe, Servant Jazz Quarters (promoters), Sharron Fortnam (Sharron Saddington), Steve Davis, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Mantis Opera, Thomas Armstrong, William D. Drake

June 2018 – upcoming chamber-fusion and Rock In Opposition gigs in London – North Sea Radio Orchestra (2nd June); Lindsey Cooper Songbook with The Watts, John Greaves and Chlöe Herington (16th June)

24 May

North Sea Radio Orchestra are bringing their chamber-fusion sound to south London as part of the Lambeth Readers & Writers Festival. They’re a leafy and lambent confection of strings, reeds, nylon-strong guitar, boutique post-Stereolab keyboards and softened brass, fronted by the heartfelt disparate vocals of husband and wife team Sharron and Craig Fortnam (one a clarion carol, the other a papery whisper-croon).

Given the Festival’s context, they might pull out a few of the pieces with which they initially made their name a decade-and-a-half ago – garlanded, illuminated settings of Thomas Hardy, William Blake and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Either way, come for an evening which merges English country-garden airiness with German experimental rock boffinry and Zappa-styled tuned-percussion tinkles. Regular gigmate and sometime NSRO contributor William D. Drake was scheduled for a support slot, but since an injury put him out of action for the summer, he’s had to pull out. There may or may not be a suitable replacement.

Lambeth Readers & Writers Festival presents:
North Sea Radio Orchestra
Clapham Library, Mary Seacole Centre, 91 Clapham High Street, Clapham, London, SW4 7DB, England
Saturday 2nd June 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

* * * * * * * *

There’s a tenuous but true link between NSRO and Yumi Hara’s Half The Sky project. On top of the existing ties of friendship, they’re both mostly-acoustic chamber music projects with prominent bassoon and an electric experimental rock component; both focus predominantly on a single composer; both lean (implicitly or explicitly) towards the ‘70s Canterbury scene and sound.

However, where NSRO has a core of sweetness Half The Sky is decidedly umami. Set up to curate, recreate and perform the work of the late Lindsay Cooper (and specialising in the repertoire she put out for the groups Henry Cow, News From Babel and Music for Films) theirs is a knottier, more querying sound: a winding road full of debate and pointings, animated but affectionate.

There have been shifts in the band recently. While Yumi continues on keyboards and lever harp alongside co-founder/former Cow drummer Chris Cutler, and singer Dagmar Krause was added as the primary vocalist for last year’s European dates, the band now features John Greaves on bass and keyboards and Tim Hodgkinson on reeds and lap steel, bringing its ex-Cow member count up to four (with Chlöe Herington still on hand to add more assorted reeds). They’ve kept the fifty-fifty male/female player ratio which reflected their original title, but have now taken up the more sober, less whimsical name of Lindsay Cooper Songbook. This will be the debut of the new crew, but here’s video of various previous lineups of the band in action in London and Japan…

The evening also features three support sets drawn from the ensemble. Making their British debut, The Watts unites Yumi Hara with Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler in a post-Cow trio. John Greaves adds a solo performance of his own songs on voice and piano, and Chlöe Herington (following the development of her VALVE project into a collective female trio which, in some respects, echoes Lindsay’s work with FIG) will be returning to her own solo roots with music for bassoon and electronics. If there are any gaps left, staunch ‘Organ’-ista Marina Organ will be filling them with her DJ set, drawing on the horde of fringe-rock and experimental records she plays on her Resonance FM show.

Lindsay Cooper Songbook + The Watts + John Greaves + Chlöe Herington + DJ Marina Organ
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Saturday 16th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

There’ll be a second chance to catch them this summer – at the Zappanale in Bad Doberan Germany on 21st July. For those who missed my Lindsay summary last time, here’s a trimmed version:

“Long before the knot of current pop-culture wrangling over women’s control over the music they make, (Lindsay) was plugging away in her own corner, striving (and ultimately succeeding) for much the same thing in the often arid and unforgiving spaces of British art rock, improv and jazz… Pinning down the nature of a woman’s work in art – or women’s work in general – is not always an easy thing, nor even desirable. Even the most positive intentions can produce more restrictive categories, more unwanted boxings and demands to conform.

“In the case of Lindsay, whose career always foregrounded honest effort and end product over personality showboating, and which was tinted by doubt and determination, it’s probably best to concentrate mostly on the mind behind the music: to listen to the querying voice coming through. Operating over a set of times in which both contemporaries and colleagues had a tendency towards answers and stances, stated in both bald pronouncements and modernist-baroque ornamentations, she opted to bring a more questioning tone which nonetheless carried some of its possible answers in both action and presentation.

“Hers was a polymathic but purer musicality: an instrumental voice which voyaged alongside others’ often harsher pronouncements, détournements and doctrines and drew from them while never being subject to them, and which always kept a gentler, more accommodating side open to allow growing space and to consistently rebuild… She was responsible for most of the piled jazzy grandeur of the second side (of Henry Cow’s ‘Western Culture’) finding previously unexplored links between the music of New York, Canterbury and Switzerland)…

“In the late ’70s Lindsay had already formed the witty, subversive Feminist Improvising Group, or FIG (which) not only enabled previously sidelined female voices onto the improv scene but deliberately upturned expectations as to what such a scene could achieve. FIG were spontaneous, mutually supportive and – just as importantly – funny. With a strong and personal rooting in lesbian, class-based and feminist activism (plus parallel feelings of sidelining and denial on the part of others) but a suspicion of dogma, they expressed frustration and political challenge by drawing on a collective sense of the absurd and of the sympathetic… Men carped, frowned and cold-shouldered; women laughed, argued and sometimes welcomed; the group members continually challenged their own sense of self and role; but the work itself sounds joyously unshackled – something I would have loved to have been around to see…

“Post-Cow and FIG, Lindsay ran her own Film Music Orchestra to create and record arthouse soundtracks (often working in cinematic cahoots with Sally Potter). She rejoined Chris Cutler for the 1980s post-Marxist art-song project News From Babel (in which) Chris’ social and political musings would make a happier marriage with the pop-cabaret end of Lindsay’s music. She also contributed to the counter-cultural jazz colours of various Mike Westbrook and John Wolf Brennan bands, played with Pere Ubu ranter David Thomas, worked in theatre and (in the ’90s) composed a more formal chamber music which nonetheless retained the edge and inquiring spirit of her work in avant-rock and political art. She’d collaborate with Potter again for the Cold War song cycle ‘Oh, Moscow’ in the late ’80s, to which Chris Cutler also contributed. If encroaching multiple sclerosis (which had privately dogged her throughout her post-Cow career) hadn’t dragged her into early retirement in the late ’90s, there would have been more.

“(Lindsay Cooper Songbook) provide a welcome re-introduction to Lindsay’s work, performed by committed people whose sympathy with Lindsay Cooper’s music is absolute. However, they should also be viewed as a window onto the wider career of a quietly remarkable woman whose death in 2013 forced a premature coda onto the work of a mind whose personal humility had been more than balanced by its nimbleness, thoughtful and flexibility. Come along to these concerts and hear some of that mindwork and heartwork come alive again.”

Tags: Chloe Herington, Chris Cutler, Craig Fortnam, Dagmar Krause, ensemble music, Feminist Improvising Group, Henry Cow, James Larcombe, John Greaves, Lindsay Cooper, listening to women, London (England), Marina Organ (broadcaster), News From Babel, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Sally Potter (film director), Sharron Fortnam (Sharron Saddington), The Watts, Tim Hodgkinson, William D. Drake, women of heart and mind, Yumi Hara (Yumi Hara Cawkwell), Zappanale (event)

May 2018 – a London alt/art/psych/theatrical/poetic cabaret at Slapper’s Club, with Katharine Blake, Clifford Slapper, Kavus Torabi, Charlie Cawood, The Cesarians duo, My Name Is Swan, Danielle Imara, Jo Below, possibly Suri Sumatra and definitely Piers Atkinson’s hat parade (24th May)

17 May

Regardless of gentrification, Stoke Newington remains one of the best London places to look if you’re up for hippy-punk cabaret weirdness. This is not just due to the regular string of evening goings-on and shenanigans at The Others, but also because of the recent revival of Slapper’s Club at the Mascara Bar heading up to Stamford Hill. Curated as a joint effort between multi-skilled classical rebel-turned-sultry/scholarly Mediaeval Baebe/Miranda Sex Garden singer Katherine Blake and glam-socialist piano player/Speaker’s Corner veteran Clifford Slapper (possibly best known, despite a whirl of activity, for his work on Bowie songs), it’s a loose-bag celebration of artistic diversity… and it’s free.

For this end-of-May show, Clifford himself will be performing in two separate, sung duo sets performing “the classics”: one with Katherine, and the other with singing theatre/art/novel-writing polymath Danielle Imara (the former Nina Silvert). No-one involved has said what “the classics” are – could be anything from Purcell to Prince, Bolan to music-hall, Bowie to Wiemar, Flesh For Lulu. Could be some of Danielle and Katherine’s own songs. Here are three possibilities…

Mediaeval Baebes multi-instrumentalist Charlie Cawood will take a little time out from being London’s beloved jack-of-all-fingerboards, and will celebrate the success of his recent debut album ‘The Divine Element’ (a glorious fresh-fusion magic-carpet ride across half a globe’s worth of music) by pulling together various other heavy playing friends for a set of Indian sitar music. Not sure whether he’s playing the classic ragas, but in case he isn’t, here’s something suitably sitar-ful from ‘The Divine Element’. Alongside is something from Charlie’s Knifeworld bandmate Kavus Torabi, who’s adding this particular Mascara Bar evening as another stop on the meandering solo tour supporting his own recent solo debut (April’s dusky psych-folk EP ‘Solar Divination’, which perhaps drawing some influence from Kavus’ other lives in Gong, Cardiacs, Guapo and others, but not nearly as much as it draws from ominous imagined dusk rituals and mysterious old ghosts on the darker hippy trails).

Also on hand are a stripped-down acoustic version of the ferally witty Cesarians – just singer Charlie Finke and pianist Justine Armatage, treating us to a more intimate take on the band’s ambitious, expansive knife-dancing pop. Rounding off the main musical acts, Jo Below (probably accompanied by Claudette the concertina) will sit down, tell you stories, recite her poems and sing songs, and along the way “regale you sweetly with surprising lewdness”. There’ll probably be “tales of captains and nomads and loves of her not-so-sure life” and perhaps some traditional stuff, as well as accounts of winking etiquette for the Tube.

Hopefully able to make it on the night will be dancer and all-round burlesque-rian Suri Sumatra; while definitely on the performance roll is celebrity milliner Piers Atkinson with his alternative catwalk routine (“Salon Show: A Masc-Querade where our in-house superstars will treat you to an extraordinary hat parade accompanied by a live musical atrocity.”).

Capping the night’s gambit is poet Jan Noble performing ‘My Name Is Swan’, a poetic monologue that’s already done the rounds of various Swan pubs in London and elsewhere. “Drawing on Jan’s fifteen years experience teaching poetry and creative writing in prisons and on psychiatric wards, ‘My Name Is Swan’ describes a twenty-four hour journey across London. An odyssey of loss and belonging, lies and loyalty, ownership and neglect, Brexit and heartbreak, drugs and the suburbs, boredom, football violence, vandalism, happiness, isolation, addiction, rivers, shopping trolleys, love, hope and the metropolitan malaise… addressing the growing social and economic disparity of the modern city, it is most of all a beautifully evocative portrait of London, the struggles it presents and the solutions it offers.” The work’s also been filmed by Adam Carr with additional musical contributions by Samuel Kilcoyne and Takatsuna Mukai: I’m not sure whether we’re just getting Jan on his own, or whether we get bits of the film or music too, or whether we get all three.

Katharine Blake and Clifford Slapper present:
‘Slappers’ Club’
Mascara Bar, 72 Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, London, N16 6XS, England
Thursday 24th May 2018, 7.30pm – free entry – information here

Tags: Charlie Cawood, Charlie Finke, Clifford Slapper, Danielle Imara, Jan Noble, Jo Below, Justine Armetage, Katherine Blake, Kavus Torabi, London (England), Piers Atkinson (milliner), The Cesarians

May/June 2018 – gigs for Crayola Lectern in London and Brighton with Joss Cope, The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Husband and others t.b.c. (16th May, 1st June); ‘A Spring Symposium’ fundraiser for Tim Smith near Salisbury with Lake Of Puppies, Arch Garrison, Crayola Lectern, Bob Drake, Kemper Norton and Emily Jones (12th May)

1 May

First things first: the murmuring, brass-dappled Crayola Lectern trio are making their way up for a rare London gig in the middle of May, followed by a Brighton launch show for the new Crayola Lectern album, ‘Happy Endings’, at the start of June. The vehicle for Chris Anderson’s tidal, sometimes melancholic, often softly funny songs – low-key dramas of reflection, resignation and not-quite acceptance – they’re powered by his piano, Al Strachan’s sleepy cornet and percussion and Brighton uberdrummer Damo Waters’ parallel skills on keyboards.

It’s not been confirmed yet who’s joining in at Brighton, though the whispers are that it’ll be someone – or several someones – drawn from Chris’ Brighton psychedelic circles, which includes driving psych-rock ensemble ZOFFF, Kemper Norton (more on whom shortly), CLOWWNS and Spratleys Japs. However, the London bill has its two support acts.

Psych-pop journeyman Joss Cope, armed with his strongest project yet (last year’s ‘Unrequited Lullabies’) will be along for the ride. I recently described the album as “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”. Live, you may get a little less of the texturing, but you’ll still get the songs: chatty, wry commentaries on a world wobbling off the rails. The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Husband also happens to be Nick Howiantz, who otherwise divides his time between running Brixton Hill Studios and fronting sporadic, noisy Brighton psych-pop rompers Ham Legion. I’ve no idea about what’s behind the genderswapping ecclesiastical mask, but he/she/they are being tagged as a “veritable modern day Syd Barrett”, so come along and see whether that’s a claim worth claiming or whether it falls interestingly wide of the mark.

Dates:

Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England, Wednesday 16th May 2018, 7:30pm (with Joss Cope + The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Husband) – information here, here and here
The Rose Hill, 70-71 Rosehill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4JL, England, Friday 1st June 2018, 8.00pm (support t.b.c.) – information here

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I was talking about Crayola – and William D. Drake – only a few posts ago, as regards their Worthing fundraiser for Tim Smith on 19th May. A week before that, both of them (in various permutations) will be joining another Tim fundraiser – this one an all-dayer in Coombe Bissett, nestled in the Wiltshire chalk downs south-west of Salisbury.

‘A Spring Symposium’ is the brainchild – or heartchild – of onetime Cornish folkie Emily Jones, who’s now joined the cluster of Cardiacs family musicians living around Salisbury. Her own songs of seal-wives, haunted bungalows, witchery and other glimpses beyond the vale will be part of the event, alongside contributions from various other characters well-known to Cardiacs followers or to aficionados of certain weird-folk, Rock in Opposition and hauntological camps.

Emily’s near-neighbours, Craig and Sharron Fortnam of North Sea Radio Orchestra, will be taking part in various permutations. Craig will be bringing along his Arch Garrison duo with James Larcombe, singing soft songs (on gut-strung acoustic guitar and buzzing organs and monosynths) about long walks, lost brothers, ancient roads, dogs, death and bereavement and the various gentle tug-of-wars between family and necessary solitude, compromise and truthfulness, art and earning. Craig and Sharron will both be playing in a second reunion of Lake Of Puppies, the rollicking, affectionate acoustic-psychedelic folk-pop band they formed with avuncular ex-Cardiac and alternative keyboard virtuoso William D. Drake over twenty years ago. During the mid-‘90s they’d play regular small gigs around London; bobbing up with their bouncy songs of life, good humour and growing things, like a rosy apple in a tub. Sadly, they went their separate and amiable ways after only a few years and no more than a couple of rough demos. Having reconvened in the summer of 2013 (for a lovingly received appearance at the Alphabet Business Convention), they promptly disappeared again, but have been working out a long-delayed debut album on the quiet. Some of that ought to show up at this concert. See below for a couple of dashes of their particular flavour. Large Life might be billed as Bill’s, but it’s Puppies to the bone, and their 2013 set from Salisbury should give you an idea as to how they are now.

I’ve already mentioned the Crayola Lectern set; there’ll also be one from Bob Drake (the onetime 5uus and Thinking Plague guy currently bouncing around the country on a tour of his own). Sit at Uncle Bobby’s feet; listen to his electric guitar jangle, pop and change its mind every other mid-phrase; and take in some loveably bizarre constantly changing one-minute songs about sinister meerkats, experiments gone wrong, and the way in which assorted eldritch beasts from dark dimensions annoyingly disrupt your life, your shopping and your evening’s relaxation. If Ogden Nash, Fred Frith, Roald Dahl and Neil Young had all crept up to H.P. Lovecraft’s house one larky summer’s evening with a pint of moonshine and some tall tales – and really made him laugh – it would have sounded something like this.

While there may be a couple of extra guests showing up as a surprise, the Symposium roster is formally rounded off by Kemper Norton and by Libbertine Vale – the former an electro-acoustic folk-culture miner of music and landscapes, (armed with instruments, electronics and field recordings to remap both physical terrain and song terrains), the latter the Omnia Opera/7shades singer who’s revealed herself as a rebel Midlands folkie, digging deep into the more macabre corners of the folk-song catalogue and coming back with “uncomfortable songs about death, a capella sqwarking that will kill or heal your ears, dependent on your disposition.” It’s tough to track Libby down on the web, but here’s a bit of Kemper.

There’s only ten days to go ‘til the event, but there’s still time to arrange to get there. There’ll be cakes and ale, there’ll be vegetarian food; Tim Smith himself will probably be in attendance, and Emily’s suggested that you caravan-camp out on the chalk downs. If this English May makes its mind up (and settles for being a good springsummer), it all ought to be lovely.

Emily Jones presents:
A Spring Symposium: Lake of Puppies + Crayola Lectern + Arch Garrison + Bob Drake + Kemper Norton + Libbertine Vale + Emily Jones
Coombe Bissett Village Hall, Shutts Lane, Homington Road, Coombe Bissett, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP5 4LU, England
Saturday 12th May 2018, 2.00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Arch Garrison, Bob Drake, Coombe Bissett (England), Craig Fortnam, Crayola Lectern, Emily Jones, James Larcombe, Jennifer Husband (Nick Howiantz), Joss Cope, Kemper Norton, Lake of Puppies, Libbertine Vale, London (England), Sharron Fortnam (Sharron Saddington), William D. Drake

May 2018 – upcoming London gigs – SOIF Soiree in Wood Green including John Moore, Society Of Imaginary Friends, Magdalena Grabher, John Glyn & Richard Bolton, Circulus’ William Summers and assorted poets and spoken-worders (May 4th)

29 Apr

It’s always nice to have free events bob into view, even if it’s at short notice. Into my face blows a excitable new balled-up missive from operatic art-pop auteurs and eclectic monthly salon curators Society of Imaginary Friends. Once I’ve opened it, smoothed it out and vigorously curry-combed it for loose grammar and punctuation, I’m offered a remarkable selection of goodies: a webbing of poetry and musicality which links together Shakespeare, The Jesus & Mary Chain, psychedelic folk troupe Circulus, Black Box Recorder, Rosa Mota, autism, X-Ray Specs and vegan cuisine.

I’ll let him/her/them do the talking:

“I was taking the escalator over the hill… hang on… something’s burning… It’s our Beltane Birthday Soiree on the 4th May!!! The extraordinary Alfie Thomas (SOIF has hit a very significant number of earth years… Oh, what a dancing dragon of a party we have in store for YOU… Yee…

“Hah!!! Our star-studded night includes the fantastic John Moore (Black Box Recorder, Expressway and Jesus & Mary Chain) performing a couple of his hits from his new album ‘Knickerbocker Glory’ (“couched in shimmering rock, Sixties girl-group pop and even a touch of operatic soprano on Anne of a Thousand Days, this is a literary pop gem” – ‘The Times’) – guess who the operatic soprano is? Punk legend virtuosic saxophonist John Glyn (X-ray Specs and Wreckless Eric) will be astounding us with his magical improvisation, weaving his beautiful tones with the incomparable virtuosic guitarist Richard Bolton. Their inspiration is the vibe of the night: we all have a part to play in creating something totally original.

“The beautiful, soulful Magdalena Grabher will be looping her intricate musical motifs to create ethereal soundscapes and gorgeous songs; the wonderful highly acclaimed poetess Lady Amy Neilson Smith and master of woodwind Sir William Summers (Circulus, Princes in the Tower) will be astounding us with their Shakespearian-inspired set.

“Award-winning spoken-word performer Cian Binchy will be making us think (catch him before he takes his sell out show ‘MADHOUSE re:exit’ to Manchester for a month), urban punk goddess I Am Her will be performing songs from her brand new album; the superb Math Jones will be sharing his Beltane musings; welcoming to the Soiree mystery new poet Charlie and author Samuel Bates. Special guest DJ t.b.a, and special birthday songs from Society Of Imaginary Friends. Fabulous vegan cuisine by Roger and Kathy – it is also Roger’s birthday!! So much to celebrate. FREE ENTRY: Looking forward to seeing you there… xxx”

Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
Beltane Birthday Soiree: Society Of Imaginary Friends + John Moore + John Glyn & Richard Bolton + Magdalena Grabher + William Summers & Amy Neilson Smith + Cian Binchy + I Am Her + Math Jones + Charlie + Samuel Bates + others t.b.c.
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 4th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here

Tags: Amy Neilson Smith, Black Box Recorder, Cian Binchy, Circulus, Her (Julie D. Riley), John Glyn, John Moore, Kabaret @ Karamel (event), Magdalena Grabher, Princes In The Tower, Richard Bolton, Samuel Bates, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), The Jesus & Mary Chain, William Summers, Wreckless Eric, X-Ray Spex

April/May 2018 – Worthing worthies – upcoming gigs at the Cellar Bar for The Golgis and My Giddy Aunt (20th April) and for Bob Drake (9th May) plus William D. Drake, Crayola Lectern and the mysterious Drones For Tim play St Pauls Church (19th May)… and a Gothic film showing for ‘Deep In The Woods’ (19th April)

18 Apr

I mentioned the burgeoning ambitions of Worthing’s Cellar Bar Club a few months ago. It’s been quietly setting itself up as a plucky regional rival to the riot of venues in Brighton ten miles away. I thought it was time to revisit it.

Fruitcakery first. Playing in a couple of days time (on 20th April) are The Golgis, described both as “an outrageous alt.folk pantomime band” and as “a revamped version of a band that were almost popular fifteen years ago”. All very Worthing so far, and we’re told to “expect catchy songs, a spot of juggling, audience participation, and some interesting and unique wind instruments.” Among other tunes, they’ll be playing their recent online single debut ‘Mr Fisher‘ and celebrating its failure to chart. There’s not much to link to yet, but here they are running through it live for the benefit of a phone cam.

Support act My Giddy Aunt features the singing and songwriting of Sue Chewter, who (back in the 1990s) was once the wildly imaginative pint-sized driver of ideas behind the remarkable, mostly-female London psychedelic-acoustic band The Wise Wound). Also featuring Shirley Paver, Luke Pritchard and another former Wise Wounder, Brian Madigan, My Giddy Aunt’s a lighter undertaking than Sue’s old firm, playing up the angle of yer ageing, slightly glammy relatives enjoying cake, sherry and semi-retirement by the sea.

The following promo gabble got tossed my way in a battered toby jug – “Come and listen to the Aunties and Uncles you prayed would never kiss you. Proudly we are supporting The Golgis. More fool themin order to get that authentic Friday feeling you must drink vodka from a teapot and get touched up by the Giddy Aunts . We are the lipstick on your teeth; a mental wet-patch of entertainment. David Bowie had Ziggy Stardust and Sue has Giddy Ass Dust. Bring on the talcum powder, it’s Friday night. Line ‘em up. Monty!” Sodding nonsense – and it tells me nothing about what they sound like. But anything with Sue’s songwriting attached is worth a listen.

On 9th May, the Arts Cellar sees something simultaneously more serious and even further off the wall in the shape of Bob Drake. For more ‘Misfit Cit’-tery on Bob, click here, but in the meantime, it’s enough to know that Bob was “a founding member of the band Thinking Plague in 1978, and has been a member of the 5uu’s, Hail, and The Science Group. He has engineered and mixed many albums on the Recommended and Cuneiform labels, and has worked with artists ranging from Ice Cube to the Art Bears, but it is with his series of solo recordings made between 1994 and the present that he has really found his own voice with individual, always highly melodic tales of unusually intelligent animals, hauntings, chemistry, geology and who knows what. He began doing solo shows in 2015, and is currently at work on what will be his tenth solo album.”

Here he is solo and live in London in 2016 – filmed all dark and grainy, but shooting off songs like a batch of crazy fireworks.

Both gigs are at The Cellar Arts Club, 70 Marine Parade (basement), Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 3QB, England. Times and links as follows:

The Golgis + My Giddy Aunt, Friday 20th April 2018, 8.00pm – information
Bob Drake, Wednesday 9th May 2018, 7.30pm – information

* * * * * * * *

Also coming up in Worthing…

Expect to see a warm exodus of psych-speckled enthusiasts swimming over from Brighton on the 19th May when singer-songwriters William D. Drake (no relation) and Crayola Lectern‘s Chris Anderson play St Paul’s Church for a Tim Smith benefit gig promising to be full of pianos, wistful humour, soft voices and romantic drift. Bill will be bringing his own songbook of material criss-crossing his solo career and his work with Cardiacs and Sea Nymphs, with steepings of old poetry, Neverland folk and classical billows. Chris is celebrating the release of a brand new Crayola album, ‘Happy Endings’, which ought to build on its predecessor’s mixture of post burn-out hopefulness, psychedelic throb and sweet songs from the end of the road. All show profits for this show are going to the fundraising campaign for ailing Cardiacs leader Tim Smith’s ongoing care, which has achieved startling successes earlier this year since belatedly jumping into the world of crowdfunding.

Both Chris and Bill usually have friends in tow to help fill out the sound. These are all most likely coming together as part of “niche supergroup” Drones For Tim, specially conceived and formed for a one-off performance to make this particular gig special. Previous Drake and Crayola onstage allies have included Joss Cope, trumpeter Alistair Strachan, former Cardiacs Christian Hayes and Jon Poole, the Rodes brothers (from CLOWWNS and Spratleys Japs), ubiquitous art-rock drummer Damo Waters and the Larcombe brothers (Stars In Battledress, Lost Crowns, Arch Garrison) so you can make an educated guess as to who might be in the ranks, but you might still be surprised… Further standalone guests and DJs to be announced in due course, so keep an eye on the event pages…

Alternative Worthing and Musica Lumini present:
‘A Very Special Evening Beside The Seaside’: William D. Drake + Crayola Lectern + Drones For Tim
St. Paul’s Church Community Centre, 55B Chapel Road, Worthing, BN11 1EE, West Sussex
Saturday 19th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

Fans of the Cardiacs/Brighton psych crossover may also be interested in yet another Cellar Arts Club occasion – a showing of Button Pressed Films‘ recent comedy short ‘Deep In The Woods’ (written by onetime ‘Doctor Who’ writer Simon Messingham, directed by Mark Tew) on 19th April. According to the synopsis, the film also sports a “gothy rock/4AD type” soundtrack composed and performed by Chris Anderson and Christian Hayes, with additional spooky singing from Jo Spratley of the revived Spratley Japs.

The film showing is the jewel in the setting of a one-night-only goth shindig, with dressing up and wild-waif dancing encouraged to the usual soundtrack – early Cult, Cocteau Twins, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Ghost Dance, Sex Gang Children, the lot. Perhaps inevitably, they’re calling it the ‘Sea Shells Sanctuary’… which is better than ‘Hair Of The Downs’, ‘She’s In Patching’ or ‘Tarring Couple Kill Colonel Mustard’, I guess.

Tags: Bob Drake, Brian Madigan, Button Pressed Films, Crayola Lectern, Drones For Tim, Mark Tew (film director), My Giddy Aunt, Simon Messingham (writer), St Paul's Church (venue) - Worthing - England, Sue Chewter, The Cellar Arts Club (promoter/venue), The Golgis, The Wise Wound, William D. Drake

April 2018 – assorted London gigs – a math/post/prog rock evening with Kusanagi, Masiro and Iran Iran (6th April); another Society Of Imaginary Friends Soiree with lutes, poets, theatrical pop and more (6th April); polysexual/feminist punk and alt.pop with Twinken Park, Ghum and Stef F at DSFL (7th April)

2 Apr

Three more gigs to add to the early April London grab-bag…

* * * * * * * *

Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Kusanagi + Masiro + Iran Iran
The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 6th April 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

From Chaos Theory…

“Superbly intricate math rock, mindboggling prog and spacious post-rock at this month’s edition.

“Kusanagi sound nothing short of grandiose every time we see them play. This Liverpool-based band seamlessly fuse electronics, post-rock and shimmering guitar, occasionally flirting with metal. We’ve loved watching them get better and better over the years as they’ve performed alongside the likes of Tera Melos, Svalbarduk, Employed To Serve, VASA, Cleft, VLMV, Adam Betts – Music, and we’re delighted that they’re finally gracing the stage at The Facemelter.

“It’s a huge joy to see Masiro launching an album after they’ve been teasing us for over a year with sublime live performances of their latest material. Combining punchy grooves, complex rhythms and catchy headnodding riffs, this instrumental trio has found a sound that sits comfortably between prog, tech metal and math rock.

“Iran Iran are a band that’s developed a sound so unique, it barely could be described as fitting into any genre. Back with us for the first time with their current lineup, the Bristol-based trio produce astonishingly complex noise, not always easy to follow, yet somehow still rife with chuggy rhythms that keep our heads nodding and feet tapping.”

* * * * * * * *

Society of Imaginary Friends presents:
SOIF Soiree: Lords & Ladies of Misrule Soiree – Society Of Imaginary Friends + Lady Lovely Lute + Millie George + Her/Jeff Townsin + The Kosmic Troubadour + Math Jones + Cian Binchy/Blert Ademi + Debra Watson + more t.b.c.
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 6th April 2018, 7.30pm – free event – information here

From the Society:

“He rolls into town drunk as a skunk, trembling chihuahua on his shoulder and rattlesnakes for scarves. He winks at the sun and collapses in paroxysms of laughter as the gullible gather round to buy his dubious wares: he is the ‘Medicine Man’ curled up under the stars and the Appellation moon. He is our April Fool, the Duke of Disorder, the paradise quack of chaos; and we will be dancing the hallucinogenic hoedown with him at our Medicinal April Fool Soiree.”

Shouldn’t that be “Appalachian moon”, or have I misread my grimoire? At any rate, Society of Imaginary Friends are back, armed with “their most mischievous songs” and with Society accordionist Alfie Thomas presiding over the usual free fest of fine vegan food and diverse, odd-bedfellow acts. This month’s special guest and (I think) Soiree newcomer is fol-de-rollerblading lutenist and Thamesside busker Lady Lovely Lute aka Stephanie Feeney who will “whisper mediaeval somethings in your ear; she will lull you into a false sense of sweetness and drop some belladonna in your tea” while playing her own versions of Early Music classics.

The April Soiree also features some familiar faces – some on their own (poets Millie George, Math Jones and Debra Watson , twinkly hippyglam glo-pop soloist The Kosmic Troubadour) and some in duo arrangements: autism posterboy performer Cian Binchy with pianist Blert Ademi; Rosa Mota/Crown Estate songwriter maverick Julie D. Riley (a.k.a Her) with drummer Jeff Townsin (Madam, Sophia and Submarine).

Also on tap (possibly literally) is a “very special guest dancer” and a special guest DJ from the Society’s little black book.

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“Flaming, queer and transsexual wannabe metal punx” Twinken Park have an EP launch at South Bermondsey playzone DIY Space for London: I don’t cover events at this place often enough, so here goes…

Twinken Park + Ghum + Stef Fi at DSFL
DIY Space for London, 96-108 Ormside Street, South Bermondsey, London, SE15 1TF, England
Saturday 7th April 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

“Twinken Park have a new EP of twinky transgenderqueer heavy metal rage coming out on For The Sake of Tapes! To celebrate the release of ‘Flowers’, we’re holding a launch gig at DSFL.”

In support, female four-piece Ghum (who hover in a defiant, hungry, soursweet dreampsych zone somewhere between Nirvana and Lush) and Stef Fi, the experimental pop solo project from “black feminist sistah punk band” Big Joanie‘s singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips (featuring “love songs about trying hard and mostly failing” in styles ranging between acoustic punk, bedsit soul and lo-fi folk loops).

In keeping with the inclusive ethos of both venue and bands, this is an all-age gig, with “no-one turned away due to lack of funds” – although in order to attend you’ll need to take out the two quid DSFL membership arrangement by the preceding Thursday at the latest.

Tags: Blert Ademi, Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Cian Binchy, Debra Watson, Ghum, Her (Julie D. Riley), Iran Iran, Jeff Townsin (Madam, Kosmic Troubadour, Kusanagi, Lady Lovely Lute, London (England), Masiro, Math Jones, Millie George, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), Sophia, Stef Fi, Submarine, The Facemelter (event), Twinken Park

April 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 3) with Margaret Leng Tan, ModernMedieval, Julianna Barwick, Patrick Zimmerli, Carla Kihlstedt and others, featuring premieres of new works by George Crumb, Suzanne Farrin, Kelly Moran, Jeremy Flower and Patrick Zimmerli (14th, 19th, 26th April)

1 Apr

During April, New York’s Ecstatic Music Festival comes to an end with its three final events. In the previous six concerts, we’ve seen (among other things) big band music, contemporary classical percussion, slam poetry, choirwork, experimental pop and progressive industrial metal. The closing three shows feature left-field jazz/classical/pop fusions, mix-and-match vocal ensemble music, and a finale of virtuoso contemporary classical piano (including toy piano).

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Jeremy Flower, John Hollenbeck, Ethan Iverson, Carla Kihlstedt, Christopher Tordini & Patrick Zimmerli: ‘Clockwork’ & ‘Songs of Mourning’
Saturday 14th April 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here

“The evening begins with a celebration of the release of composer-saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli’s ‘Clockworks’, an hour-long jazz quartet suite and a musical meditation on time, in all its forms, performed by Zimmerli with former Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Christopher Tordini and composer-jazz drummer John Hollenbeck.

“In the evening’s second half, pop/art song composer-violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Rabbit Rabbit, Charming Hostess, Tin Hat, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger and others) and composer Jeremy Flower joins Zimmerli, Tordini and Hollenbeck for the world premiere of ‘Songs Of Mourning’, an exploration of sorrow ranging from the political to the personal, and other works from their cumulative pasts.”

ModernMedieval & Julianna Barwick
Thursday 19th April 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here

“Some of the greatest voices in contemporary music come together! Julianna Barwick’s ethereal, powerfully emotive voice (usually layered on top of itself to stunning effect) is paired with three-member super-group ModernMedieval (celebrated performers of early music, featuring former Anonymous 4 founder Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Roomful of Teeth’s Martha Cluver and Eliza Bagg), ascending into a thrilling and truly ecstatic sonic world.

“Featuring premieres of new works by Barwick, Caleb Burhans (“New York’s mohawked Mozart” – ‘Time Out New York’), and Caroline Shaw (the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music).”

Margaret Leng Tan premieres George Crumb, Suzanne Farrin, & Kelly Moran
Thursday 26th April 2018, 7:30 pm – information here and here

“Margaret Leng Tan — the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde piano — has built a career on upending tradition, pushing her instrument into fresh, no-holds-barred sonic worlds,” raves the Washington Post. Tan gives the New York premiere of ‘Metamorphoses’, a major new work written for her by the seminal twentieth century composer George Crumb, for amplified piano, toy piano, percussion and voice. Metamorphoses is performed with Monica Duncan’s video projections, in which atmospheric visual textures complement the music.

“Tan will also premiere two new EMF-commissioned pieces by young composers responding to Cage and Crumb’s influence: a work for prepared piano by Kelly Moran, and a haunting new piece by 2017 Rome Prize winner Suzanne Farrin that acknowledges not only Crumb’s important contribution to American music, but, in Farrin’s words, “also Margaret Leng Tan’s special role as the artist who has brought the piano’s insides to life on stage.” Works by Toby Twining and John Cage round out the program.”

As with all the other EMF concerts, these will take place at Merkin Concert Hall @ Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, NY 10023, USA.

Both the ModernMedieval/Julianna Barwick and the Margaret Leng Tan concerts are co-presentations with New Sounds Live: hosted by John Schaefer, they’ll be streamed live via the New Sounds homepage.

Same again next year?

Tags: Anonymous 4, Caleb Burhans, Carla Kihlstedt, Caroline Shaw, Charming Hostess, Christopher Tordini, Eliza Bagg, Ethan Iverson, George Crumb, John Cage, John Hollenbeck, Julianna Barwick, Kelly Moran, listening to women, Margaret Leng Tan, Martha Cluver, ModernMedieval, New York City (USA), Patrick Zimmerli, piano music, quartet music, quintet music, Rabbit Rabbit, Roomful Of Teeth, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Suzanne Farrin, The Ecstatic Music Festival (event), Toby Twining, toy piano music, women of heart and mind

March 2018 – upcoming London pop/rock/etc gigs – Demons of Ruby Mae, Tonochrome and Daniels Goldseal (7th March); Blind Dog Studio show with Colonial Sun, Mally Harpaz and Naomi McLean/Hazel Iris/Aine Mcloughlin (7th March)

1 Mar

A couple of interesting gigs on March 7th…

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Scruff of the Neck presents:
Demons of Ruby Mae + Tonochrome + Daniels Goldseal
The Sebright Arms, 33-35 Coate Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9AG, England
Wednesday 7th March 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

Leicester-via-Manchester multi-instrumentalists Jonny Gavin and Adam Rowley – a.k.a. Demons Of Ruby Mae – produce a broad, flowing and assured grand pop, the kind that sounds tailor-made for cinema trailers and box set TV. The mixture of luxuriant instrumental illustration and echoing space – plus Jonny’s impassioned vibrato vocal – results in something like the homeless marine-folk piano ballads of Olafur Arnalds with perhaps a little more contemporary pop underpinning. In existence for six years now, they’ve been on the up since releasing the ‘Someday’ single last year.

I’m not sure which Tonochrome you’re going to get on the night – the brasher, shape throwing pop-rock band which puts out singles like ‘Not Gonna End Well’ while grabbing for burnished hooks and straightforward messages; or the altogether more fluid entity which they present on their debut album which blooms through shades of art-rock and scintillating prog (weaving a graceful dance with vibraphones, string sections, moving jazz chordage and pillowing horns, while staying closer to the inquiring pop-shaded spirit of Field Music, Talk Talk and Dutch Uncles than to the likes of Spock’s Beard). Both versions are current; both are contained within the Tonochrome scope; both currently seem to cohabit without stress.

One thing that’s certain is that, following several promising years of finding their feet, Tonochrome are now stepping with great assurance. How they’re going to carry off these subtler shadings live when cut back to their basic five-piece rock lineup I’m not sure, but there’s enough savvy in them to find a way.

Emerging from roots as a somewhat introverted solo project for songwriter Ian Daniels, Daniels Goldseal has evolved into a canny, effective cinematic song-lens through which Ian can both observe and cast fresh light. With Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Mark Lanegan and Lambchop as likely inspirations and/or comparisons, Ian operate an absorptive, drifting frame of reference, orbiting the truth in a haze of tequila tones and commenting in a voice sometimes full of sardonic barfly foreboding, sometimes a dreamy Celtic burr.

So far Ian’s got only four publically-released songs behind him, each with a different soundscape – the muttering dusty guitar of Nectarines, the flatlands gospel pining of Out Of the Woods, the barebones electronic R&B, harmonium scratch and Leon Redbone slurs which come together in June, and the hooded country/barstool-folk of A Woman Is, complete with growling electric piano and distant swerves of pedal steel. I’ve no idea what he’ll try to do live: probably he’ll be bringing these and other songs along in fresh sets of clothes.

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Blind Dog Studio Presents
Colonial Sun + Mally Harpaz + Naomi McLean/Hazel Iris/Aine Mcloughlin
St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 1UL, England
Wednesday 7th March 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

While still best known for backing up Anna Calvi, multi-instrumentalist Mally Harpaz has been very active with her own music recently. Her multimedia art collective Blind Dog Studio has been going from strength to strength: their biggest show yet, continuing their aims of proving “a musically cinematic experience”, now comes to St Pancras Old Church.

As before, Mally’s bringing her soundtrack compositions – instrumental chamber pop – to sync with the Clara Aparicio Yoldi video animations which inspired them and which expand on classic paintings. Also as before, Colonial Sun (a.k.a. James Marples, will be performing his dark post-imperial Australian ballads with cello and percussion.

In addition, recent Guildhall graduate and budding composer Naomi McLean, renegade opera singer-turned-experimental folk-popper Hazel Iris (whose melliflous EP ‘Misfortunate Tales’ is out now) and accordionist Aine Mcloughlin are teaming up to perform classical compositions – possibly newly written and possibly not. Blind Dog aren’t giving away much beyond expansive murmurs of “candles and viola, mesmerising arias, exceptional guests before the altar”, so while you’re waiting to be swept away by the churchy glamour, here’s a bit of Hazel plus a Mally song from last autumn…

Tags: Aine Mcloughlin, Blind Dog Studio (event), Colonial Sun (James Marples), Daniels Goldseal, Demons Of Ruby Mae, Hazel Iris, listening to women, London (England), Mally Harpaz, Naomi McLean, Tonochrome

March 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 2) with Bent Knee, big dog little dog, Arone Dyer’s Dronechoir, Mahogany L. Browne, Glasser acoustic trio and Mantra Percussion (1st, 22nd, 29th March)

19 Feb

Over in New York, the Ecstatic Music Festival continues throughout March with three more concerts across a brace of Thursdays, criss-crossing contemporary classical percussion, slam poetry, choirwork, experimental pop and progressive industrial metal in a thrilling cross-genre splay.

Arone Dyer’s Dronechoir & Mahogany L. Browne
Thursday 1st March 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

“Dronechoir is the latest innovation by Arone Dyer of Buke And Gase. Since February 2015 she has been examining dis/comfort within performance through a series of long-durational choral pieces, and has assembled a group of talented women from completely different musical backgrounds to engage in spontaneous performance that bridges the gaps between them.

“They’ll be joined by the celebrated poet and spoken word artist Mahogany L. Browne (Cave Canem Fellow and Programming Coordinator of Black Lives Matter Pratt @ Pratt Institute) for an evening of powerful vocal performances addressing Black Lives, gender equity and racial equality (featuring poets Imani Davis, Shanelle Gabriel and poet and singer Camonghne Felix).”

Glasser (acoustic trio) + big dog little dog
Thursday 22nd March 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

“Glasser (aka Cameron Mesirow), known for her ethereal vocals and atmospheric electro-pop, will venture into fresh sonic territory with her new all-acoustic trio, which features multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee and bassist Eleonore Oppenheim.

“They will be joined by big dog little dog, Eleanor’s new duo project with composer-violinist Jessie Montgomery. Each band will perform sets of their own material, then together they’ll premiere a new piece written for the Festival.”

Bent Knee & Mantra Percussion
Thursday 29th March 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

“The “silo-smashing” sextet Bent Knee “taps into chamber pop, industrial rock, metal and prog-rock” (‘Wall Street Journal’). This hard-hitting experimental Boston band comes together with the visionary, “superhuman” (‘Time Out New York’) Mantra Percussion for new works expanding their already enormous scope and sound. The two ensembles will perform separate sets and then come together to premiere a new work by Bent Knee that weaves influences from across the rock, pop and avant-garde spectrums into a seamless, thrilling whole.”

As with the previous month’s worth of EMF concerts, all of these will take place at Merkin Concert Hall @ Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, NY 10023, USA.

If I was in New York, I’d see you there.

Tags: #BlackLivesMatter, Arone Dyer, Bent Knee, big dog little dog, Buke And Gase, Camonghne Felix, Dronechoir, Eleonore Oppenheim, Glasser, Imani Davis, Jessie Montgomery, listening to women, Mahogany L. Browne, Mantra Percussion, New York City (USA), Robbie Lee, Shanelle Gabriel, The Ecstatic Music Festival (event), women of heart and mind

February 2018 – upcoming London gigs – Society Of Imaginary Friends Soiree with Meg Lee Chin, Keiko Kitamura, I Am Her, Kosmic Troubadour, Math Jones (2nd February); Peter Blegvad Trio and Bob Drake (9th February – plus the Club Integral Resonance Benefit Gala on the 8th); Evil Blizzard and Nasty Little Lonely (10th February)

29 Jan

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.

Tags: Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Bob Drake, Chris Cutler, Evil Blizzard, Franziska Lantz, Glowering Figs, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Cow, Her (Julie D. Riley), James O’Sullivan, John Greaves, Kabaret @ Karamel (event), Keiko Kitamura, King/Cornetto, listening to women, London (England), London Lovecraft Festival (event), Math Jones, Meg Lee Chin, Nasty Little Lonely, Neil Luck, No Frills Band, Peter Blegvad, Pigface, Resonance FM (broadcaster), Robert Storey, Robin The Fog, Slapp Happy, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), Spizzenergi (Spizz etc.), Strayaway Child, Swordfish, The Kosmic Troubadour, Two Horns, women of heart and mind

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Misfit City

May 2021 – single & track reviews – Craig Fortnam’s ‘Ark’; Gabriella Smith/Gabriel Cabezas’s ‘Bard of a Wasteland’; LEYA’s ‘ABBA/Mary’ (Christina Vantzou remix)

May 2021 – single & track reviews – Loud Women’s ‘Reclaim These Streets’; Penelope Trappes’ ‘Blood Moon’; Spellling’s ‘Boys at School’

August 2020 – single & track reviews – ReMission International’s ‘TOS2020’; Derw’s ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’; The Forever Now’s ‘Reciprocals’

January 2019 – upcoming London gigs – Monelise, Laura Victoria, Paul Reynolds and Paul Go free in Peckham; Amy Balog at the Poetry Café; The Osiris Club, Kavus Torabi and ANTA in Camden (all 9th January)

October 2018 – singer-songwriter album launches in London and Wales – Hazel Iris (25th October), Emma Lohan (25th, 26th October)

September 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – Rumour Cubes, Agathe Max and Dream Logic in London (14th September); Major Parkinson’s European autumn tour (various dates, 26th September to 6th October)

July 2018 – some post-Doran thoughts on smaller music festivals; and next week’s EppyFest in Cheltenham (27th & 28th July)

July 2018 – upcoming avant-pop gigs – Liam Singer in New York and Catskill with Sontag Shogun, Alexander Turnquist and Tim Mislock (12th, 13th July)

July 2018 – two eclectic London music evenings – SOIF Soiree with Society Of Imaginary Friends, Jennifer Bliss Bennett, Dekay Ex, Stone Deep, Outre Dan Steele and William Summers (6th July); Rude Mechanicals with John Callaghan, Hypnotique and Rotten Bliss (13th July)

July 2018 – upcoming London singer-songwriter gigs – Ana Silvera’s ‘Oracles’ at the South Bank (4th July) and Holly Penfield’s ‘Fragile Human Monster’ in Piccadilly (9th July)

June 2018 – upcoming London rock gigs – H0nkies, TomZack, Aeddan and Stal Kingsley (14th June)

June 2018 – upcoming New York gigs – Charlie Looker debut solo album launch at National Sawdust, with full ensemble and Daisy Press (14th June)

June 2018 – upcoming London rock gigs – gloriously complex experimental rock evenings – The Mantis Opera, Barringtone and New Born Animal (8th June); Lost Crowns with Sharron Fortnam and Kavus Torabi (June 14th)

June 2018 – upcoming chamber-fusion and Rock In Opposition gigs in London – North Sea Radio Orchestra (2nd June); Lindsey Cooper Songbook with The Watts, John Greaves and Chlöe Herington (16th June)

May 2018 – a London alt/art/psych/theatrical/poetic cabaret at Slapper’s Club, with Katharine Blake, Clifford Slapper, Kavus Torabi, Charlie Cawood, The Cesarians duo, My Name Is Swan, Danielle Imara, Jo Below, possibly Suri Sumatra and definitely Piers Atkinson’s hat parade (24th May)

May 2018 – upcoming London gigs – SOIF Soiree in Wood Green including John Moore, Society Of Imaginary Friends, Magdalena Grabher, John Glyn & Richard Bolton, Circulus’ William Summers and assorted poets and spoken-worders (May 4th)

March 2018 – upcoming London pop/rock/etc gigs – Demons of Ruby Mae, Tonochrome and Daniels Goldseal (7th March); Blind Dog Studio show with Colonial Sun, Mally Harpaz and Naomi McLean/Hazel Iris/Aine Mcloughlin (7th March)

March 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 2) with Bent Knee, big dog little dog, Arone Dyer’s Dronechoir, Mahogany L. Browne, Glasser acoustic trio and Mantra Percussion (1st, 22nd, 29th March)

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