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February/March 2018 – Minute Taker mini-tour of England with Runes (2nd, 3rd, 10th, 17th February); Holly Penfield’s rescheduled Fragile Human Monster dates in London (23rd February, 23rd March); Joss Cope and Emily Jones in Worthing (2nd February)

Ben McGarvey, better known as ambient-torch-y folktronicist Minute Taker is heading out on a brief February tour taking in a brace of Saturdays, a Friday and four of the country’s more impressive churches. It’s in support of his new mini-album ‘Reconstruction‘ which he claims reflects “the search for new improved ways of rebuilding yourself when your world has been blown apart.”

Ben’s last pair of tours were more directly theatrical multi-media affairs, fleshing out the doppelganger/ghost story of ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ with tie-in animations, strings and extra guitars. This time, it’s just him – piano, looped harmonies, distorted Eastern-influenced percussion parts, glockenspiel and synths. In addition to the slow dream-jazz-styled songs from ‘Reconstruction’, he’ll be playing rearranged songs from ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ and his previous albums ‘Too Busy Framing’ and ‘Last Things’, plus some rethought-out cover versions from his various influences. Expect an atmosphere of drawn-out, deliciously lovelorn confessions and self-realisations set to luscious, trembling tunes, each with a core of silver-wire determination.

Also along for the ride is Greek-turned-Mancunian singer-songwriter Harry Selevos, a.ka. Runes, who has two albums of dreamy cherubic pop behind him – 2015’s ‘Orphic’ and the 2017 OP3 collaboration ‘AWSS’, sublimating his classical piano training via Asian-influenced vocals, a near-ambient synth pulse and a blissful energy (ending up somewhere between Jimmy Somerville and Mark Hollis).

Dates:

St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 1UL, England, Friday 2nd February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Brighton Unitarian Church, New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UF, England, Saturday 3rd February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
St Paul’s Church, St Paul’s Square, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, B3 1QZ, England, Saturday 10th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
St James & Emmanuel Church, 6 Barlow Moor Road, Didsbury, Manchester, M20 6TR, England, Saturday 17th February 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here

Prior to the tour, Ben will be performing a couple of live-streamed concerts from home via his Facebook page on Sunday 28th January. The first, at 7.30pm, is a general one with a Q&A session; it will be followed by a bonus session for his Secret Facebook Group covering the ‘Secret Songs’ album series in which he explores cover versions and reinventions.

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Live At Zedel/Crazy Coqs presents:
Holly Penfield: ‘Fragile Human Monster’
Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, Soho, London W1F 7ED, England
Friday 23rd February & Friday 23rd March 2018, 9.15pm – information here and here

The last Minute Taker tour, in October last year, coincided with Holly Penfield scheduling time out from her ongoing reign as jazz-cabaret queen and camp icon in order to return to the ‘Fragile Human Monster’ show she’d spun into a strange and shamanic synth-pop cult-of-the-broken during the early ‘90s. Back in October – and earlier – I wrote about how the old show had a “compelling and bizarre Californian theatrical edge which variously sat in your lap and purred, wailed over your head, broke down in front of you, or made you feel less alone – always in the same set” and about how “being a member of Holly’s audience meant being enticed into shedding those cloaks of cynicism and reserve we use to insulate ourselves, and opening your heart up to the rawest kind of sympathy and honesty. The show became a part of us, as much as we were a part of it, the church of the misfits she embraced. We dropped our guard, she sang: a voice for our odd angles and our visceral fears… If you led with your sense of cool, or your cynicism, there was no chance. But at full tilt, it was unmatchable.”

Both ‘Fragile Human Monster’ and its related ‘Parts Of My Privacy’ album had been a second-stage reaction to Holly’s previous career as a blow-dried Los Angeles rock starlet (during which, in classic fashion, she’d been sidelined, ground up and spat out by the dream machine). Both had starred Holly alone but for the saxophone and suss of her partner and husband Ian Ritchie and for the evocative night-time sound of her Kurzweil sampler-keyboard. Over these, she spilled her self-composed, gloriously-sung narratives and metaphorical fantasias of collapse, vulnerability, madness and healing like an obsessive, loving, slightly deranged blurring-together of Laurie Anderson, Jane Siberry and Pat Benatar; framed by a stage set of trinkets and keepsakes which assumed the magical associations of a voodoo shrine – or, as I put it previously, “a travelogue of places been, of people touched and gifts given and received.”

It was the kind of gig into which, whether performer or audience member, you had to throw your whole self… and in turn it eventually flamed out, eventually making way for Holly’s camper (yet straighter) third stage as a knowingly decadent flaunt-it-all singer-performer of jazz and torch standards, commanding top-notch acoustic bands. It’s that latter stage that finally made her name – yet some of the willing therapeutic madness of FHM has always been present in those slinks through Fever and I Wanna Be Evil, the wigs and costume changes, the brassy fragility and the phenomenal voice. (Back in California, Holly had shared a voice coach with Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Junior. It showed.)

It wasn’t clear what was impelling Holly to bring the old show back; nor whether she was resurrecting the synths and sequencers and ditching the jazz quartet and feather boas. In any case, it was promptly derailed by her surprise leather-clad showing on ‘The X-Factor’ in full-on kook mode, teasing Simon Cowell with a riding crop during the auditions phase. She did get a market-friendly Cowell soundbite out of that – “a cross between David Bowie and Liza Minnelli” – to go with her Tim Rice citation (“more than one fine diva – she’s a whole host of them, and they all look wonderful and sound sensational”) but it also meant that the planned Vauxhall Tavern FHM shows got showbizzed, and abruptly morphed into the familiar jazz cabaret albeit with a Halloween tinge. Escape velocity lost and an opportunity missed, even if some of the FHM songs still got stirred into the mix.

Now she’s rescheduled the Monster for a couple of dates at the swish London Zedel eaterie: a luxuriant art-deco cabaret capsule. Again, not much about how she’s going to do it, or how much habit and setting is going to shape instrumentation and presentation, but I’m hoping that after last year’s false alarm this will be the real deal, and that whatever twenty years away have added to the show’s energies will add to the spice. Sadly, there’s nothing directly from the Monster on Youtube – and nothing of ‘Parts of My Privacy’ – so instead I’ll have to whet appetites one of the more Monsterous moments from the cabaret show, an excellent new number Holly posted up the other year (like a Bowie torch song for the American dream), and an FHM ballad in its original glossy LA-pop ’80s garb before Holly pared it back to an art-pop synth shimmer.

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Musica Lumini presents:
Joss Cope + Emily Jones
The Cellar Arts Club, (basement of) 70 Marine Parade, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 3QB, England
Friday 2nd February 2018, 7.30pm – information here

It’s always nice to hear about a new venue, pushing back against the swelling tides of blandness and land-banking; and Worthing’s Cellar Arts Club must be a godsend for the more inquisitive characters who live in Brighton’s smaller, sleepier cousin town. I say “new”, but in fact it’s been in existence for nearly a year – a small, sprightly co-op effort providing music, poetry, stand-up, discussion and small-scale theatre and film showings. This February, it celebrates a small coup in pulling in both Joss Cope and Emily Jones for a concert.

Any discussions of Joss inevitably involve invoking (and then quelling) the shadow of his big brother – Julian Cope, the ‘80s psych-pop chart star and holy fool who spent the next three decades evolving into a garage-rock pagan shaman, a looming Archdrude and more recently a heathen-folk Biker of Ragnarok. So here I go… While there are a few shared traits (a sibling similarity in tone, including the Midlands yawp that occasionally cuts through their middle-class diction; their West Coast way with a melody; their tendency to move from proclaimer to informal intimate in a heartbeat by slipping a conversational twist into a driving lyric) they more often sound like two boys who heard the same records but went away having heard and learned different things. For all of his anarchic ways, whenever Cope the Elder yomps off on his Odinist trip, dooms Christianity or tries to brain-bugger you into enlightenment with 12-strings and Mellotrons, he always seems anxious to please, impose and impress; to garner attention from (and for) his assorted upendings and derailments. More outrightly affable, Joss may have come along on some of Julian’s musical trips, but his own are more relaxed and chatty, drawn from the confidence of one who takes more pleasure in the deft shapework of being a craftsman than in being a noisy prophet of the heath.

Ever since his emergence thirty-odd years ago (with short-lived bands such as Freight Train Something Pretty Beautiful and United States Of Mind), Joss has brought Cope-ular bounce and chattiness to the acid wistfulness and garage grooves. Since then, apart from a longer stint with counter-pop collective deXter Bentley, it’s been mostly innumerable multi-instrumental pick-up collaborations between Brighton and London (from Sergeant Buzfuz to Crayola Lectern). However, with last year’s ‘Unrequited Lullabies’ (recorded in Joss’ part-time home of Helsinki with a set of amenable Finnish musicians including Veli-Pekka Oinonen of the Leningrad Cowboys) he’s unveiled an album where his own voice comes clear to the surface. A luscious living-room tranche of psych-pop with a sharp wit; dappled with dextrous pop guitars, carousel prog, fake horns and laps of Mellotron, it also shows that there’s more than enough in Joss’ songwriting to ensure that it’s worth listening to him even if he just rocks up alone with an acoustic guitar. With a delivery not too far off the drowsy cut-glass musings of Guy Chadwick (and travelling through similar musical territories to or the Robyn Hitchcock or The Monochrome Set, although he’s less frivolous than either), he provides deceptive sunny reflections on our currently souring culture with its intolerance, its blame-shifting and the growing poisoning of discourse (“fell voices charm the crowd and there’s a bill for everything / Heard the claim that destiny was waiting in the wings… / Gotta get out of this cauldron before it starts to boil / there’s the frog and the kettle, pour on toxic oil”). At the same time, he’s got a healthy disregard for the idea of singer as preacher – admitting, in Cloudless Skies, that “the truth is understated, there’s no reality to be debated, / but no-one wants to hear that in a song.”

So far, the singer-songwriter work of Truronian hinterland-folkie Emily Jones (daughter of cult sixties folk singer and instrument inventor Al Ashworth-Jones) has rambled across two albums and a collection of Bandcamp oddments. In these pages, she’s mostly shown up in connection with the regular support slots she’s played backing up the Spratleys Japs revival. Opening for Joss should provide a bit more of a window for getting across her own particular songview, which layers ancient drone-lays and Sandy Denny musings with latterday and merges ancient folk tropes with latterday horrorfolk tales and strands of modern rurality, in particular the mystical fraying of reality that comes with too much time alone in a remote cottage. Picking at her songbook reveals the makings of an intriguing psych-folk visionary, with stories of strange transformations, blurrings and exchanges (from her recasting of traditional selkie tales to the peculiar trash-moth creature that flits through Hermegant And Maladine to her musings on the supernatural interplay of housework, psychic memories and ghost-hopes in Pieces Of People).

Tags: Birmingham (England), Brighton (England), Crayola Lectern, deXter Bentley, Emily Jones, Fragile Human Monster Show, Holly Penfield, Joss Cope, Julian Cope, Leningrad Cowboys, listening to women, London (England), Manchester (England), Minute Taker, Musica Lumini (promoters), Runes, Sergeant Buzfuz, Something Pretty Beautiful, United States Of Mind, Veli-Pekka Oinonen, Worthing (England)

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Categories 2018, ambient pop, art pop, cabaret, chamber pop, cover versions, DIY music, experimental pop, folk music, folk-pop, interactive performances, jazz, LGBTQIA+ music, performance art, pop, previews, progressive pop, psychedelic folk, singer-songwriter, song cycles, synth pop

January/February 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 1) with Kronos Quartet, Xenia Rubinos, Face The Music, Adam Schatz’s Civil Engineering and Bang On A Can (27th January, 5th February, 15th February)

15 Jan

Looking over to America, the Saturday after next sees the first date in New York City’s snappy, broad-based Ecstatic Music Festival.

“Starting on 27th January and running through 26th April 2018, the festival, hailed as “the alt-classical world’s main showcase” (‘The New York Times’), will feature collaborations from more than seventy-five composers and performers from different musical genres across the sonic spectrum, including Kronos Quartet, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Margaret Leng Tan, Glasser, Xenia Rubinos, Mantra Percussion, Mahogany L. Browne, Carla Kihlstedt, Patrick Zimmerli, Ethan Iverson, Buke & Gase’s Arone Dyer, and many more. A collaboration between New Amsterdam Presents and Kaufman Music Center, the festival has nine collaborative one-night-only performances featuring world premieres, new arrangements and the exclusive opportunity to hear artists discuss their work.”

Here are some details for the first three shows (taken from the programme and tweaked/expanded where necessary), spread out from the end of January to the middle of February:

“Xenia Rubinos can make social consciousness sensual,” says the ‘New York Times’. Her catchy yet exuberantly visceral songs meld weighty social issues with intimately personal ones and draw from a broad palette of influences ranging from Caribbean and jazz to indie rock, hip-hop and punk.

“Xenia will team up with Adam Schatz’s Civil Engineering, a high-energy, ten-member multi-dimensional big band led by the protean multi-instrumentalist Adam Schatz, “New York’s indie-rock Zelig” (‘New York Observer’) and Landlady frontman, to perform new arrangements of her songs, his songs, and composers they love, and to premiere new works written for the Ecstatic Music Festival.

“Regarding the project, Adam claims to be “chasing the spirits of Duke Ellington and Gene Wilder. I am trying to operate at a large scale that hits at the heart and can go anywhere at any time. Songs, improvisations, and adventures with a big band of impossibly talented people. This is Civil Engineering.” The band has included Alec Spiegelman, Ross Edwards, Brandon Seabrook (Seabrook Power Plant, Needle Driver), Ross Gallagher, Noah Garabedian (Big Butter And The Egg Men, Ravi Coltrane), Stephanie Richards, Curtis Hasselbring (The New Mellow Edwards, Decoupage, The Curha-chestra) and Patrick Breiner.

“The adventurous, Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet – one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles of our time – joins NYC’s acclaimed youth new music ensemble (and Kaufman in-house orchestra) Face the Music to perform new works written for Kronos’ “Fifty for the Future”, a commissioning, education and legacy project showcasing contemporary approaches to the string quartet that features new works by some of today’s foremost composers.

The two ensembles will perform separately and together: there’s no details on the Kronos setlist yet, or on the combined programme, but Face the Music will be performing Yotam Haber‘s ‘From The Book’ and Kala Ramnath‘s ‘Amrit’.

“Co-founded in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, Bang On A Can has grown from a one-off concert band to a ceaselessly active, multi-bodied and internationally famous New Music ensemble, building a world in which powerful new musical ideas flow freely across all genres and borders. Set up in 1997, long before crowd-funding became the norm through Kickstarter and the like, Bang On A Can’s People’s Commissioning Fund has pooled contributions of all sizes from hundreds of friends and fans. Since its inception as a radical partnership between artists and audiences to commission works from adventurous composers, it has commissioned over fifty works of music for New York’s electric Bang on a Can All-Stars.

“This concert, compiling new commissions for 2018 and a few old favourites, is a New Sounds Live co-presentation: it will be hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer and streamed live. There will be world premieres of pieces by George Lewis and Angélica Negrón, plus a new look at “historic” PCF-commissioned pieces by Pamela Z, Annea Lockwood, Lukas Ligeti and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.”

All concerts are performed at Merkin Concert Hall @ Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, NY 10023, USA. Dates and times below:

Xenia Rubinos & Adam Schatz’s Civil Engineering – Saturday 27th January 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here
Kronos Quartet & Face The Music – Monday 5th February 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here
Bang on a Can People’s Commissioning Fund Concert – Thursday 15th February 2018, 7:30pm – here and here

For those who might not have already followed up on the remaining six dates between March and April, I’ll stick up reminders closer to the time…

Tags: Adam Schatz’s Civil Engineering, Angélica Negrón, Annea Lockwood, Bang On A Can, Face The Music, George Lewis, Kala Ramnath, Kronos Quartet, Landlady, Lukas Ligeti, New York City (USA), Pamela Z, The Ecstatic Music Festival (event), Thurston Moore, Xenia Rubinos, Yotam Haber

January 2018 – upcoming London rock and folk gigs – twists and weaves with Prescott, Lost Crowns and Kavus Torabi (11th January); a carpet of acid-folk/chanson dreams with Alison O’Donnell & Firefay (18th January); a lysergic lattice with a Knifeworld double-set (20th January)

6 Jan

Prescott + Lost Crowns + Kavus Torabi
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Thursday 11th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Reunited with guitarist Keith Moliné (who had to sit out some of their engagements last year), instrumental avant-rockers Prescott bring their springy barrage of warm, bouncy tune-mozaics back to London at Servant Jazz Quarters. On the evidence of last year’s ‘Thing Or Two’ album, the band (completed by spacey fretless bassist/composer Kev Hopper, keyboard quibbler Rhodri Marsden and swap’n’go drummer Frank Byng) is growing like a tricksy hedgerow. New layers, extensions and scrabbling digressions continue to bud out of their riotous cellular approach; and out of the games of post-minimalist chicken which they use to hold and release each other from their stack of cunning microloops.

It’s still fair to say that Prescott’s relationship with their own instrumental cleverness is an edgy and oblique one. Fine and rebellious players all, they’re too suspicious of straight prog, jazz or lofty experimentalism to have a straight relationship with any of them. Consequently they come across on record as jitterbug countercultural eggheads – ones who play obstinate, transfigured parallels to clavinet jazz-funk (post-Miles, post-Headhunters) or twinkly-marimba’d Zappa passages, but who nail it all down to a precise post-punk, post-virtuoso sensibility. Still, this only sketches part of the Prescott picture while missing the heart of it. Despite the band’s tendencies towards deadpan stage presence (and the eschewment of anything even vaguely wacky), each and every Prescott gig ends up as a generous, audience-delighting puzzle of pulses, traps and tickles on the funny bone.

Maybe if they’ve got anything as corny as a raison d’être (that is, beyond executing Kev’s pieces with deftness, style and pleasure) it might be about evaporating the frequently frustrating and gummed-up relationship between musicality, suffocating ideology and good humour. For all of their self-imposed restrictions, Prescott are in some senses a freer band than almost anyone else in their field: an expansive Lego set of musical options concealed in a deceptively small box.

Thanks to both the burgeoning stature of Knifeworld and his helming of the post-Daevid Allen Gong (plus entanglements with Guapo and Cardiacs, and his garrulous showings on radio and in print), Kavus Torabi is rapidly becoming a senior figure at the culty end of psychedelic art-rock. Even his rough-and-ready solo acoustic performances are becoming a draw in their own right, although he’s mostly (and modestly) restraining them to support slots, presenting gravelly-voiced house-party strumalongs rather than electric-genius showcases. Such is the case with his opening slot for Prescott, which also sees him broaden his guitar playing with trips to the harmonium.

On previous form, expect established songs, songs-in-progress and song unveilings from Kavus’ Knifeworld catalogue (plus visits to his old work with The Monsoon Bassoon and possibly a bit of latterday Gong-ing if any of it translates away from the group’s electric Om). If you’re hoping for Guapo stuff, you’d better wait for one of his gigs with them. If you want him to rip into a Cardiac song, you’re best off catching him guesting at one of the growing number of Spratleys Japs shows (increasingly become rolling parties celebrating the Cardiacs spirit, pulling in hit-and-run appearances from the band’s alumni and songbook).

Invigorating as a Prescott/Torabi summit might be, the night’s real draw is Lost Crowns: only the third live venture for this carefully-concealed solo project from Richard Larcombe. You might have seen the Crowns step out at either one of a culty pair of Alphabet Business Concern shows in 2013 and 2017: otherwise, you’ve not seen or heard them at all. If you’ve followed Richard’s on/off work singing and guitaring for fraternal duo Stars In Battledress (alongside his brother James), you’ll have some idea of the rich, unfolding master-craftsman’s confection to expect. 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.

Reared on English folk and art-rock but steeped in both Chicago math-rock and (via radio, television and film) in sophisticated comic absurdity from the likes of the Marx Brothers, Spike Milligan and Vivian Stanshall, Richard is in fact one of the most aggravatingly unknown, self-effacing, even self-concealing talents of his generation. In the fifteen years since his last, short-lived solo foray Defeat The Young he’s kept his own work closely hidden, apparently preferring the shared burden and brotherly warmth of occasional shows with the similarly-obscure Battledress, or to play supporting roles with William D. Drake or sea-shanty-ers Admirals Hard. Were he not so damn elusive, he’d be regularly cited alongside the likes of Colin Meloy or Neil Hannon as an exemplar of bookish art-pop wit. For the most part, though, Richard seems happiest with his other career (in children’s theatre, an area in which, incidentally, he’s equally talented) although I suspect that the truth is that his perfectionist’s need for control gets a little on top of him, though never enough to ruffle his brow. According to Richard, this particular live surfacing’s going to be a “limited-capacity probably-not-to-be-repeated-often event”, but he clearly means business, having armed himself with the kind of musical crack squad that can do his work justice – London art-rock go-to-guy Charlie Cawood on bass, Drake band regular Nicky Baigent on clarinet, the enigmatic “Keepsie” on drums and a doubled-up keyboard arrangement of Rhodri Marsden (hopping over from Prescott) and Josh Perl (coming in from Knifeworld and The Display Team).

As regards firmer, more specific details on what Lost Crowns will be like, Richard himself will only murmur that the songs are “quite long, with a lot of notes.” Rhodri Marsden (a man more given to gags than gush) has chipped in with a wide-eyed “utterly mindbending and completely beautiful”; rumours abound re ditties about synthesia and/or the quirks of historical figures; and what’s filtered through from attendees at those previous ABC shows is that the Larcombe boy has seriously outdone himself with this project. The rest of us will have to wait and see. Meanwhile, in the absence of any available Lost Crown-ings to link to or embed, here are a couple of live examples of Richard’s artistry with Stars In Battledress.

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Alison O’Donnell + Firefay
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Thursday 18th January 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Same time, same place, but one week later – another rare treat in the shape of a London appearance from “fairy queen of acid folk” Alison O’Donnell, allied with Anglo-French folk-noirists Firefay.

The possessor of a warm declamatory folk voice (one well suited to storytelling), Alison began her musical journey at convent school in 1960s Dublin with childhood friend Clodagh Simonds. Writing and singing folk songs together, the two became the core of mystical folk-rockers Mellow Candle: scoring a faintly lysergic orchestral-pop single before either girl had turned seventeen, Clodagh and Alison then spent five years exploring and finessing the baroque/progressive folk sounds eventually captured on Mellow Candle’s one-and-only album ‘Swaddling Songs’.

Ahead of its time (and mishandled by the record company), it followed the example of other recent genre-stretching folk albums by Trees and Nick Drake and sold poorly. By the time that the disillusioned band disintegrated in 1973, Alison was still only twenty. She spent the next three decades travelling in a slow arc across the world and across music: spending long stretches of time in South Africa, London, and Brussels before returning to Dublin in 2001, she passed – en route – through traditional English, Irish and Flemish folk bands (including Flibbertigibbet, Éishtlinn and Oeda) as well as stints in theatre and satire, and in contemporary jazz band Earthling. As she entered her mid-fifties, though, Alison’s career entered a surprising and fruitful second stage. She finally began releasing material under her own name – initially with multi-instrumentalist Isabel Ní Chuireáin (for the part-trad/part-original ‘Mise Agus Ise’ in 2006), and then alone or with her band Bajik from 2009’s ‘Hey Hey Hippy Witch’ onward.

Meanwhile, the slow transition of ‘Swaddling Songs” from forgotten ’70s flop to early Noughties word-of-mouth lost classic brought Alison into active collaboration with a fresh generation of musicians who’d been captivated by the record. Agitated Radio Pilot’s Dave Colohan came in for on 2007’s ‘World Winding Down’, Steven Collins of The Owl Service for 2008’s ‘The Fabric of Folk’ EP, and Graham Lockett of Head South By Weaving for 2012’s ‘The Execution Of Frederick Baker’. Colohan in particular has become a regular ally and co-writer, playing a big part in Alison’s 2017’s ‘Climb Sheer The Fields Of Peace’ album and inviting her into his Irish psych-folk collective United Bible Studies. There have also been teamups with metal bands Cathedral and Moonroot, with folktronicists Big Dwarf, and with Michael Tyack of psych-folkers Circulus.

Among the most promising of these latterday collaborations has been her 2012 teaming with Firefay (fronted by the trilingual Carole Bulewski) for the much-admired ‘Anointed Queen’ album. This month’s concert revisits that project and beyond, Alison and Firefay performing in a meticulously interwoven partnership which will dip into songs from ‘Anointed Queen’ in addition to Firefay material and songs from Alison’s own back catalogue, from Mellow Candle through to ‘Climb Sheer The Fields Of Peace’. Come expecting a world/wyrd-folk wealth of keyboard drones, strings, bells, reeds and ouds, all mingled in a lysergia-flecked folk-rooted song continuum stretching from Ireland to Brittany and Flanders (across the British Isles and London, with look-ins from Gallic chanson, kletzmer, urban baroque, boozy sea songs, tints of Canterbury art-prog and even hints of the Sudan and Middle East.)

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Guided Missile presents:
Knifeworld (double set)
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Saturday 20th January 2018, 7:30pm – information here , here and here

Just over a week after their leader disports himself (mostly) unplugged and exposed in Dalston, Knifeworld themselves burst back into action in Islington, getting a whole show to themselves at the Lexington. Currently revelling in the flexibility and range of tones available to their eight-piece lineup, they’ll be drawing on their last couple of years of songwriting and performance by playing a full acoustic set followed by a full electric set.

If you’re not yet familiar with Knifeworld’s work, you’re probably new to the blog – ‘Misfit City’ has been saturated with it ever since the band first emerged eight years ago – look back over past posts to acclimatise yourself to their dancing, springy, psychedelic mix of oboes, guitars, saxophones, drums and warm, wood-rough head-next-door vocals. It’s a skewed but precise brew of pointillistic acid-patter pulling in sounds, tones and attitude from five decades of music – you can spot ’50s rockabilly, late ’60s lysergic swirl, full on ’70s prog/soul complexity, ’80s and ’90s art pop noise and suss and beyond – all topped off by Kavus’ particular wide-eyed worldview. Eccentric and garbled on the surface, his songs still couch pungently honest depths of feelings, fears and hope if you’re prepared to push past the distraction of tatters and gags – as with two of his mentors, Tim Smith and Daevid Allen, Kavus treats psychedelia as a tool to explore, question and deepen the subject of human existence rather than trance it away in a blur.

Exceptionally excited by what’s coming up, the band are promising “a gig like no other…. your chance to hear many rarely- or never-played songs before. A whole night of delirious, mindbending and beautifully strange music.” Below is forty-one minutes of slightly shaky, slightly scratchy Knifeworld footage from the Supernormal 2016 festival, in order to light the fuse…

Tags: Agitated Radio Pilot (Dave Colohan), Alison O'Donnell, Ben Woollacott, Charlie Cawood, Chloe Herington, Circulus, Emmett Elvin, Firefay, Frank Byng, Head South By Weaving (Graham Lockett), Josh Perl, Kavus Torabi, Kev Hopper, Knifeworld, Lost Crowns, Mellow Candle, Nicola Baigent, Oliver Sellwood, Prescott, Rhodri Marsden, Richard Larcombe, Servant Jazz Quarters (promoters), Steven Collins, The Owl Service

December 2017 – various upcoming gigs in Bristol and London – Seitz, Tom O.C Wilson and Northwest (17th December); Colonial Sun, Mally Harpaz and V Ä L V E (19th December); The Secret Crowd and The Many Few (15th December)

7 Dec

Here are three more upcoming December shows across the coming fortnight which caught my interest. There’s a three-helping dose of sophisticated underground pop on a decommissioned barge in Bristol; another triple-decker in London covering moody post-colonial balladry, electro-acoustic film music and experimental collage-composing; and finally an easy-going London indie rattlethrough…

As I’m still rushed, what follows is the usual textgrab from press releases and gig guides, although I’ve leaned in to dab in extra information where needed…

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Seitz + Tom O.C Wilson + Northwest
Grain Barge, Mardyke Wharf, Hotwell Road, Bristol, BS8 4RU, England
Sunday 17th December 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

“A Sunday night triple-bill of advanced accessible music. Here’s what to expect:

“Hailing from Germany via California and incubated in Bristol, singer and pianist Carolin Seitz formed Seitz in 2015 – a glacial chamber trio bringing you some vast and microcosmic torch hop. Think Lotte Lenya on Pukka tea!

“Tom O.C Wilson is an Anglo-American pop composer with an insatiable appetite for musical discovery. His music straddles the line between the classic English pop songwriting tradition (Ray Davies, Andy Partridge, Damon Albarn) and the sophistication of current US acts such as Dirty Projectors and Deerhoof. Yet his musical canvas also draws upon wider influences, from the exuberance of contemporary jazz (Denys Baptiste, John Hollenbeck), to the irresistible rhythmic pull of Sardinian guitarists such as Paolo Angeli and Marino De Rosas.

“Tonight he is joined by the dynamic and musically sensitive trio of James Ashdown (drums), Steve Haynes (bass) and Steve Troughton (keyboard), to perform songs from his recently released album “Tell A Friend” (Pickled Egg Records).

“Northwest are an experimental pop duo based in London, formed by the Spanish-born singer and composer Mariuca García-Lomas and producer and multi-instrumentalist Ignacio Simón. Their music explores different genres (from contemporary classical music and avant-garde electronica to experimental pop, psychedelia and trip-hop) and has drawn comparisons to artists such as Julia Holter, Portishead or Grouper. Their euphoric performances have quickly become recognized as one of the most captivating and mesmerizing live shows around.”

https://vimeo.com/238816598

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Blind Dog Studio presents:
Colonial Sun + Mally Harpaz + V Ä L V E
The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England
Tuesday 19th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“Colonial Sun is the brand-new musical moniker of James Marples, an Australian singer-songwriter who sings dark ballads set amongst minimal cello and percussion arrangements, and whose work has drawn comparisons with Howe Gelb, Sun Kil Moon and Mark Lanegan. Emotionally lucid and at times surreal, these songs explore history, nostalgia and a sense of place and draw on imagery ranging from the Australian landscape to the decaying monuments of empire. This is only the second Colonial Sun gig, for which James will be joined onstage by a new and very special guest…

“James has previously released music (including 2006’s ‘Heads Are Down, Collars Are Up’ EP) on two independent record labels and performed his own compositions at the Glastonbury Festival and at theatres and venues in Europe and Australia. He worked with Second Hand Dance on the music for the shows ‘Creepy House’ and ‘Grass’, and (during 2017) has been the songwriter-in-residence at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College, London.

“Drummer, pianist and multi-instrumentalist Mally Harpaz (who’s played with Lunatic Crash, Anna Calvi, Hazel Iris, Ciara Clifford and Jessica Lauren) will be performing her original compositions joined by a small number of phenomenal musicians and special guests. These distinct pieces were mainly written as part of a collaboration with award-winning video artist Clara Aparicio Yoldi for several short films including ‘Iconosfera’, ‘Zoom Out’, and ‘Zoom In’: the original recordings feature (among others) Anna Calvi, Mark Neary and Mally’s old Lunatic Crash bandmate Eran Karniel.

“Mally’s reverence for the profound creates mysterious melodic lines and shares a luscious ambience with other contemporary pioneers such as Steve Reich, Max Richter, and Nils Frahm.

“V Ä L V E is the outlet for the compositional work of composer/performer Chlöe Herington (also a member of Chrome Hoof, Knifeworld and Half The Sky), using text and image as the starting point for scores. Chlöe collects sounds and diagrams – such as score fragments found in skips, or electrocardiograph printouts – composing predominantly for bassoon, saxes, electronics and found sounds to explore synaesthetic memory and collective experience.

“Live (joined by Emma Sullivan on bass, Microkorg and vocals and by Elen Evans on harp), the music traverses the realms of noise and improv into songs, punctuated with found sounds and eases into spacy soundscapes.”

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If you fancy something a little more straightforwardly poppy, then there’s this show a little earlier in the week. The Secret Crowd headline with their sunny semi-acoustic pop-punk (with added ukulele and trumpet), supported by endearing ‘Misfit City’ faves The Many Few playing material from their brand new album ‘Sharkenfreude’, (plus Fleetwood Macs – I don’t know, covers band or ironic indie?). All of it preceding the usual ’60s Mod, Motown and soul disco at the Crawdaddy! clubnight.

The Secret Crowd + The Many Few (Christmas Special) + Fleetwood Macs + Crawdaddy Club Night
The Fiddler’s Elbow, 1 Malden Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3HS, England
Friday 15th December 2017, 6.00pm – information here, here and here

Here’s The Many Few sounding like a delightfully rickety collision of Deacon Blue and XTC with West African highlife; and (due to newness of band and shortage of online material) some muffled recent-gig phone footage of The Secret Crowd…

Tags: Anna Calvi, Blind Dog Studio (event), Bristol (England), Chloe Herington, Colonial Sun (James Marples), Eran Karniel, Ignacio Simón, James Ashdown, listening to women, London (England), Mally Harpaz, Mariuca García-Lomas, multimedia, music for electronics, Northwest, piano music, Seitz, Steve Haynes, Steve Troughton, The Many Few, The Secret Crowd, Tom O.C. Wilson, VALVE

November 2017 – Cosmo Sheldrake’s new album news and European mini-tour (17th-30th November) including an appearance by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

11 Nov

Fresh off a September tour with ex-Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Mr Jukes (and an October one with actor-folkie Johnny Flynn and Holly Holden Y Su Banda), one-man experimental pop orchestra Cosmo Sheldrake is finally gearing up to release his debut album. He’s celebrating with an entirely premature string of headlining dates in England, Germany, France and Switzerland during the second half of November.

They’re only premature in that the album’s still at least a season away, but why stop when you’re on a roll? “Am soooooo happy to announce my debut album ‘The Much Much How How And I’ is finished… it has been a very long time coming. Three years in the making! I’m very excited and can’t wait to have it out in the world.” Though this isn’t happening until 6th April 2018 (on the Transgressive label), pre-orders are here if you’re already intrigued – and meanwhile, you can take a peek at the hilarious, macabre Josh Allott-directed video for one of the tracks, Come Along, which “explores the experience of both having head lice and being a head louse. Microscopic worlds expand and consume the world of the large. Human heads become continents, scalps become landscapes, salons become solar systems. Come along now.”

With its skewed but loosely unified focus on nature, myth, science and intuition, both song and video are typical of Cosmo’s work – an generous and omnivorous corpus enveloping traditional folk and glitch mashups; hipster chic and novelty records; Bjork, Bobby McFerrin and the Fariñas; process music, Partch and prog; rhymes, reels and street parties; old Lomax recordings, beatboxing and Edward Lear. Cosmo himself is an extraordinary collagist and multi-instrumentalist whose roster includes thirty or so instruments (from guitar and piano to samplers, euphonium and duduk topped off with the distinct, lilting and mustardy twang of his vocals) and who’s spurred by a restless urge to reinvent anything he touches and any place that he plays. He’s been rumoured to pursue extinct animal recordings in order to get the noises and voices he wants, so not even death is an obstacle to curiosity. Of course, as one of the children of therapist and vocal shaman Jill Purce and of rebel biologist/parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, he’s long been growing in interesting soil. In many respects, it’s hardly surprising that he’s turned out the way he has.

As the further video clips below show, Cosmo is not someone whose talents and ideas are best contained by a support slot. It’s best to see him when he’s more in command of the evening, even if he’s just up on a little stage somewhere rather than out there subverting a swimming pool or model village, capering in front of a brass band or preparing to keelhaul an accordion.

Here are the live dates:

Mick’s Garage @ Crate Brewery, Unit 8, Queen’s Yard, Hackney Wick, London, E9 5EN, England, 17th November 2017 – information
Rosis, Revaler Str. 29, 10245 Berlin, Germany, 23rd November 2017 – information
Stall 6, Gessnerallee 8, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland, 24th November 2017 – information
1. Stock, Tramstrasse 66, 4142 Münchenstein, Switzerland, 25th November 2017 – information
Le Pop-Up du Label, 14 rue Abel, 75012 Paris, France, 30th November 2017 – information here

and here

Fresh news in for the London gig – as well as a DJ set from Gentle Mystics (like Cosmo, unpeggable underground everything-ists whose own records yaw wickedly and knowingly between Balkan folk, Brit-hop, 2 Tone, Eartha Kitt and occasional world/prog/folk re-arrangements of Stravinsky), there’ll be support via a performance of Jenny Moore‘s ‘Mystic Business’, emphasing just how far Cosmoworld stretches from the average pop show. A member of drum-heavy art/femme/punk/party trio Charismatic Megafauna, Jenny works across a variety of performance art fields from radio show to performance installations, turning up live investigations of artistic responsibility, sexual “humanifestos“, proposals for rock operas and more.

‘Mystic Business’ is one such project: originally a set of communal workshopped songs for percussion and voices which explore and shows off a range of expressio. These range from single-voice-and-slapped-thigh rap to involved group-drumming chorales and minimalist loft-music singalongs (like post-Riot grrrl echoes of Philip Glass and Arthur Russell). Topics explored include body politics, doubts/immediacy/questioning, ripples of revolt, premature ejaculation and marimba-assisted paeans to feminist science fiction hentai. See below for a five-minute excerpt (a kind of post-structuralist spiritual/canon) and for the full forty-two minute version. I’ve no idea how this might work in the more structured context of a formal gig, but I’m sure that Jenny will come up with a new twist.

Tags: Berlin (Germany), Charismatic Megafauna, Cosmo Sheldrake, Holly Holden Y Su Banda, Jenny Moore, Jenny Moore's Mystic Business, Jill Purce, Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, listening to women, London (England), Paris (France), Rupert Sheldrake, Zürich (Switzerland)

October 2017 – upcoming London gigs – art pop and stories from Tom O.C Wilson, Eley Williams and Kept Cairns (22nd October); holy electro-noise folk and beats from Jarboe, Father Murphy and Metalogue (23rd October)

17 Oct

Pickled Egg Records presents:
Tom O.C Wilson + Eley Williams + Beetles
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 22nd October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Until recently operating as Freeze Puppy, Tom O.C. Wilson is now venturing out under his own name with ever-more-intricate and compositionally complex conversational songs, venturing into hitherto unexplored territory between (to pick a few loose examples) Stephen Sondheim, Frank Zappa, Neil Hannon, Django Bates and The Carpenters.

‘Tell A Friend’ – his debut album as himself – is “lovingly crafted, infectiously playful arthouse pop… a frothy, colourful twelve-song collection that pushes the raw materials of pop into dazzlingly surprising shapes, from the polyrhythmic fervour of Give Yourself Some Credit to the Steve Reich-meets-Motown stomp of The Ones. Yet as with similarly cerebrally-minded pop acts such as Field Music, Max Tundra and Dutch Uncles, the intricacy of the music is coupled with an unusually high hooks per-minute quotient — these are songs to sing along to as much as ponder.” While previous records have revelled in a certain literary playfulness, each song on this one is based on Tom’s own life and friendships. It’s in keeping with Tom’s decision not to hide behind kooky project names any longer: he’s never likely to create a standard-issue confessional album, but this is explicitly “a celebration of human interaction” in all its richness. Judging by the tone of start-up single The Ones, it’s predominantly positive.

Tom was originally providing his own support as half of his other band Beetles, but they’ve had to pull out. Fortunately, a more-than-worthy replacement’s been found in the shape of singer-songwriter Kept Cairns, a mysterious pseudonymous friend and fellow traveller from Tom’s Bristol days. His songs (which he himself describes as “gradually accret(ing)” rather than being written) “sketch and explore the unseen world of interiority: mental health, transcendence, relationship breakdown, the limits of communication, ambiguity, time and love.” Generally that’s a recipe for broken-handed strumming and murky lo-fi mumbles; so it’s surprising to find percussive, intricate acoustic guitarwork (recalling Michael Hedges and John Martyn) and carefully-drawn lyrics and vocal lines as crisp as new book pages (detailing complicated and frequently unresolved situations but describing them with an immaculate grace and economy). To see what I mean, you’ll need to take a trip over to his music page: bar a quiet presence on Spotify, he’s so far underground that gigs like these are the only other chance to get the measure of him.

Appropriately for an evening of literary pop, the middle act on the bill is a writer. Eley Williams is an acclaimed prose-poet of confusions, mental transformations and fairytales whose stories sweep across their settings like an investigating light passed over text. Here she is in action:

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The following day, Chaos Theory will be vibrating the rafters as they take over St Pancras Old Church and shake out its more shadowy corners for a particularly ambitious gig. Expect an evening of dark drones and noises, Euro-American cloister-folk and cinematic/industrial music textures, filled with dark-refracted Catholicism and a decidedly ecclesiastical tone.

Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
Jarboe + Father Murphy + Metalogue
St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 1UL, England
Monday 23rd October 2017, 8.00pm -information here and here

From the Chaos Theory blurb:

“Original Swans member Jarboe joins forces with Italian occult propagators of insight-through-terror Father Murphy, as they perform a single set in three parts. Father Murphy will open with their avant-garde dark creations, to be joined by Jarboe to perform their new collaborative EP (which came out on Consouling Sounds on 22nd September). Jarboe will then perform her own material, with Father Murphy providing their own twist to her sounds as her backing band.

“Ambient darkness will be provided before and after the performance by producer Metalogue, who will create a whole new set for the evening and release it as a new album. This will be an experience like no other.”

https://youtu.be/3Ff0nrs20xg?list=RD3Ff0nrs20xg

Tags: Beetles, Eley Williams, Father Murphy, Freeze Puppy, Jarboe, Kept Cairns, Laila Woozeer, Metalogue, Pickled Egg Records (record label), Servant Jazz Quarters (promoters), St Pancras Old Church (venue) - Kings Cross - London - England, Tom O.C. Wilson

October 2017 – upcoming gigs – Anglo coastalysergia and Americana with Crayola Lectern, Dr Spacetoad and Billy Bad Band in Hove (21st October); Austrian psychprog with Blank Manuskript in Ramsgate, Leicester and London (26th-28th October)

16 Oct

We’ve just had a dose of daytime pink skies across Britain – appropriate, given the psychedelic tone of this quick posting.

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The Real Music Club presents
Crayola Lectern + Dr Spacetoad + Billy Bad Band
The Brunswick, 1-3 Holland Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 1JF, England
Saturday 21st October 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

The veteran of innumerable bands from punk to power-pop to latterday Anglo-psych, Chris Anderson finally found his core niche during the mid-Noughties as Crayola Lectern. Unspinning wistful, sweetly lugubrious stories of life, loss and learning dusted by his own gently lysergic leanings, he’s crafted “what psychedelic music would have sounded like had the Edwardians invented it.” Having been accompanied in the past by a shifting pool of live collaborators including assorted Cardiacs (Jon Poole, Bic Hayes, Jo Spratley) and Brighton psych luminaries (Joss Cope, the Rodes brothers from Clowwns and Rect.angle), his current cohorts are Alistair Strachan (on brass, percussion and necessary noises) and drummer-turned-synth-moonlighter Damo Waters.

The alter-ego of songwriter/actor/painter Paul Francis, Dr Spacetoad is another long-standing Brightonian: a discombobulated, identity-swapping cosmic troubadour who’s sometimes veered into Dada-styled space-rock in cahoots with Captain Sensible and who (as Jean Paul Dionysus) once played a key role in the London acoustic revival of the late ’80s. Expect him in his guise as melancholy garret-haunting singer, hopeless romantic and nifty fingerstyle guitarist.

Opening for this double bill of life-worn inner-spacemen is Bad Billy Band, who offer a more straightforward blend of Anglo folk-rock and electric Americana: a soften-upper.

https://youtu.be/OojcQhQgWb4

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For further cosmic ventures, go discover the glow-mossed, castellated structures of Austrian art-rock sextet Blank Manuskript next week as they pass through England as part of a European tour. Polyinstrumentalists who layer flutes, tapes, trombone, reeds and glockenspiels into their standard rock armoury, they’re an intriguingly witchy concoction, balancing pretty much equally between grand prog and freak psych. Some of the band are happy to dress like Napoleonic dandies, a la Hendrix; others look like punk-metal flotsam. All of them sit on long and involved instrumental passages with an air of bugged-out wonder, spraying out rivulets of fingertapped guitar, floating ruminative keyboard lines or murmuring breathlessly arcane lyrics.. Sometimes they display their love of classic British ‘70s prog, pulling off expansive structured Yes or Caravan moves. Sometimes they thunder, spasm and gibber like one of the post-Can, post-industrial, post-metal neo-psych bands that Baba Yaga’s Hut tend to put on. You don’t often see that particular gap being bridged.

https://youtu.be/kB-gPPmWqUA

Dates:

Ramsgate Music Hall, 13 Turner Street, Ramsgate, Kent, CT11 8NJ, England, Thursday 26th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Musician, 42 Crafton St West, Leicester, LE1 2DE, EnglandFriday 27th October 2017, 7.00pm (with River Chickens + Those Amongst Us Are Wolves) – information
The Water Rats, 328 Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8BZ, England, Saturday 28th October 2017, 10.00pm – information

Only the Leicester show features any support acts, and I’ve scraped up a little info about them. Despite being founded on a rumbling, frowning Mogwai-esque post-rock base of dour guitar minimalism, Coventry four-piece Those Amongst Us Are Wolves tend towards being post-post-rockers, needing little persuasion to roll right into classic-rock bodybuilder riffage. Cheerfully charismatic Ashby rockers The River Chickens, on the other hand, are travelling the other way: moving away from Cult covers toward their own honey-sweet heavy power-pop. Judge for yourselves below.

Tags: Billy Bad Band, Blank Manuskript, Brighton (England), Crayola Lectern, Dr Spacetoad, Hove (England), Leicester (England), London (England), Ramsgate (England), River Chickens, Salzburg (Austria), The Real Music Club (event/promoter), Those Amongst Us Are Wolves, Worthing (England)

October 2017 – upcoming English gigs – Holly Penfield chops and changes in London (18th October); Minute Taker’s multimedia love-and-ghosts story ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ in Glasgow, London & Brighton (15th, 21st, 22nd October); Cardiacs’ ‘Marenest’ fundraiser showing in Bristol with The Scaramanga Six (21st October); and something on Paul Diello

7 Oct

Holly Penfield presents:
‘Holly Penfield – Spooky Little Girl’
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, 372 Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, London, SE11 5HY, England
Wednesday 18th October 2017, 8.00pm – information here

For a while, there, I was spun back. Twentysomething years ago, I was a regular at Holly Penfield‘s ‘Fragile Human Monster Show’ (having first caught her performance on a random Edinburgh night back in 1992). Ostensibly based around sleek ’80s synth’n’sequencer pop, her shows had a number of twists. More like ’70s songwriter confessionals, they stirred yearning jazz and blues strands back into a genre which had mostly eschewed them. Based around Holly, her Kurzweil keyboard and a saxophonist (usually her husband Ian Ritchie, who’s had a hand in everything from Scouse artniks Deaf School to the Roger Waters band and the ‘Lonely Planet’ theme), they also had a compelling and bizarre Californian theatrical edge which variously sat in your lap and purred, wailed over your head, broke down in front of you, or made you feel less alone – always in the same set.

If you can dig up Holly’s long-lost debut album ‘Full Grown Child‘ – a brash early ‘80s Chinnichap production – you’ll hear an Innuendo-strewn, pop-belting cross between Suzi Quatro, a bleach-blond Rizzo, ABBA and full-on coke-blizzard-era Stevie Nicks. ‘Fragile Human Monster’ was the fallout from all that: an onstage realisation of Holly’s independent followup ‘Parts Of My Privacy’, in which she and Ian went back to her bluesier and torchier San Francisco roots, merged it with Ian’s techno-pop skills and teased out a series of passionate, cracked paeans (plus jarring digressions into performance art) about fear, instability and how the lost rebuild their lives and make their way. Tremendously tuneful but at odds to the music biz, the ‘Fragile Human Monster Show’ was that rare thing: outsider music with genuine craft and skill. It was also pretty queer and culty, drawing a diverse squadron of waifs and strays of all stripes (including me) to Holly’s home venue on the Kilburn High Road. Eventually it wore Holly out: putting it to rest, but still hanging onto her stubborn kookiness, she applied her remarkable voice and stage presence to a new career as a jazz cabaret diva. She’s made, I think, just one revisitation to Monster territory since (which you can read about here).

Late this summer, though, Holly announced that she was bringing the old show back for an evening in October, though she wasn’t clear about how she’d be doing it: perhaps reworked for the acoustic jazz band she’s used for the last couple of decades, or perhaps with her going it alone (with the Kurzweil and sequencers brought out of mothballs and will go it alone). At any rate, I thought I’d be going along – possibly in search of my own confused, similarly theatrical mid-twenties self, perhaps to see if I got along with him a little better.

However, everything was upended in early September following Holly’s jolting appearance in the auditions for ‘The X-Factor’. Ubercamp, leather-clad and singing Meredith Brooks’ Bitch, she went full-on nightclub and came on to Simon Cowell like a kinky Weimar nightmare with a riding crop. Inspired by the experience (and not a little miffed at the mocking edit that made it to TV) Holly’s now claiming that “the evil jazz cabaret performer in (me) has clawed its way to the surface”, and has morphed the October show into an upbeat Halloween “Spooky Little Girl” special (billed as “cabaret classics, spooktacular rocking favourites and self-penned songs as only our Diva can deliver them”).

I can’t help thinking that an opportunity’s been lost (or steamrollered) but I might show up anyway. She’s still promising to pepper all of the knowing cornballery with old FHM songs; several existing set standbys (such as Stay With Me, seen below in a torch-jazz arrangement from 2009) originated in the old show, and a new-ish piano/vocal song Confessions (posted up online a year ago) suggests a creative leaning back towards the old days of torch and bearing witness. Regardless of any of that, there’s still the voice; there’s still the onstage magnetism. Should be some sort of a blast.

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Also during the midmonth, acclaimed LBTQ folktronicist Minute Taker (aka Ben McGarvey) takes his multimedia show ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ out on tour in England and Scotland. I missed the news about his summer tour (which spiralled out from his homebase of Manchester, taking in Oldham, Chorlton and the Didsbury Art Festival plus a trans-Pennine appearance at Hebden Bridge) but managed to catch the news about his autumn followups in Glasgow, Brighton and London (including an appearance at the seventeenth century “actor’s church”, St Pauls in Covent Garden). Here’s the story:

“Singer-songwriter Minute Taker and BFI award-winning animation artist Ana Stefaniak have created a haunting, modern fable told through projected film and an epic live band performance of Minute Taker’s upcoming album… Expect to be immersed in a dark and magical world of strange animated characters and piano songs brimming with ethereal harmonies, fizzing synthesisers and orchestral twists.

“In ancient Greek philosophy Aristotle first popularised the notion that artists, poets and writers were of a melancholic disposition. In the middle ages melancholics were thought to be possessed by demons if they could not be “cured” of their depressive tendencies. Set on a desolate seashore, ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ explores the notion of the archetypal artist as he journeys through the euphoric highs and the self-destructive lows of his creative cycles. A new romantic relationship brings the artist the contentment he craves but it soon becomes apparent that there’s something else lurking in the shadows; a ghostly, shapeshifting third entity whose form is entirely dependent upon the artist’s current mindset. Sometimes a saviour, a source of inspiration and hope, sometimes a savage, ruthlessly determined on driving his lover away.”

Ben comments “one of my biggest influences when creating ‘To Love Somebody Melancholy’ was Kate Bush’s masterpiece ‘The Ninth Wave’. Such a wonderfully magical, otherworldly and at times frightening journey into the unknown. I never tire of going on this adventure with her. Come join our own dark adventure, inspired by Kate’s.”

Dates:

Websters Theatre, 416 Great Western Road, Woodlands, Glasgow, G4 9HZ, Scotland, Sunday 15th October 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
St Paul’s Church, 29 Bedford St, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9ED, London, England, Saturday 21st October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Latest Music Bar, 14-17 Manchester Street, Brighton, BN2 1TF, England, Sunday 22nd October 2017, 7.30pm (with Paul Diello) – information here

Additional support comes in Brighton comes from the award-winning “pop/folk/fabulous” singer-songwriter Paul Diello, who recently wowed the Brighton Fringe Festival with a sold out run of five-star-review shows and who promises “a special set of songs” for the occasion. Citing Madonna, Bowie, Kate Bush and Anohni as inspirations, Paul is an increasingly powerful artistic presence in the LGBT underground, operating in the febrile interface between cabaret, chart pop, queerness and visual staging (in particular, via video). Provocative and insidious, with an ear for the brazen tunes of ‘80s synthpop, Paul reminds me of a tougher Marc Almond – albeit with the sturdy physique of a dockside bouncer – while his songs are sharp confections of fists, flowers and standing your ground.

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Kate Bush seems to have become a recurring presence in this thread. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but I’ve always drawn a vague connecting line between ‘The Ninth Wave’ and Cardiacs’ 1989 album ‘On Land And In The Sea’.

Despite their common south London roots and the bare three years between them, there doesn’t initially seem to be much linking Bush’s silky-petalled Fairlight-driven art pop with the shrill, switchbacking, horns-and-artpunk firepower of Cardiacs, let alone their urchin squawks versus her sensual coo (though I’d have loved to have heard them cover each other). Dipping beneath the surface, however, reveals plenty to unite the two work. There’s the common and commonly transmogrified debt to English prog (in the structural ambition, the little flourishes of grandeur, and the enthusiastic mining of everything from twinkling tunes to violent psychedelic riffs, looming synth orchestration to jigs and jittering dreamscapes). There’s the common immersive marine motif – even when the sea’s banished from the foreground, it’s always present to embrace, propel, threaten or dissolve the bobbing characters within the songs. And although ‘The Ninth Wave’ centres pretty clearly on the near-death experience and night journey of a single castaway, while ‘On Land…’ zig-zags crazily over suburbs, shorelines, skies and inlets while weaving through multiple blurred perspectives (from the individual to that of a kind of profoundly skewed post-war national consciousness) in both works a half-sleeping, half-waking British mythology gets forked up and worked over anew, with a relentless filmic curiosity.

‘On Land And In The Sea’ provided most of the songs played in Cardiacs’ 1990 concert film ‘Marenest’, which brings its own chaotic theatrics to a fundraiser showing in Bristol. Live support comes from brutally grand, macabre Yorkshire rockers The Scaramanga Six, bringing a punchy live set based in part on their new crowdfunded ‘Chaotica’ album.

If ‘On Land…’ really was intended as some kind of concept album, it hid the fact under a typically Cardiacs welter of invention and disinformation. In contrast, ‘Chaotica’ wears its conceptual heart on a stained sleeve – the Scaramangas have been pretty open about its roots in “an abstract story roughly hewn from a concept of a dystopian island society. A place where everything has fallen into ruin, yet people still seem to have the same preoccupation with the trivial crap they had before. The population trudge through a chaotic existence on top of each other with absolutely no hope of a better life. Society is reduced to its base behaviour yet people still crave superficial fixes. The human condition carries on regardless. There is no outcome, no lessons to be learned. Familiar?” ‘Chaotica’ might not quite be a Brexit ‘Quadrophenia’, but it’s clearly leaning that way.

As is generally the rule with Cardiacs-related events these days, all profits on the day (including bonus donations by bucket or booking-stage gifting) are going to fund the care of Cardiacs’ driving force Tim Smith as he continues to battle against the aftermath of heart attacks and stroke. Note that the venue is quite hard to find, hidden as it is away behind the rubbish bins in a nondescript Bristol car park. Some Cardiacs fans would claim that this is only appropriate.

‘Maresnest’: Tim Smith Benefit with The Scaramanga Six
Cube Microplex, Dove Street South (off top-left of King Square), Kingsdown, Bristol, BS2 8JD, England
Saturday 21st October 2017, 7.00pm – information

Tags: Ana Stefaniak, Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Cardiacs, Glasgow (Scotland), Holly Penfield, Kate Bush, London (England), Minute Taker, multimedia, Paul Diello, The Scaramanga Six

June 2017 – the month’s Daylight Music gigs in London – Jherek Bischoff, Emma Gatrill & Liam Byrne (June 3rd); Epic45, The Great Albatross, and B. J. Cole & Emily Burridge (June 10th); Louis Barabbas, Melissa Parmenter and Ben McManus & Clara Delfina (June 17th); Trans-Siberian March Band, Antony Elvin & His Men and Toby Hay (June 24th)

25 May

The people behind eclectic, free, family-friendly London event (and ‘Misfit City’ favourite) Daylight Music are swirling back into action in June with four weekly gigs to start their summer season (even if two of them aren’t nominally DM events, the Daylight imprint shows clearly). Here’s me simply boosting the existing signal…

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Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 252 – Jherek Bischoff + Emma Gatrill + Liam Byrne
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Only Jherek Bischoff would record an album in an empty, two-million-gallon underground water tank (with a reverb delay lasting forty-five seconds). A fabulously inventive and playful musician, Jherek is a mostly self-taught composer whose music dazzles, confounds and delights.

“Liam Byrne divides his time between playing very old and very new music on the viol. ‘The Times’ praised his “nuanced and expressive, stylish virtuosity”. He’s worked with artists including Damon Albarn, Nils Frahm and Matthew Herbert, and the likes of Nico Muhly have written works for him.

“Emma Gatrill is a multi-instrumentalist based in Brighton. Playing live, she augments her harp and vocal with ambient analogue synths and drums machines, layered with guitar atmospherics from Marcus Hamblett.”

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Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 253 – Epic45 + The Great Albatross + B. J. Cole & Emily Burridge
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 10th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“The much-loved epic45 — championed by the much-missed John Peel — have been making music for over twenty years. Their celebrated EPs and albums are inspired by the ever-changing English landscapes.

“The Great Albatross tug gently on the heartstrings with their sweetly shimmering indie songs. Formed in Glasgow by A. Wesley Chung (formerly of Boris Smile), the group has an expansive, international list of contributors and collaborators.

“If you had to combine any two instruments, you might not immediately think of putting cello and steel guitar together, but B. J. Cole and Emily Burridge confound expectations with their dynamic, sophisticated music. Hailed as “languorous, sensuous, moving music…amazing!” by ‘Art Nouveau’, these fine musicians weave around each other, mixing their intuitive improvisations with inspired, moving interpretations of classic pieces.”

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Arctic Circle presents:
Louis Barabbas + Melissa Parmenter + Ben McManus & Clara Delfina
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 17th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Louis Barabbas is a Daylight Music favourite, thrilling the audience and tearing up the stage with his caustic love songs and energetic show. A writer, performer and label director, he’s performed all over the world and shared stages with acts including Motörhead, Supergrass and The Blockheads.

“Melissa Parmenter is a well-respected film producer, who’s collaborated closely with director Michael Winterbottom over the last fifteen years, including producing all three series of ‘The Trip’ trilogy. She’s also an accomplished composer and pianist, having scored a number of films including ‘Genova’, ‘The Killer Inside Me’ and ‘Comes A Bright Day’.

“After repeatedly meeting at various festivals last year, Ben McManus & Clara Delfina decided to join forces to sing American old-time and bluegrass music, blending banjo, fiddle and guitar with their beautiful harmonies.”

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Arctic Circle presents:
Trans-Siberian March Band + Antony Elvin & His Men (with Nina Miranda) + Toby Hay
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 24th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Summer Solstice edition…

“It’s always a party when the Trans-Siberian March Band are around! A riotous jumble of cabaret, carnival and overwhelming joy, this 13-piece Balkan brass band have delighted audiences at Glastonbury, Woman and the Royal Albert Hall. The Times called them “hugely entertaining… perfect festival crowd-pleasures.” They’ll be playing their winning mix of traditional Turkish and gypsy tunes, Russian sing-alongs and swinging klezmer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz0YY473Fp8

“Antony Elvin (“a Noel Coward for the Noel Fielding generation!’, according to Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh!) is a singer/songwriter from London. His songs take the listener out on a ridiculous spree, in ‘Perfect London’ – a London of your dreams, gaslit yet modern, pastoral yet subliminally violent. In a strong English accent, he sings about the characters he meets and the romances of the day without the vulgar baggage of angst. Special guest for this concert is Nina Miranda of Smoke City, Shrift and Zeep – she of ‘Underwater Love’ fame.

“Toby Hay makes instrumental music inspired by the landscape, people and history of Mid Wales. A guitarist and composer, ‘Folkroom‘ claim that “he’s one of the finest storytellers… and he’s never sung a word.”

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As ever, there are likely to be interstitial musical acts filling in the gaps between acts (via loops, atmospheres or turns on the venue’s grand piano or massive church organ), plus late in-the-day extra recruitments. These will be announced closer to the time.

Good to see Toby Hay on one of the bills – his debut EP featured in ‘Misfit City’ several years ago, and since then he’s become a mainstay of the Lamplight acoustic nights up at Regather in Sheffield…

Tags: acoustic guitar music, Antony Elvin & His Men, Arctic Circle (promoter), B. J. Cole, Ben McManus, big bands, cello music, chamber ensemble, Clara Delfina, Daylight Music (event), Emily Burridge, Emma Gatrill + Liam Byrne, epic45, hapr, Jherek Bischoff, London (England), Louis Barabbas, Marcus Hamblett, Melissa Parmenter, Michael Winterbottom, multi-instrumentalists, Nina Miranda, pedal steel guitar music, Sheffield (England), Smoke City, The Great Albatross, The Lamplight Club (event), Toby Hay, Trans-Siberian March Band, viol music

June 2017 – upcoming English gigs – the return of Pram with the immersive ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’ event in Birmingham (June 3rd); Zarjaz Baby and Jon Slade/Night of the Comet in London (June 3rd); Arthur Russell’s ‘Calling Out Of Context’ revisited in London (June 7th)

23 May

Some shows and events to start June off. In Birmingham, experimental dream pop/post rock band Pram (one of the most original and charming groups ever to work in either genre) have resurfaced and are taking over an Edgbaston park for a very different kind of performance. Back in London there are opportunities to catch up with Zarjaz Baby (one of the wilder characters from the original wave of British post-punk) an acoustic set from Jon Slade (who’s navigated his way through a heap of scenes from art-punk to Riot Grrl to a thousand indie DJ nights); and a recreation of the cello/pop songs of Arthur Russell, one of the darlings of the 1980s New York loft music scene.

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for-Wards, MAC Birmingham and Pram present:
Pram: ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’
Martineau Gardens, 27 Priory Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B5 7UG, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 4:30pm – free event – information here, here and here

“Composers and sonic artists Pram have been exploring south Birmingham with the help of local community groups to uncover the sounds of the locality. The results are both familiar and surprising.

“Let Pram take you on a journey through the city, a sound trail through the four wards of Birmingham’s Edgbaston district. Hear the world from the perspective of a bee as it flutters and forages. The snuffles of a tiny baby become the snores of a lion, the gurgle of a stream a mighty cataract. Come along and follow the woodland trail, bring a picnic and settle down for a performance inspired by the sound of the city as you’ve never heard it before.

“Set in the magical surroundings of Martineau Gardens, ‘Under the Blossom that Hangs on the Bough’ is an installation and performance by Pram, celebrating the sounds of Edgbaston. It will take place at Martineau Gardens on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd June, concluding at 6.30pm with a Pram performance inspired by sound recordings made in the wards of Quinton, Harborne, Edgbaston and Bartley Green. Free admission if you register at Eventbrite…”

This isn’t quite the same Pram that charmed us and subverted pop for a surprisingly long stint in the ’90s and noughties across a string of albums which included ‘Dark Island’ and ‘Sargasso Sea’ and a sound that seemed to be part child’s murmur, part clinking post-kosmische stroll and part friendly haunted house. Most obviously, singer and lyricist Rosie Cuckston (she who used to mount her keyboard on an ironing board at concerts) is absent, having moved on into academia and a more direct form of the social activism which the band’s eclectic inclusiveness and tendency to take philosophical side roads only hinted. That said, the rest of the band’s original creative core (multi-instrumentalists Matt Eaton, Sam Owen and Max Simpson) are all present, having spent the interim years of Pram downtime working with wonky loops as Two Dogs, creating film and theatre sound and making sonic art out of books with the Sound Book Project.

This also isn’t the first time that the post-Rosie Pram’s reappeared. Earlier in May they made an appearance at Imaginary Musics in Switzerland, playing a “music for Kopfkino” audio-visual set in a festival dedicated to “cinematic, recomposed and fictional musics”, and it seems as if losing Rosie’s quiet reflective voice and cocooned lyrics has shifted them further over into the areas suggested by Matt’s sound design and by Sam and Max’s live sound art. On-spec, it seems as if they’ve succeeded in becoming a kind of “post-band”, with a foot in their old live work, song-structures and performance coherence, but leaning towards something far more abstract and ego-free. ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’ sounds as if it will be something fascinating to be immersed in – an urban psychedelic afternoon stroll with the family, an aural refraction of Birmingham through leaves, greenery and company.

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Zarjaz Baby + Jon Slade
The Horse Hospital, The Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 7.00pm – information

“An existentialist extravaganza featuring a solo acoustic set from Zarjaz Baby (Freakapuss and former Tronics). Zarjaz will be performing dark atmospheric songs, full of imagery, with jazz, blues, early ’60s beat and pop influences, with live performance artists, in a style not seen since the basement and candles days of Beatniks.

“Also featured on the night is a solo acoustic Love-Rock revival set from Jon Slade/Knight Of The Comet, incorporating songs from his former bands Huggy Bear and Comet Gain, plus a Fire Department number, some Electric Bull re-workings, as well as songs he wrote with Wolfy Jones.

“’60s European pop music in between sets, Francoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot, Gillian Hills. Expect sombre girls dressed in black and boys in Breton shirts.”
For more information contact incoming@freakapuss.com

For more on Zarjaz’s chequered life and career, have a read of this interview he did with ‘The Quietus’ three years ago, featuring accounts of brushes with mental illness, of releasing surreal post-punk songs with titles like Shark Fucks, of arguing with ‘2000AD’ over his stage name, and of having his image ripped off by Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

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XOYO Live and Milestones present:
‘Arthur Russell – A Classic Reinterpreted’
XOYO, 32-37 Cowper Street, St Lukes, London, EC2A 4AP, England
Wednesday 7th June 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

“It’s been said that “Arthur’s songs were so personal that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music.”

“Twenty-five years after Arthur Russell‘s death, some of the most exciting, forward-thinking faces in music are set to present a unique rendition of Arthur Russell’s timeless album ‘Calling Out Of Context’. A posthumous album that brought together twelve incredible tracks from across two previously unreleased LPs, ‘Calling Out Of Context’ represents Arthur in his prime. Two decades later and the music sounds as contemporary as ever – a huge inspiration for those performing on the night. We’re very excited to hear this new rendition.”

Bringing together elements of electropop, classical minimalism, post-disco, hip hop and singer-songwriter work, the ‘Calling Out Of Context’ songs span twenty years of Arthur’s composing and creative history while he was battling to fuse the parallel New York worlds of dance culture and art music between the late ’70s and the early ’90s – a pioneer of the freewheeling musical eclectism which today we pretty much take for granted. Take a look at this salvaged 1987 interview feature from the ‘Melody Maker’ for more on the topic, featuring reflections from Arthur and others on Indian music, the pulse shared by formal minimalism and New York dance clubs, and the social and cultural challenges of the time regarding blending “high” and “low” cultures.

The band for this London performance consists of Ashley Henry (keyboards), Midori Jaeger (cello), Alica Higgins (vocals), Sam Gardner (drums) and Joe Downard (bass).

Tags: Arthur Russell, Ashley Henry, Birmingham (England), Comet Gain, Freakapuss, Huggy Bear, Joe Downard, Jon Slade, Knight Of The Comet, London (England), Midori Jaeger, Pram, Sam Gardner, Tronics, Zarjaz Baby

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – The Magic Lantern, Nick Ereaut, Amy Walker and Sky Coloured at Rain Today (May 18th); Vanishing Twin and Dijf Sanders at Total Refreshment Centre (May 19th); Quiet Boy, Roxanne Tataei and Brigitte Aphrodite at Total Refreshment Centre (May 25th)

9 May

Pulled out of the bag for today’s post of “soon-to-arrive” shows in the capital – a free baroque pop songwriter’s night and a pair of oblique pop evenings with fairly diverse bills. Almost entirely cut’n’pasted info here, since I’m up against time again.

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Rain Today and Sky Coloured present:
Rain Today: The Magic Lantern + Nick Ereaut + Amy Walker + Sky Coloured
The Junction, 171 Coldharbour Lane, Loughborough Junction, London, SE5 9PA, England
Thursday 18th May 2017 , 7.00pm – free event – information

“The Magic Lantern is the musical moniker of Jamie Doe. A multi-instrumentalist with an immediately arresting voice, he is currently recording his third album ‘To The Islands’, mostly written during a tumultuous journey to Australia, where he was born, after nearly ten years away.

“Following the stripped-back intimacy of Jamie’s second album, ‘To This Islands’ features a powerful new ensemble exploring memory, hope and our perennial search for acceptance with an intriguing variety of musical textures. ‘To The Islands’ is due for release in the winter of 2017/18.

Nick Ereaut is an East London based singer-songwriter and jazz musician. He grew up studying classical piano and double bass before becoming a jazz bass player by trade. Aside from these roots, his influences include Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Donny Hathaway, Nik Bärtsch and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Ted Hughes. He’s currently working on his debut EP, featuring a string quartet.

“Amy Walker‘s slow, folky songs tell tales of dropping out of university, facing adversity in the workplace and the treasures and trials of love. Born in London in 1984 (and recently returned after a decade in Paris) she originally studied songwriting and the physics of sound in Dartington, Devon: she has gone on to record in an aircraft hangar and a mine, and her piano duet ‘My Head Is A Piano’ called for the pianists to sit cross-legged under their pianos.

“Her first studio album, ‘Unravel’, tells the story of the last decade of her life, from abandoning university (Michael And The South West Useless Brigade), to being paid less than her male counterpart (Filthy Little Shrew), to finding peace (Angels Come Down), and losing it again (She Did Tell You).

“Sky Coloured are a symphonic pop band from south-east London. A collective of brilliant musicians playing songs of outstanding craft and originality, they put out their debut LP, ‘Starting Time’, in December 2016.”

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Total Refreshment Centre presents:
Vanishing Twin + Dijf Sanders
Total Refreshment Centre, 2a Foulden Road, Shacklewell, London, N16 7UR, London, England
Friday 19th May 2017, 7.00pm – information

“Oblique pop ensemble Vanishing Twin formed in 2015 over a love of unusual instruments, freaky records and the irresistible seduction of A Good Groove. Founder Cathy Lucas, after releasing a string of conceptual cassettes on her own RAM* label under the name Orlando, put a band together and named it after her Vanishing Twin, a sister absorbed in utero, when they were both still a cluster of cells.

“For the launch of the project’s new EP, Cathy is joined by drummer Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga, Shit and Shine, Raime, Neon Neon), bassist Susumu Mukai (a.k.a. primitive electronic producer Zongamin), library music head Phil M.F.U. (Man From Uranus) on strange sounds, and film-maker/visual artist Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion.

“Dijf Sanders‘s last album, ‘Moonlit Planetarium’, takes you to a trip of yet undiscovered regions where the most diverse individuals have met in a flawless vibe to retire in harmony and peace whilst wondering what so-called civilization has done to their former planet. Tribal rhythms, warm melodies, electronics, deep melancholy and spoken word fused to a seamless and beautiful musical work in utopia. Dijf is based in Gent, Belgium and produced ‘Moonlit Planetarium’ in collaboration with brass and flute players Nathan Daems and Jon Birdsong.”

There’ll also be a DJ set helmed by psychedelic “out-of-this-world music” band Flamingods.

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Quiet Boy presents:
Quiet Boy + Roxanne Tataei + Brigitte Aphrodite + Gemma Cairney (DJ set)
Total Refreshment Centre, 2a Foulden Road, Shacklewell, London, N16 7UR, London, England
Thursday 25th May 2017, 7.00pm – information

“Multi-instrumental pop quintet Quiet Boy (offering a heavy poly-rhythmic punch, weaving lines, pretty piano, romantic strings and deep bass webs) are celebrating the release of their first EP, ‘Earwig with an evening of new material and video projections. It’s an incredibly important night for the Quiet Boy project, which has been in the making for over three years.

“Roxanne Tataei (a.k.a. Rox) describes herself and her new music as “the lovechild of Minnie Riperton and Stevie Nicks, by way of South London”: her critically acclaimed debut album ‘Memoirs’ was released in 2010 on Rough Trade and led to tours with Mark Ronson, Paul Weller and Nitin Sawhney.

“Wanderlust sated, the last few years have been dedicated to writing and recording new material. Her second album’s on the way with new creative collaborators including Nick Trepka (Emmy the Great), Grammy award winning producer Al Shux (Lana Del Rey/ Alicia Keys) and NTS maverick Lord Tusk (Dean Blunt, Hyperdub) in tow. Roxanne Tataei is gearing up for 2017 – more expressive, exploratory and emancipated than ever before.

“Brigitte Aphrodite is a multifaceted punk showgirl and performance artist committed to social expression. She is most recently known for her critically acclaimed show ‘My Beautiful Black Dog’ a part-gig/part-theatre punk musical exploring depression. The show sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe, featured on the BBC 10’O Clock News and in the Guardian and Elle magazine, and toured the UK with sold-out shows at Southbank Centre and The Wellcome Collection in London.

“Brigitte is soon to release her debut album, book and second theatrical show (‘Parakeet’).”

To round things off there’ll be a DJ set by Radio 1’s Gemma Cairney.

Tags: Amy Walker, Brigitte Aphrodite, Dijf Sanders, Gemma Cairney, Nick Ereaut, Quiet Boy, Rain Today (event/promoter), Roxanne Tataei, Sky Coloured, The Junction (venue) - Loughborough Junction - London, The Magic Lantern, Total Refreshment Centre (promoter/venue), Vanishing Twin

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – Beatrix Players + King Of The Opera (May 11th); Cosmo Sheldrake + A House In The Trees (May 12th)

2 May

A few more warmly off-kilter London gigs coming up in early May: Beatrix Players‘ elegant chamber-pop, King Of The Opera‘s rough-edged alternative folk, Cosmo Sheldrake‘s poly-instrumental Edward Lear-inspired busk whimsy, A House In The Trees‘ oblique chillout…

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Beatrix Players present:
Beatrix Players + King Of The Opera
Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton Street, Hoxton, London, N1 6SH, England
Thursday 11th May 2017, 7:30pm – information

“Through their enchantingly dark and evocative melodies, expansive arrangements and empowered orchestral sound Beatrix Players tell stories of real life and fantasy. Citing influences as diverse as Michael Nyman and Regina Spektor and drawing comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush and Einaudi Ludovico, this London-based, all-female trio combine elements of folk, jazz, progressive and classical music.

“In 2015 the band took their unique sound – a beautiful combination of vocals, piano and cello – into the studio to record their self-produced debut album, which has been mixed by two-time BBC Folk Award winner, Jim Moray. That album, titled ‘Magnified’, is now brought to you in an evening with musicians from the album: Robyn Hemmings on double bass, Maria Kroon on violin, Emanuela Monni on percussion, Jez Houghton on French horn. Pop/soul/funk choir Sound will also be joining in.”

King Of The Opera (formerly known as Samuel Katarro) is the musical project of Alberto Mariotti – a songwriter from Tuscany, Italy – first introduced to the public at the renowned Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona in the Spring of 2012. The project’s strength lies in its continuous search of the meeting points between seemingly irreconcilable genres: distorted punk-blues, bewildered (and bewildering) folk ballads and digressions into the acid realm of psychedelia.

“In 2016 King Of The Opera released his new album ‘Pangos Sessions’, ten songs that summarize his musical career in a pretty original way, alternating acoustic reinterpretations from the King Of The Opera/Samuel Katarro songbook and five cover songs (originally released in Mariotti’s birth year, 1985), by The Cure, The Waterboys, The Replacements, Tom Waits and Sonic Youth. The collection also includes the unreleased alt-folk-ballad By The Shore.”

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Rockfeedback presents:
Cosmo Sheldrake + A House In The Trees
The Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette Street, Hackney, London, E9 6NU, England
Friday 12th May 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

“Cosmo Sheldrake is a twenty-five-year-old multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and producer. He regularly performs on banjo, loop station, keyboards, double bass, drums, penny whistle, sousaphone, accordion and many more. He is an inspirational singer and improviser, and much of his work is concerned with play, nonsense and the sonorous environment.

“Cosmo composes music for film and theatre and tours internationally, performing solo and with several bands including Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit and the Gentle Mystics. He ran a community choir until 2013, teaches in schools and privately and has facilitated music workshops and youth empowerment and nature awareness camps across Europe and North America.”

Support comes from smooth and hallucinatory dark-pop/trip hop act A House In The Trees, the core of New Cross’ Rising Sun Collective.

Tags: A House In The Trees, Beatrix Players, Cosmo Sheldrake, Emanuela Monni, Jez Houghton, King Of The Opera (Samuel Katarro), London (England), Maria Kroon, multi-instrumentalists, Rising Sun Collective, Robyn Hemmings, Rockfeedback (promoter), Sonic Youth, Sound (choir), The Cure, The Replacements, The Waterboys, Tom Waits, trio music

April 2017 – upcoming London gigs – three songwriters – Momus (10th); BC Camplight (20th); David Vaughan (29th)

4 Apr

This month, there’s the chance to catch the work of three distinctive and different songwriters who are making individual appearances in London.

In reverse date order – there’s the warm and witty cabaret folk of David Vaughan, who ruminates on subjects from cheerful lust to the downfall of Andrew Mitchell, to the resolve of bereaved children. There’s the wrecked, wracked, shaggy-falsetto alternative pop of Philly refugee-turned-Manchester revenant BC Camplight. Finally – or firstly – there’s whatever a reflective, career-compiling Momus currently cares to pick out from his twenty-six years of contentious adventure (whether it’s the sampler pop performance art palimpsests of his recent work, the Pet-Shop-Boys-do-transgressive-Gainsbourg synth pop of his middle period, or the dazzlingly literate acoustic folk of the early years when he lined up alongside Cave, Cohen and Brel as a speculative, lethally witty chronicler/observer of the possible, the askew and the perverse).

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Momus
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Monday 10th April 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Nick Currie, more popularly known under the artist name Momus (after the Greek god of mockery), is a Scottish songwriter who lives in Japan. He also writes fiction and reviews contemporary art.

“A veteran of British indie labels, Momus is currently in the midst of a re-release program which will see all his early material reissued by Cherry Red. His latest LP of new compositions is ‘Scobberlotchers’ — a response to Brexit and Trump — and his latest novel is ‘Popppappp’, the tale of two graphic designers captured by fanatical followers of Mark E. Smith.”

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Parallel Lines presents:
BC Camplight
St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Camden Town, London, NW1 1UL, England
Thursday 20th April 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Lost treasure needn’t be found in the distant past; the 21st century hides many artists who disappeared into the great wide yonder. BC Camplight (the alter-ego of American songwriter Brian Christinzio) is one such example.

“Originally from New Jersey, Christinzio started playing piano aged just four, inspired by his mum’s Jerry Lee Lewis and Nilsson records and his Dad’s classical collection. Depression and crippling hypochondria clashed with captaining the football team and a penchant for boxing. Post-school, he fell in with people, “willing to go through shit to be a musician,” which saw him relocate to Philadelphia where he occasionally played live with Philly faves The War On Drugs and guested on Sharon Van Etten’s album ‘Epic’. He went on to release his own albums in 2005 and 2007, both gems of a certain psych-pop vintage, combining eloquent songwriting with a self-destructive bent. Christinzio certainly knew it – he’s described himself as “the guy who blew it.”

“But this sublime talent with the keening vocal and fearless approach to lyrical introspection has another chance. His new album ‘How To Die In The North’, recorded in his newly adopted home of Manchester, England, is a fantastically rich, stylistically diverse trip. From dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, from blue-eyed soul to speedy surf-pop, from sparser piano balladry to psychedelic showstoppers and a grand finale that’s part Nilsson and part Broadway showtune.”

There’s a further twist to the tale in that BC has recently fallen foul of Britain’s ludicrous visa laws and is now having to split his living time between Paris and Philadelphia (the very place he had to leave in order to achieve this artistic and personal rebirth). Come along to this solo piano-and-voice gig on the 20th to at least express a little sympathy.

(UPDATE, 7th April 2017 – Another sorry twist. This gig has been moved to St Pancras Old Church following the sad, sudden closing of The Forge. Another great venue goes down… At least this means that the show doesn’t get pulled and that more tickets are available.)

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MAP Studio Café presents:
David Vaughan
MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Saturday 29th April 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Singer-songwriter David Vaughan’s highly original mix of chanson, latin jazz and classical music comes to MAP for the very first time. Playing two forty-five minute sets of original songs arranged especially for voice, piano/classical guitar, accordion and clarinet, David calls on a number of influences including French chanson of the mid 20th century, modern and traditional Latin jazz, and classical music. They are melodic in nature with intricately arranged accompaniments highlighting David’s talents as both a performer, composer and arranger.

“With a varied career that spans work as a big band jazz trumpeter, jazz fusion keyboard-player (with Matt Borgmann’s 1990s band Meander), rock singer, commercial music composer and music teacher, David leads the show in his own relaxed, friendly style putting his audience at ease for what is an intimate, often heart-felt, sometimes dramatic, sometimes virtuosic show. Few contemporary British songwriters propose such an original blend both of instrumentation and of musical styles. The sound of top UK cabaret/jazz accordionist Romano Viazzani, combined with the mellow tone of upcoming classical clarinetist Jordi Juan Pérez, provides an inimitable backdrop to Vaughan’s songs. And yet this is neither folk nor traditional song, but something entirely original.”

Tags: BC Camplight, Café Oto (promoter/venue), David Vaughan, MAP Studio Cafe (promoters), Momus, St Pancras Old Church (venue) - Kings Cross - London - England, The Forge (promoter/venue)

April 2017 – upcoming London gigs – “wonk rock” with The Display Team + A Sweet Niche + Ham Legion (3rd); Patricia Hammond & Matt Redman’s Edwardian pop (3rd); SOIF Soiree with Society Of Imaginary Friends, David Skinner, The Support Stockings, Cian Binchy, Millie George, I Am Her, Martin Wakefield, Jed Demochowski, Anne Corrigan etc. (7th)

27 Mar

I was moved to jam these three early April gigs together for a preview. On the Wednesday, it’s up to you whether you go for the tangled electric loom of wonky pop/jazz/punk noise or for the hundred-year-old pop hits with the Keep Calm And Carry On teatowels. Either way, you still get to attend the latest mixed-music-and-poetry SOIF cabaret on the following Friday…

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Bad Hedge presents:
The Display Team + A Sweet Niche + Ham Legion
The Birds Nest, 32 Deptford Church Street, Deptford, London, SE8 4RZ, England
Monday 3rd April 2017, 7.00pm – information

“A repulsive onstage three-way shocker! For one night in April, three heavyweights of the widely ignored wonk rock scene will spill off the stage in one of London’s best (and cheapest) small venues. And all for free! The Display Team: nob-bothering high-octave brutalitarians; like a small orchestra with big balls. A Sweet Niche: skronky honkies that bring an ominous twistin’ y’all can’t be resistin’. Ham Legion: kaleidoscopic power-pop rompers with more dinner ideas than you’ve had hot.”

For a little more on these people from back in the ‘Misfit City’ archives, have a peek here, here and here. Meanwhile, here’s the obligatory fistful of tunes.

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Wiltons Music Hall presents:
Monday Night Music: Patricia Hammond with Matt Redman
The Mahogany Bar @ Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, Whitechapel, London, E1 8JB, England
Monday 3rd April 2017, 8.00pm – free event – information here and here

“An evening of rousing Edwardian pop! Patricia Hammond and Matt Redman, world-renowned specialists in authentic historical performance, will play an assortment of pop songs from the Edwardian era, including some of the first songs ever written about motorised transport: Willie Had A Motor-Boat, In My Merry Oldsmobile, My Rickenbacker Car, Wait Till You Get Them Up In The Air, Boys, and many, many more delights. If you’re very nice to them, Patricia and Matt also promise some rousing singalongs to gems such as If You Were The Only Girl In The World and, for the WW1 Centenary’s sake, Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit-Bag.

Matt will be performing on piano, guitar, banjo and accordion, and will treat people to instrumentals of some of the new dance crazes of the 1900s and 1910s, such as tango, chorinho, ragtime, Hawaiian and blues. Of course, this being Wilton’s, songs of the great music hall era will also feature. All together now!”

* * * * * * * *

Society Of Imaginary Friends present:
Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree: “For Absent Friends” (featuring Society Of Imaginary Friends + David Skinner + The Support Stockings + Cian Binchy + Millie George + I Am Her + Martin Wakefield + Evie + Jed Demochowski + Anne Corrigan + Dj Onjdrew + others t.b.c.)
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 7th April 2017, 8.00pm – free event – information

The latest in Society of Imaginary Friends’ ongoing series of grab-bag gigs, featuring a number of faces which ought to be familiar from recent performances:

“A sunny spring park comes to life crowded with absent friends, friends turned imaginary, walking with the sun, singing and humming, playing rounders, turning summersaults, laughing with the children,climbing trees, smiling into the breeze and as the sun sets we gather round a bandstand at the centre of a green. Vegan ma-nah is brought out by sensual peace-loving Daleks… a gorgeous offering of sound and light a celebration of friendship.

“Performing on 7th is the virtuosic guitarist and velvety voiced singer David Skinner; harmonious vocal stylings from our choir The Support Stockings; fresh from his sold-out national tour, Cian Binchy; the fabulous young poet and star of the Round House and Young Vic Millie George; urban punk from the mighty Julie Riley‘s I Am Her; Martin Wakefield and Evie with inspiring poetry, music and verse; Jed Demochowski (of the VIPs) and his new band; Anne Corrigan delighting us with her poems; DJ Onjdrew, and a couple of super amazing surprise star guests. Plus us, theSociety Of Imaginary Friends.

“Please come and bring a memory, a line or two about your absent friend to say on the night. Looking forward to seeing you there. Don’t forget it is free entry and there is amazing vegan food and award-winning beverages to purchase.”

https://youtu.be/q66yOwa9fi0

Tags: A Sweet Niche, Anne Corrigan, Cian Binchey, David Skinner, DJ Ontjdrew, Evie (poet), Ham Legion, Her (Julie D. Riley), Jed Demochowski, Kabaret @ Karamel (event), London (England), Martin Wakefield, Matt Redman, Millie George, Patricia Hammond, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), The Display Team, The Support Stockings, The VIPs, Wilton's Music Hall

March 2017 – upcoming Brighton gigs – Oscillations V on the 10th (JØTA, MUMMY, Maskulin); The Real Music Club on the 25th (Brother Twain, Gail Storm Edmunds, Jack Pout)

3 Mar

Here are a couple of imminent Brighton events which caught my attention, initially through their connection with a certain strand of south-coast English psychedelia – gently self-exiled, looking outward from the shore, murmurating in open-sky freedom) which spans contact, membership, inspiration or practical fellowship with the likes of Damo Sukuki, The House of Love, Cardiacs, Stereolab, Levitation, the Lewes Psychedelic Festival et al.

That said, the full range of what you eventually get here, along Brighton’s eclectic seafront, seems to sit itself more in other areas: ‘60s pop and Anglo rhythm-and-blues (Love, Traffic, The Walker Brothers), synthpop, European dance music and broken beats, folk-club fingerpicking, slightly eldritch post-punk noise. Everything meets by the sea.

* * * * * * * *

The first of these two gigs takes place in central Brighton’s rock’n’roll boutique hotel, Hotel Pelirocco – two Regency townhouses turned into a glamour warren. Oscillations have been running free nights of electronic/psychedelic music and visuals there since last autumn, inspired by fifty years of assorted countercultures and altered states of mind: I’m only just catching up with this now.

Oscillations presents:
Oscillations V – JØTA + M U M M Y + Maskulin
Hotel Pelirocco, 10 Regency Square, Brighton, BN1 2FG, England
Friday 10th March 2017, 7.30pm – free event – information

“JØTA is electronic music producer Peter J.D Mason (half of Becky Becky, one-fifth of Cloud and formerly one-thirtieth of Fence Collective. He improvises electro-space-disco-synth-experimental-Soviet-dance tunes on cheap anal/igital synths inspired by the Soviet space programme of the ’50s and ’60s.

“MUMMY‘s Jo Spratley and Bic Hayes breathe and drink and eat and live with all the other creatures and plants and beings in England near The Sea. They need very little to survive. They dedicate their noise to the vanishing ones and long to slip through the deep with the seal.

“Maskulin provides a versatile collection of content generating modern twist on the beats scene. Expect vibrant combinations of genres from the likes of jazz and soul with modern rap to engineer a sound unique within the Brighton music scene.”

Also on hand are the “mind-melting visual projections” of Innerstrings, the “lumière” side of the son-et-lumière at Lewes Psychedelic Festival. DJ sets come from from the Oscillations organisers themselves and from DJ MessyTrax: “proud owner of one of the largest private collections of Legowelt vinyl in Fiveways… spinning a selection of tunes old and new, including aliases, side projects, collaborations and remixes… essential slam-jack electronics.”

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Later in the month, there’s an airier, gentler evening being staged a step or two westward in Hove, at which one of the newer Brighton bands are making their first live appearance.

The Real Music Club presents:
“The Triangulation of the New”: Brother Twain + Gail Storm Edmunds + Jack Pout
The Brunswick, 1-3 Holland Road, Hove, West Sussex, BN3 1JF, England
Saturday 25th March 2017, 8.00pm – information here or here

“The name “Brother Twain” has been rumoured and whispered about on the Brighton scene for a few years now, especially amongst fans of legendary Brighton garage band CLOWWNS. The time has arrived for the Rodes brothers, Étienne and Adrien, to launch the band: drawing influences from classic pop, less classic pop, Krautrock, crooners, bluegrass and film music, it’s grown-up-psych-prog-baroque pop (with a love of circular melodies and unexpected chords via guitars, strings and brass).

“Brighton dwellers since the early 2000s, Adrien and Étienne hail from the historic city of Versailles, France. It’s perhaps unsurprising (or inevitable) therefore that their sister went to school with members of Phoenix, and that Nicolas Godin of Air once studied under the benevolent supervision of their father at the Versailles School of Architecture. Adrien previously busied himself with recording under the aliases Topo Gigio and Rec.Tangle for mancunian label Melodic Records, while Étienne joined Stereolab offshoot Imitation Electric Piano (with Simon Johns and Joe Watson) for their second album, before becoming part of CLOWWNS. Most recently, both brothers participated in the live rendition of Tim Smith’s Spratleys Japs album ‘Pony’.

“United by blood and an undying love for a crafty tune (and armed with a long list of tracks written over the last ten years), the Rodes brothers joined forces and got to work in Adrien’s six-meter square studio on the Brighton seafront along with singer/lyricist Miles Heathfield (CLOWWNS, Poppycocks) and drummer Damo Waters (CLOWWNS, Tim Smith’s Spratleys Japs, Electric Soft Parade, Field Music, SLUG), while hired hands played strings and brass. Adrien and Étienne played everything else and everyone chipped in for backing vocals. The Brother Twain debut album has been out since 19th February; this is their debut gig.

“Niece of the late trombone legend Rico Rodriquez, Gail Storm Edmunds grew up heavily influenced by reggae, soul, jazz and blues. Having played sessions and toured all over the world with the likes of Eddie Floyd, Terence Trent D’Arby, Heidi Berry and Sacha Stone, she’s pioneers her own “Hippy Soul” sound, blending her strong, rich, powerful yet classical voice to simple, affective acoustic guitar, meaningful songwriting and a catchy, upbeat, positive style. Though Gail’s original debut album ‘Time Is The Master’ (recorded back in 1999) ended up unreleased – and she subsequently took time out for happy motherhood – she is making a comeback (having played a number of festivals last year) with the upcoming ‘This is Hippie Soul’ EP.

“Jack Pout is a BBC Folk Award-nominated singer/songwriter inspired by the revivalist musicians of the ’60s and ’70s. Jack’s music carries nuances of numerous influences such as John Martyn, Duster Bennett, Bob Dylan and Chris Smither but with an individuality that makes his music inimitably his. In 2015 he released his debut EP “Baksun” and he has just followed that up with the release of ‘Chrono Manual Man’ (an EP of his favourite songs from the ‘40s, ‘50’s, ‘70’s and 2016). Jack continues to play shows across the UK and Europe, playing and hosting stages at numerous festivals: his honest, and often deeply personal, style of writing is married to a love for humour. His live shows are known for their friendly and conversational style with audiences, and feared for his love of puns.”

Tags: Adrien Rodes, Étienne Rodes (E Rodes), Becky Becky, Brighton (England), Brother Twain, Christian Hayes (Bic Hayes), Cloud, CLOWWNS, Damo Waters, Fence Collective, Gail Storm Edmunds, Hove (England), Innerstrings (light show), Jack Pout, Jo Spratley, Maskulin, MessyTrax, Miles Heathfield, MUMMY, Oscillations (event/promoter), Peter J.D Mason (JØTA), The Real Music Club (event/promoter)

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Categories 2017, acoustic music, acoustic pop, baroque pop, chamber pop, dance music, dance pop, DIY music, DJ sets, downtempo, electronic, electronica, folk baroque, folk music, hip hop, instrumental music, noise rock, pop, post-punk, previews, psychedelic rock, rhythm'n'blues, rock, singer-songwriter, soul, space rock, synth pop, techno

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree, 3rd March – guitars, sopranos, art-pop, poets etc

28 Feb

The third of the year’s Society of Imaginary Friends soirees takes place in north London on the first Friday in March – the usual cosy-glorious, thought-provoking mishmash of sundry singer-songwriters, poets, classical musicians and people with ideas, encouraged and topped off by the all-bases-covered chamber pop of the Society themselves.

Society Of Imaginary Friends present:Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree: “A Breath Of Fresh Air” (featuring Society of Imaginary Friends + Anne Corrigan + David Skinner + Martin Wakefield + I Am Her + Duet Diana + Millie George
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 3rd March 2017, 8.00pm – free event – information

Word from SOIF’s Alfie and Louise:

“People have said “my goodness, Soif Soirees are unpredictable,” “Soif Soirees are like nothing I have experienced before,” or even ‘Soif Soirees feature some of the most moving and talented performers in London,’ and that Soif Soirees are a ‘a breath of fresh air.’ So this is our theme for our March Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree. A breathe of fresh air… remember what that used to feel like? Sweet oxygen hitting your lungs?… Your body aching with gratitude for the relief of it?… Yes, that’s good old Soiree wholesomeness… brought to you by our sponser TOYFE inc (Turn Off your Fucking Engine).

“Like a breeze from the mountains, we have new work from the incredible Millie George (poet laureate of the new generation); Duet Diana (a.k.a. Katie Morel Orchard and Sarah Lenney with their gorgeous operatic duets); punk mistress I Am Her (a.k.a. Julie Riley); god of small things Martin Wakefield. David Skinner is coming all the way from Cork, Ireland to delight us with his velvety tones and virtuosic guitar playing; the extraordinary Anne Corrigan will be reciting her poetry and – like a glass full of magical Listerine – we have the Society Of Imaginary Friends, so breathe deep and tune in. Remember the Piccadilly line is now running twenty-four hours, and there will be incredible vegan food on sale by the master chefs Kathy and Roger. We hope to see you on Friday for fun and a breath of fresh air…”

There are a few tasters below. I’m sorry that I couldn’t find more.

https://youtu.be/q66yOwa9fi0

Tags: Anne Corrigan, David Skinner, Duet Diana, Her (Julie D. Riley), Kabaret @ Karamel (event), Katie Morel Orchard, London (England), Martin Wakefield, Millie George, Sarah Lenney, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event)

March to September 2017 – upcoming gigs – North Sea Radio Orchestra out and about in England and Wales (sometimes with Crayola Lectern or William D. Drake)

23 Feb

Having bowed, hummed and carolled their way back into action with last September’s ‘Dronne’ album, plus a few end-of-the-year gigs, art-pop-touched chamber ensemble North Sea Radio Orchestra are casting a garland of assorted luminous live dates across England and Wales this year – starting in March, and continuing through April, July and September.

In keeping with their liking for ecclesiastical reverb, which suits their churchy acousti-tech sound (described recently as “sitting in a special place somewhere between Neu! and Arvo Pärt”), most of these gigs are taking place in current or former places of worship, some converted into community centres or arts spaces or (in the case of the Cardiff show) into acoustic recording studios.

St Paul’s Church, 55b Chapel Road, Worthing, BN11 1EE, England, Saturday 11th March 2017, 1.30pm (with Crayola Lectern) – information here and here
Gresham Centre @ St Anne & St Agnes Church, Gresham Street, Barbican, London, EC2V 7BX, Friday April 28th 2017, 7.30pm (with William D. Drake) – information here and here
Assembly Rooms @ Frome Memorial Theatre, Christchurch Street West, Frome, BA11 1EB England, Sunday 9th July 2017 (part of the Frome Festival – further details t.b.c.)
Sacred Trinity Church, Chapel Street, Salford, M3 5DW, England, Saturday 15th July 2017, 4.30pm (with William D. Drake) – information here and here
Acapela Studio @ Capel Horeb, Heol Y Pentre, Pentyrch, Cardiff, CF15 9QD, Wales, Saturday 23rd September 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

The Worthing show (a fundraiser for MIND) features a support slot for Chris Anderson’s rumpled, brass-dabbed domestic/psychedelic song project Crayola Lectern, while the London and Salford dates have William D. Drake in tow (playing a solo piano set, which may or may not focus on the kind of instrumental studies collected on his ‘Yews Paw’ album).

https://youtu.be/OojcQhQgWb4

There’s another Drake solo show taking place mid-tour in Greenwich, London – another solo piano set (details below). For news of Bill’s concurrent song tour – much of it a two-hander with another singer-songwriter friend, Stephen EvEns – check back on my earlier blog post from the 15th.

William D Drake – The Prince Of Greenwich, 72 Royal Hill, Greenwich, London, SE10 8RT, England, Friday 17th March 2017 – time & further information t.b.c.

Tags: Chris Anderson, Craig Fortnam, Crayola Lectern, Frome (England), James Larcombe, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Salford (England), Stephen Evens, William D. Drake, Worthing (England)

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – Coven ’17 English tour, 2nd-13th March (fightin’ women’s folk from O’Hooley & Tidow, Lady Maisery and Grace Petrie)

17 Feb

Coven, 2017

Last month’s astonishing Women’s March laid bare a fairly fundamental truth – that the backbone and much of the driving force of protest movements (certainly the successful ones) are made up of women.

Historically, one of the binding factors of this has been folk music – women singing, women playing, women writing or interpreting, and women inspiring from the stage. Though this kind of music’s often had a rough ride from the fashion police who drag it in and out of style, generally the performers have treated this as little more than an incidental matter – noted, grunted at, and set aside while the serious matter of talk’n’listen is gotten on with. Similarly, there’s nothing saying that folk performers whose public image might mostly be that of making pretty sounds on the radio won’t also retain, sustain or develop deep commitments to social politics, and thereby draw in anyone who’s prepared to think of them as more than an aural accessory to go with the wallpaper. At any time there are plenty of tours and shows taking place and reinforcing this, although I, for one don’t get to hear enough about them. Here’s one which I did get to hear about – six outspoken women on tour in March with a brace of songs and collective commitment, stirring up discussion and solidarity. Past craft; present engagement.

Woven from the usual brace of press releases:

“Coven are a collective of three of the British folk scene’s finest, most formidable and forthright female acts, taking to the stage to celebrate International Women’s Day in a week of unforgettable concerts. The exquisitely harmonic songwriting duo and BBC 6 Music favourites O’Hooley & Tidow (described as “defiant, robust, political, Northern, poetical folk music for the times we live in” by the ‘Independent’) will be joined by the enchanting BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Finalists Lady Maisery (“women with ideas, purpose and urgency… powerful, enthralling work” – ‘Songlines’) and the irrepressible Leicester songwriter, activist and performer Grace Petrie (“a powerful new songwriting voice” – ‘The Guardian’).

“Three years ago, they all got together to celebrate International Women’s Day in March with a series of three concerts. Since then, the tour has extended year on year… Experience these thought-provoking, entertaining and enthralling women debuting the music from their first collective EP, ‘Unholy Choir’ (recorded at Frome’s Cooper Hall in the early part of 2017), and performing both individually and collectively on one stage.”

Here are examples of work by each of the three Coven components; followed by a clip of all of them together, performing an extended harmony-folk take on Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work. A version of the latter is on ‘Unholy Choir’ along with the Maisery’s Rowan Rheingans’ resetting of female labour anthem Bread & Roses, a cover of the late Maggie Roche’s Quitting Time, an a capella version of Pat Humphries ’ Never Turning Back, a new version of Grace’s If There’s A Fire In Your Heart and a full sextet version of Coil & Spring (O’Hooley and Tidow’s Pussy Riot tribute, co-written with former Chumbawamba mainstay Boff Whalley). So far, the plan is for the EP to only be available at the gigs. Early on, at least, you’ll need to attend one to get one.

Full tour dates:

The Greystones, Greystones Road, Sheffield, S11 7BS, England, Wednesday 1st March 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Greystones, Greystones Road, Sheffield, S11 7BS, England, Thursday 2nd March 2017, 7.30pm – information
All Hallows Church, 24 Regent Terrace, Leeds LS6 1NP, England, Friday 3rd March 2017, 7.45pm – information
The Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen’s Square, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP, England, Saturday 4th 2017, 8.00pm – information
The Cluny, 36 Lime Street, Ouseburn, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 2PQ, England, Sunday 5th March 2017, 7.30pm – information
Music Room @ Philharmonic Hall, Hope Street, Liverpool, L1 9BP, England, Tuesday 7th March 2017, 8.00pm – information
West End Centre, Queens Road, Aldershot, GU11 3JD, England, Wednesday 8th March 2017, 8.00pm – information
Bridport Arts Centre, 9-9A South Street, Bridport DT6 3NR, England, Thursday 9th March 2017, 7.30pm – information
St John on Bethnal Green, 200 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 9PA, London, Friday 10th March 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Road, Nunhead, London, SE15 3BE, England, Saturday 11th March 2017, 7.15pm – information
Cooper Hall, Selwood Manor, Jacks Lane, Frome BA11 3NL, England , Sunday 12th March 2017, 3.30pm – information
The Guildhall, Guildhall Lane, Leicester, LE1 5FQ, England, Monday 13th March 2017, 7.15pm – information

Tags: Aldershot (England), Belinda O’Hooley, Boff Whalley, Bridport (England), Chumbawamba, Frome (England), Grace Petrie, Hannah James, Hazel Askew, Heidi Tidow, Huddersfield (England), Kate Bush, Lady Maisery, Leicester (England), listening to women, Liverpool (England), London (England), Maggie Roche, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England), O’Hooley & Tidow, Pat Humphries, Pussy Riot, Rowan Rheingans, Sheffield (England), The Roches, women of heart and mind

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Categories 2017, a capella, acoustic music, acoustic pop, agit-pop, alternative folk, blues, chamber music, chamber pop, crossover, folk music, political music, previews, protest songs, psychedelic folk, singer-songwriter

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – 1816 (featuring Wenche Losnegård, Audun Ellingsen and Gregor Riddell) in Frome (19th); Woodpigeon, Cevanne & Crewdson, More Is More and Matt Stewart-Evans at Daylight Music in London (19th); The Nightjar and Ys in Bristol (20th)

18 Nov

An English sandwich view of the weekend, with two West Country acoustic events mingling jazz, folk and post-folk framing the usual mixed-genre Daylight Music show in London.

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Frome’s Cooper Hall has a tradition of St Cecilia’s Day concerts crossing cultures and musical genres, as well as a growing relationship with the Norwegian arts scene. This Saturday, they blend both aspects.

St Cecilia’s Day Concert – The Norwegian Connection: 1816 (Wenche Losnegård &Audun Ellingsen)
Cooper Hall, Selwood Manor, Jacks Lane, Frome, BA11 3NL, England
Saturday 19th November 2016, 7.30pm – information

“1816 was the year without a summer. 1816 is also a collaboration – a new Norwegian alternative pop band consisting of two renowned and experienced jazz musicians.

“Wenche Losnegård is a singer, songwriter, arranger and conductor with a broad span of musical interests ranging from contemporary classical, improvisation and jazz. Educated at the Norwegian Music Academy and having received numerous awards including the state scholarship in 2010-11, she now sings in the Norwegian jazz-folk acapalla trio Eplemøya Songlag (with whom she has released two critically acclaimed albums). Audun Ellingsen is a versatile double bass player working within and beyond the boundaries of jazz. After studies at Leeds College of Music he moved back to Norway and established himself on the Norwegian scene, recording and performing with various acts such as Froy Aagre, Kenny Wheeler, Andy Sheppart and Nils Petter Molvaer: he has also released two critically acclaimed albums with his own compositions with the band Audun Automat.

“Some years ago Wenche and Auden met in the dim jazz clubs of Oslo and started experimenting with the instrumentation of a bass and vocal duo. “The Year Without a Summer” inspired the name, the sound and the lyrical universe of the project – a rich, dark-sounding breed of jazz-influenced chamber pop both stripped down and richly layered. Later cello and drums were added to the palette, the former provided by Gregor Riddell (the Solstice Quartet member and composer who’s collaborated with Radiohead and Björk and more recently been a part of BirdWorld, who played at this year’s Frome Festival) and the latter by Erik Nylander (Ola Kvernberg Trio, Kirsti Huke Quartet).

“Building on the band members’ broad musical background, the 1816 live performance is captivating experience: the band wishes to comfort and disturb, please and torment, expressing music with depth and quality that can reach wide, but at the same time, leave little room for audiences to feel indifferent.”

Released on the Scandinavian Record Label, Vilje, 1816’s first single ‘The Message’ is based on a reinterpretation of treasured Norwegian poet Inger Hagerup and came out on the 14th of October. I can’t embed it here, but you can listen to it on the 1816 Soundcloud page.

* * * * * * * *

Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 239: Woodpigeon, Cevanne & Crewdson + More Is More
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 19th November 2016, 12.00pm – free event (suggested donation: £5.00) – information

Although original headliners Woolly Mammoth have had to pull out, the Daylight show goes on with indie pop collective Woodpigeon moving up to pole position. Centred around the songs of Mark Andrew Hamilton, they perform wise, liquid, breathy pop with tones of country and folk, rumbling with patience, pianos and perspective shifts. In Mark’s tunes and lyrics you can hear shades of the grit of Johnny Cash, the pointed, sighing regret of Boo Hewerdine, and the steel-cored romantic realism of Michael J. Sheehy – always ready to distil a single phrase from a cold, hard truth; always ready to chronicle the kind of love that will twist in your hands and bite you.

Cevanne & Crewsdon is a proudly eccentric/eccentronic partnership between Anglo-Armenian singer/harper/composer Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and electronic musician/instrument builder and musician Hugh “Crewdson” Jones.
Mixing all kind of influences from Renaissance to Maqam to the strange sonorities she heard during a phase of childhood deafness, Cevanne’s got a diverse portfolio of commissions and projects, ranging from the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik Scheme to a Celtic harp duo, radio drama, and work as resident composer at Handel House and 575 Wandsworth Road. In his Deptford home, Crewdson hotwires old acoustic instruments, video game controllers, toys and other found items into fascinating hybrid electro-acoustic noisemakers and sound manipulators, or designs experimental wearable instrumentation: when not at work on his own projects and recordings, he plays live with Matthew Herbert and Hello Skinny and has remixed for the likes of Brownswood, Four Tet, Accidental, Sunday Best and Ninja Tune.

Together (with shades of the working methods of Hugh Davies and of Fripp & Eno), Cevanne & Crewdson create their own extraordinary sonic world, spinning together folk and electronics using their voices, Cevanne’s harp and Crewdson’s invented electronic instruments (including the concertronica, the sonic bonnet and perhaps even the MIDI motorcycle handlebars)

More Is More are three accomplished young saxophonists and a percussionists, collating pop and jazz culture melodies and snippets, improvising grooves, and jamming them all for fun. The confluence of two great watery places – New Orleans, and Deptford. Simple as that. See below for one of their spontaneous original tunes, and for a crowd-pleasing live mashup (including bits of Toto and the ‘Star Wars’ cantina theme).

The usual in-between sets are handled, this week, by self-taught solo pianist Matt Stewart-Evans who releases post-modern romantic instrumentals on 1631 Recordings and hovers in the same soft, soundtrack-friendly zone as Brambles, Dustin O’Halloran, Nils Frahm and Max Richter.

* * * * * * * *

The Nest Collective/Ear Trumpet Music presents:
The Nightjar + Ys
The Wardrobe Theatre, The Old Market Assembly, 25 West Street, Old Market, Bristol, BS2 0DF, England
Sunday 20th November 2016, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

“For over ten years the Nest Collective has been London’s way to experiencing folk, world and new music, creating a community that seeks unique sonorous experiences in unusual spaces. This weekend, they’re delighted to present a magical, intimate, sit-down lo-fi post-folk gig with The Nightjar and Ys.

“Drawing influence from the lo-fi wooze of Grouper, the stark and poignant balladry of Diane Cluck and the deft compositions of Colleen, The Nightjar (Jez Anderson, Mo Kirby, Sarah Ricketts, and Pete Thomas) use close-harmonies, tight-interlocking guitars, deep bass and an intense lead vocal to paint fragile, haunting landscapes. Originally conceived as a close-harmony vocal trio, a collaboration with South London producer Kams brought them to the attention of Boiler Room’s Joe Muggs. The following viral Boiler Room debut brought 2015’s ‘The Nightjar’ EP plaudits from nearly seventy thousand underground music fans, as well as the accolade of airplay on Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’.

“A successful crowd-funding campaign convinced them of the existence of an audience for their dream-like, ethereal songs of hope, loss and disaster. In the autumn of 2015, The Nightjar relocated to a farmhouse in rural Portugal to begin their first full-length offering. Due in February 2017, the album received early support from Mercury-nominee Sam Lee who subsequently booked them for Cambridge Folk Festival and Shambala. 2016 tours of France, Germany and the UK, saw audiences brought to a stand-still by the raw intensity of their performance, bringing them a reputation as a must-see live band.

“In support are Anglo-New Zealander folk trio Ys, who embroider intricate harmonies, dark melodies and glittering guitar and banjo into heart-beating folk. Beautiful and compelling, their songs carry as lightly as they feel deeply. Songwriter Holly Dove met English vocalist Katie Riddle on the Melbourne music scene in 2013 and the duo have been playing together ever since, enjoying New Zealand and Australian summer music festivals before heading northwards early last year.

“Recently joining forces with Bristolian folk musician and banjo player, Rosie Garrard, the trio have developed a deeper and more vibrant sound with three-part harmonies and banjo lilts. Drawing on traditional English and Celtic folk as influence, they unearth original material and traditional songs as you’ve never heard before. Ys will lead you down the garden path and move you deep and good.”

Tags: 1816 (band), Arctic Circle (promoter), Audun Ellingsen, Bristol (England), Cevanne, Crewdson, Daylight Music (event), Erik Nylander, Frome (England), Gregor Riddell, Holly Dove, Jez Anderson, Katie Riddle, London (England), Mark Andrew Hamilton, Mo Kirby, More Is More, Pete Thomas, Rosie Garrard, Sarah Ricketts, The Nest Collective (event/promoter), The Nightjar, Wenche Losnegård, Woodpigeon, Wooly Mammoth, Ys

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – the glorious 12th: some of many gigs scattered around England on my birthday tomorrow – Mother, North Sea Radio Orchestra, ILL, Nick Costley-White, India McKellar, Alice Zawadski, Merrick’s Tusk, Snowapple, Captives On The Carousel, Mark Lewandowski, Steve Strong, Shield Patterns, Jamie Safiruddin, The Yossarians, Boy & A Balloon, Bruxa | Cosa, Ed Dowie, Carl Woodford, Andy Or Jenny, Patrons…

11 Nov

Tomorrow I turn forty-six. About half of those years have been spent as an on-and-off writer, scrambling round the edges of music and music culture, attempting to understand this great amorphous art form with its thousands of doors and voices. I had a sombre, or at least a serious, preamble planned: one of those reflective commentator essays that you see on many of the more literate blogs. I threw it away.

Instead (and in keeping with what ‘Misfit City’ has been up to for most of the year), here’s a particularly long garland of gig notices. It’s not here to illustrate any particular school of thought, being the usual melange of tastes and forms – jazz, folk, art-punk, acoustic singer-songwriter, prog, performance art, drone, classical fusion and lush noise. It’s that particular kind of broad, inconsistent, credibility-trampling aural palette which (back when I started doing this in the mid-’90s), wasn’t suggested much outside of the pages of ‘Organ’ or the less austere corners of ‘The Wire’, or indeed ‘Misfit City’; but which now seems to be almost a mainstream stance.

Some other day – perhaps some other birthday – will be the right time for an essay or a grand declaration. If I’ve got a point to make right now (if only by implication and example), it’s that at a tired, fairly battered forty-six I’m still curious, still enthusiastic, still in the business of learning; at a time and place in life which might otherwise ossify my tastes and reduce music to just another commodity or flattened signifier. Spread out over this post are details on concerts, all of them in England, all of them scattered across my birthday. There’s no way I could attend all of them, even with an entirely free hand, but all of them attract me; and at any one of them you’d have found me leaning against a wall, pen and pad in hand, taking notes, looking for new thoughts.

I’ve already posted about the iamthemorning/Tim Bowness teamup for the iO Pages festival, but I can’t really squeeze in the flight to the Netherlands. (Besides, I’m catching them in London on Monday). I’ve also posted about the evening’s Hallkvist/Taylor/Goller/Hayward jazz-fusion show (plus a side order of Charlie Stacey) at the Lambeth art incubator of IKLECTIK, as part of an update on Charles Hayward’s burst of late-year shows. Since that one’s in London, it’s a more likely option for me; but also down at IKLECTIK, in the early afternoon, London jazz incubator Jazz Nursery will be joining in with the ongoing EFG London Jazz Festival in order to present a couple of young bandleaders with relatively accessible projects.

Well, why not start there – start mellow…

Guitarist Nick Costley-White has a trio featuring Conor Chaplin on double bass and David Ingamells on drums and offers fresh, swinging takes on Jerome Kern and Cole Porter (with the leader described by ‘Jazz News’ as “a classy player with an elegant and subtle way with a good tune”). Bassist Mark Lewandowski (“sonorous, fluent… an indispensable part of our scene” – ‘London Jazz’) sets aside his busy calendar as a sideman to compose for and lead a quartet of American drum legend Jeff Williams (Stan Getz, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano etc) as well as tenor saxophonist Tom Challenger (Brass Mask, Wedding Music, Dice Factory, Ma) and pianist Liam Noble (Stan Sulzman, Bobby Wellins, many records as leader).

Jazz Nursery/EFG London Jazz Festival presents:
Nick Costley-White Trio + Mark Lewandowski Quartet
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 2.30pm – information

It looks as if this particular Mark Lewandowski band is too new to have been recorded, but here’s a clip of the Costley-White Trio at work:

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Were I up in the north-west I’d be listening to something entirely different, tempted by ‘Liberate yourself from my vice like grip’, the R.D. Laing-inspired exhibition/concert/happening that’s playing at Islington Mill in Salford. Set up by contemporary art organisation Broken Grey Wires, it’s part of their scheme to create safe psychological spaces for people with various mental health issues; to use art as “a facilitator for recovery… to encourage people to make something special for themselves”, following Laing’s own suggestion that “madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.”

(Yep – I know how to relax on my own special days.)

For the musical component, co-curators Fat Out have put together a typically eclectic and Mill-ready line-up of mostly local bands. Included are soundscaping folk-indie/jazz-shoegaze performance artists Mother, psychedelic folk-rock jam-jivers The Yossarians and colourful, blippy post-punk femme/art/pop troupe ILL (proudly strident champions of “disobedient noise” who believe in “creating music until something tingles, and performing dance noise until something bleeds”, and who were namechecked in ‘The Guardian’ today as one of the fifty new pop projects shaping the future). Also on the bill are ambient improvisers Andy Or Jenny, the “atavistic” Berlin-based Welsh looptronica singer Bruxa | Cosa, and landscape-ghosting Peak District ambient-pop duo Shield Patterns.

For the ongoing exhibition BGW have brought in various artists who explore mental health, gender, identity and subjective reality in their work (Lizz Brady, Robert Good, Amy Mizrahi, David Sheery, Kirsty Harris, Paul Kindersley, Jared Pappas-Kelley, Alexander Storey Gordon) all of whom raise so many questions, options and ways of seeing that I’d go on for ages trying to clumsily summarise them. Instead, I’d suggest that you follow them up on Facebook through the second info link below…

Broken Grey Wires & Fat Out present:
‘Liberate yourself from my vice like grip’
Islngton Mill Arts Centre, James Street, Salford, M3 5HW, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 6.00pm – information here and here

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If I were in Durham, I could make up for missing one-man post/math/trip-hop band Steve Strong‘s set of simultaneous guitar-loops/drums/electronic-noise hybrids at Wakizashi last month, by catching up with him up at his Empty Shop show in Durham – alongside the trepidatious post-hardcore of Plymouth four-piece Patrons and the blitzing sentimental charge of Derby trio Merrick’s Tusk (currently touring their melodic, heart-on-sleeve half-emo rock around the country). While I was at it, I could feel as if I was contributing more to the community than just the usual couple of hours of head-nodding. (See more about the constructive, cohesion-building Empty Shop ethos here.)

Sapien Records Ltd/Empty Shop presents:
Steve Strong + Patrons + Merrick’s Tusk
Empty Shop HQ, 35c Framwellgate Bridge (above ‘Ciao Ciao’), Durham, DH1 4SJ, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 8:00 pm – information here and here

India McKellar

If in Sheffield, I’d probably be in a softer mood, heading over to the Regather co-op for one of their cosier gigs: the second of the recently-established acoustic evenings run by local cello/voice/guitar folk duo Captives On The Carousel.

This week (in addition to the Carouselers usual warm starting set), the night’s playing host to two other Sheffield-area singer-songwriters – India McKellar, whose previous adventures on piano, as a traditional Celtic harpist and as a onetime prog-rocker have set her up well for her matured, quietly captivating role as Laurel-Canyon-by-way-of-West Riding adult songwriter; and rootsier Drake-and-Jansch-inspired guitar-and-banjo picker Carl Woodford.

Captives on the Carousel present:
Captives Vol. 2: India McKellar + Carl Woodford + Captives On The Carousel
Regather Works, 57-59 Club Garden Road, Sheffield, S11 8BU, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 7.30pm – information

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Alice Zawadski

Back in London, I’d also be tempted (were it not already sold out) by Alice Zawadski’s Joni Mitchell evening down at Brasserie Zedel. I’m not keen on the institution of the average cover version, and embarrassingly average covers of Joni songs are the bane of many an acoustic evening: honeytraps for earnest women with guitars who cover them reverently, winsomely and really badly. Every time, I picture Joni seething in the audience, her notorious strongmindededness in full bullish effect: snarling at the women onstage, cursing them out for skipping her weird tunings, for ignoring the orchestral conception behind the compositions, or for just sugaring the fine vinegar.

This one might well be different, for several reasons. One is that Alice already comes with acclaim, experience and enough background to serve the songs – extensively trained in both jazz and classical skills, a violinist and arranger as well as a singer, she’ll be thinking on maybe as many levels as Joni herself. Another is that her gig partner and pianist Jamie Safiruddin has racked up time and plaudits accompanist and/or musical director with prime British jazz, ballad and folk interpreters Ian Shaw, Claire Martin and Barb Jungr and Ben Cox, as well as pop adventures with Will Young (plus he already has Joni-form, having “played Edith And The Kingpin with exquisite poise” according to ‘The Arts Desk’).

A third reason is that this is primarily a jazz gig; Jamie and Alice joined by Seafarers saxophonist Matthew Herd, bassist Conor Chaplin (strolling over from the earlier Costley-White trio show), drummer and Conor’s Fabled buddy and drummerWill Glaser. No matter how many copies of ‘Blue’ you pitch at my head, I’ll always maintain that Joni was at her original best when diving into jazz, interweaving with Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius as her words kaleidoscoped, her notes ached and flexed and the potential in the arrangement spanned and fanned. Alice is promising Joni’s most well-worn hits and folky standards (‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘A Case of You’, ‘Woodstock’) but also “lesser-known gems from throughout her long and fruitful back-catalogue”, and it’s not always that you get the chance to hear someone dipping into the more challenging territories of ‘Hejira’, ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’ or ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’.

Here are the details for anyone who’s a better ligger/doorstaff wheedler than I am; and below that’s a clip of Alice at work with saxophonist Joe Wright on a song which, even if it’s not quite Joni, shows what her mind and approach could be bringing to the Mitchell catalogue.

Jamie Safiruddin & Alice Zawadski
The Crazy Coqs @ Brasserie Zedel, 20 Sherwood Street, Soho, London, W1F 7ED, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 9.00pm – information

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As for me, I can only guarantee that I’ll be in one particular place tomorrow. At noontime I’ll be in the Union Chapel, at one of the Daylight Music shows which I constantly plug here but all to often have to miss. Accompanied by family (and perhaps even a few unexpected friends), I’ll be down there listening to the soft, distracted keyboard songs of Ed Dowie; watching the charming and daffy Dutch folk-pop trio SnowApple delight and dazzle an audience in a fizz of swapped instruments, leapt genres, blended voices and eye-catching outfits; taking in the interstitial battered-pop moments from Boy And a Balloon‘s Alex Hall; and finally immersing myself in the ringing, humming chamber-ensemble arrangements of Craig Fortnam’s North Sea Radio Orchestra as they navigate (in a bright-toned weave of nylon-strung guitar, bassoon, strings, keyboards and voice) between the Britten-esque and the kosmische, between gurgling Vernon Elliott and sighing Robert Wyatt, between the hopping pulse of downtown minimalism and the Anglican warmth of a Wiltshire harvest festival.

Maybe Daylight shows are at the cuddlier end of what interests me within this blog; but it’s also fair to say that, out of everything covered here, perhaps the rambling, all-points Daylight positivity reflects ‘Misfit City’s own attitude best of all. And in a similar spirit… say hello if you see me there.

Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 238: North Sea Radio Orchestra + Snowapple + Ed Dowie + Boy & A Balloon
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 12.00pm – free event (suggested donation: £5.00) – information here and here

Tags: Alexander Storey Gordon, Alice Zawadzki, Amy Mizrahi, Andy Or Jenny, Arctic Circle (promoter), Boy & A Balloon, Bruxa | Cosa, Captives On The Carousel, Carl Woodford, Charles Hayward, Charlie Stacey, Conor Chaplin, Craig Fortnam, David Ingamells, David Sheery, Daylight Music (event), Durham (England), Ed Dowie, editorial, Empty Shop (promoters), iamthemorning, ILL, India McKellar, Jamie Safiruddin, Jared Pappas-Kelley, Jeff Williams, Joni Mitchell, Kirsty Harris, Liam Noble, Lizz Brady, London (England), Mark Lewandowski, Matthew Herd, Merrick's Tusk, Mother, Nick Costley-White, Noel Taylor, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Patrons, Paul Kindersley, Robert Good, Ruth Goller, Salford (England), Samuel Hällkvist, Sheffield (England), Shield Patterns, Snowapple, Steve Strong, The Yossarians, Tim Bowness, Tom Challenger, Will Glaser, wretched self-justification

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – iamthemorning’s two shows with Tim Bowness in London and Ulft (12th, 14th) and three more in the Netherlands (16th-18th)

10 Nov

Originally hailing from Saint Petersburg, iamthemorning is the partnership of self-taught, progressive-rock-inspired singer Marjana Semkina and meticulously-taught classical pianist Gleb Kolyadin; it’s also what happens when their conflicting backgrounds and sympathetic musicalities merge. Using pick-up ensembles of classical and rock musicians, they stage their music in multi-media chamber shows; swelling out to small orchestral arrangements, efflorescent electric guitar and tape inserts. Whenever this isn’t possible, they’ll strip themselves back to a string-augmented quartet. When that‘s not possible either, they’ll revert to the original duo, trusting in Gleb’s virtuosic St. Petersburg Conservatory piano skills to cover (or at least intimate) the orchestral role behind the lustrous drama of Marjana’s voice.

Marjana and Gleb’s burnished, budded musicality shows a clear affinity with the British literary mythoscape. Their burgeoning pre-autumnal songs certainly possess, amongst other things, tints of English and Breton-Celtic folk and a certain pre-Raphaelite glow; recalling, on a surface level, that billowing school of female-fronted prog-folk which includes Renaissance or Mostly Autumn (or, on the arresting death-lays which bookend this year’s ‘Lighthouse’ album, the glimmering Celtic feytronica of Caroline Lavelle). All of this probably had a lot to do with ‘Lighthouse’ scooping up ‘Prog’ magazine’s Album of the Year award for 2016.

Chamber-prog is the term the band themselves choose, and the one that’s usually applied to them. Tagging them with the prog label, however (complete with all of the blowsy, blustering AOR associations which got gummed to it during the 1980s), seems a little reductive. iamthemorning‘s meticulous immersion in advanced harmony and arrangement puts them square into the tradition of florid electro-acoustic neoromantics – the densely skilled ones who own a strong affinity to the tail-end of Romantic music but arrive several generations too late; the ones who often fall into prog by default, through a love of rock amplification and of what happens when song meets electric surge). Consider the dogged grand orchestralism thundered out by Robert John Godfrey in The Enid. Consider Kerry Minnear, slipping his haunting yet sophisticated quiet-man ballads through the busy humour of Gentle Giant (referencing romanticism and modernism as he did so: deeper rills through the romping). Consider the late Keith Emerson and how (behind ELP’s circus vulgarities and rollicks through baroque, Bach and barrelhouse) he too maintained a fascination for the rich harmonic and melodic upheaval where romanticism meets modernism; capturing it in his brash adaptations of Ginastera and Rodrigo, and listening towards the eastern European strains of Mussorgsky, Janáček and Bartók.

This last, in turn, brings us to Gleb and his own deep immersion in the likes of Stravinsky (there are videos of him playing ‘The Rite Of Spring’ and clearly adoring it); one of the reasons why, however much an iamthemorning song may slip along like a scented bath, there’s always more shading and detail in its depths. The other reason is Marjana’s growing determination to back the petal-sheened sonic prettiness and concert-hall glamour with more profound psychological resonance, turning the ‘Lighthouse’ concept into a diary of mental illness and the struggles to survive it. The band might still be in the early stages of establishing a lyrical and conceptual maturity to match the breadth of their musicality, but there’s plenty of space and opportunity to do this. The currents of invention under the lush surface slickness, and the clear willingness of Gleb and Marjana to challenge each other and to grow together, make iamthemorning a band to watch.

Tim Bowness, on the other hand, has been through much of this already, having persistently edged and developed his visions from the turbulent romantic moodism of his earlier work to his current, exquisitely-honed portraits of human vulnerability. Forced in part by increasingly long gaps in the open musical marriage of his main band no-man, he’s been demonstrating himself, step by step, to not be merely a band singer blessed with a rich, poignant whisper of a voice and a sharp sense of understated lyrical drama, but a formidable solo artist with a mind for matching and fusing together diverse sounds and musical elements.

Erstwhile/ongoing no-man partner Steven Wilson may get more of the plaudits these days, but Tim’s growing list of solo albums are every bit as good. Bridging Mark Hollis with Mark Eitzel, Robert Wyatt with David Sylvian and Peter Gabriel with Morrissey, they work off a confidently-expanding sonic palette of spiky caressing art-rock guitar, luxuriant keyboard and drum work, strings and atmospherics. As ever with Tim, the subject matter is tender and bleak – including thwarted ambitions, the shaping and stripping of love by time and mortality, and (increasingly) shades of the north-western landscapes and dilemmas to which Tim owes his own initial artistic formation.

While he’s currently brewing a welter of projects (including a long-overdue second duo album with Peter Chilvers, the resurrection of his angsty 1980s Mersey art-pop quartet Plenty, and assorted work with Banco de Gaia, contemporary classical composer Andrew Keeling and Happy The Man’s Kit Watkins), Tim’s main focus is his still-in-progress fourth solo album, ‘Third Monster On The Left’. This is sounding like his most ambitious project to date: a conceptual musical memoir centring on the backstage thoughts of a fictional, fading classic-rock musician, awash in the garden and graveyard of talent that was the 1970s. For ‘Third Monster On The Left’, Tim promises (as part of the context-appropriate crafting) a more explicit version of the progginess that’s always fed into his art pop since the beginning: specifically, “the harmonic richness and romanticism of 1970s Genesis, and the Mellotron-drenched majesty of early King Crimson.”

All of this makes the declared prospect of a Bowness/iamthemorning set of collaborative “shared bill, shared songs” concerts an interesting one. There’s already a connection via Colin Edwin, who’s played bass for both of them. On this occasion, Tim will be bringing along band regulars Michael Bearpark (guitar), Stephen Bennett (keyboards) and Andrew Booker (electronic drums) plus returning cohorts Steve Bingham (violin, loops) and Pete Morgan (bass). Some or all of these will be pulling double duty backing iamthemorning, alongside whoever Gleb and Marjana brings along. What’s most intriguing, though, is what this hand-in-hand teamup is going to bring out in both parties. Beyond the luxuriant tones, there’s useful artistic tinder in their differences, their similarities, and their internal contradictions alike.

At its best, there ought to be push-and-pull. Tim’s austere taste for unvarnished modernism and stark realism is ever compromised by a sensual greed for the textures of romance: Gleb and Marjana swim in an ocean of effusive orchestral indulgence, but now want to grap stone and dirt. He’ll give them an exquisitely pained art-pop ballad, pared clean of fairytale delusions and as slender as a greyhound; they’ll polish and expand it back into dreamscape. They’ll give him a perfumed Edwardian garden: he’ll slouch in, with his Beckett and Kelman paperbacks, to lay a grit path. He’ll bring out their darker, less-resolved deep chords. They’ll bring out his blushes.

The odds are fair that they’ll make a collective attempt at the title track from ‘Lighthouse’ (though they’ll probably not risk a medley with the no-man epic of the same name). I’m also hoping for a Gram-and-Emmylou-shaded prog harmony on Tim’s heart-breaking Know That You Were Loved; or perhaps a morningification of Dancing For You. We’ll see…

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iamthemorning with Tim Bowness:

IO Pages Festival @ Poppodium DRU Cultuurfabriek, Hutteweg 24a, 7071 MB Ulft, Netherlands, Saturday 12th November 2016, 2.30pm (with Gazpacho + Anekdoten + Lesoir + Marcel Singor + A Liquid Landscape + Anneke van Giersbergen) – information here and here
Bush Hall, 310 Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush, London, W12 7LJ, England, Monday 14th November 2016 – information here and here

Immediately after the Bowness shows, iamthemorning embark on three more shows on their own in the Netherlands – details below. Depending on which one you attend, you could see the band in any one of its three main playing configurations.

Hedon, Burg Drijbersingel 7, 8021 DA Zwolle, The Netherlands, Wednesday 16th November 2016, 8.00pm (chamber gig with violin & cello) – information
De Pul, Kapelstraat 13, 5401 EC Uden, The Netherlands, Thursday 17th November 2016, 9.00pm (duo gig) – information
Patronaat, Zijlsingel 2, 2013 DN Haarlem, The Netherlands, Friday 18th November 2016, 7.30pm (full band gig) – information

Tags: Andrew Booker, Andrew Keeling, Banco De Gaia, Colin Edwin, duo music, ensemble music, Haarlem (Netherlands), Happy the Man, iamthemorning, Igor Stravinsky, Kit Watkins, London (England), Michael Bearpark, No-Man, Pete Morgan, Peter Chilvers, piano music, Plenty, St. Petersburg (Russia), Stephen Bennett, Steve Bingham, Tim Bowness, Uden (Netherlands), Ulft (Netherlands), Zwolle (Netherlands)

November 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Society Of Imaginary Friends’ ‘Time Saturated Soiree’ with The Astronauts, Taktylos, Beth Jones, Marius French and Nighmar Ascousky (4th); Revere, Alasdair Maclean and Colm Mac Con Iomair play Daylight Music (5th)

30 Oct

Those frowning former commercial and light industrial blocks in Wood Green have been enjoying a change of function in recent years as the area gradually, awkwardly morphs into a London art hub (while rents and avaricious developments continue to push the city artists and shoestring events out of the near-east-and-centre). I’m guessing that this will only accelerate, with the artier spaces around the backstreets near the library and the old gasometers acquiring glossier licks of gentrification as the money follows. At the moment, it’s hovering in the grey area between pop-up and plush: for now, slightly outré things can still happen.

One such thing has been happening for a few years now, with the astonishingly assured art-pop quartet Society Of Imaginary Friends running musical soirees at the high-rep vegan eaterie Karamel Café (as they do in other venues dotted around London – Soho, Clerkenwell, Kingston – and occasionally in the Orkney Islands). It’s taken me a while to catch up with them.

Society Of Imaginary Friends presents:
‘Time Saturated Soiree’: The Astronauts + Taktylos + Society Of Imaginary Friends + Beth Jones + Marius French + Nighmar Ascousky + Onjdrew DJ set
Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Friday 4th November 2016, 8.00pm – free entry – information

Frequently tinged with some degree of rebel rhetoric and counterculture spirit (albeit dappled, in turn, by outright theatricality), on this occasion the Soiree makes a tongue-in-cheek grab for the occult aspects of British daylight saving. “As the clocks go back, we celebrate together the extraordinary gift of an extra hour of life from the God Chronos. Of course this means that not only do we have an extra hour in bed on Sunday but an extra hour is also available to enjoy our Time Saturated Soiree on 4th November. We will feature artists abundant in time and time signatures of the non linear variety.”

Society Of Imaginary Friends are curating from somewhere in the middle of the bill. I’m surprised that I haven’t found out about them before, since they’re right up my alley – dramatic song stories and glam-chanson-prog-folk operas which can be as smooth as mountain lakes or tossed around like cartoon galleons (that is, when they’ve not turned inwards and intimate, for creepy journeys into the shadowy nooks of the house or the cupboard under the stairs).

Orkney-born singer Louise Kleboe, (who recently wowed an audience at Organ Reframed in a teamup with William D. Drake) serves as powerful female voice and figurehead. The music (drawing on Orcadian lays and Balkan jags as much as it does English art pop and psychedelic folk) is underpinned by a constantly flexible electro-acoustic palette of piano, accordion, guitar and violin; plus sundry keyboard samplers which cough up sleight-of-eardrum aural tricks and tinkles to take us deeper into the band’s conceptual toybox. Kate Bush would be an obvious comparison; so, too, would a braver Goldfrapp; you could also stir in the Gothic intimations of Danielle Dax (if not so much of the thorny racket) and add shades of the overt theatrical danger which Holly Penfield has brought to both her singer-songwriter work and her cabaret shows.

Below are two Society songs – the smoothly rhapsodic The Moors (something to draw in and caress the New Agers) and The Easy Way (to grab them by the lapels and flip them over for a shakedown). The fact that the latter can slip into a video cut from footage of Elem Klimov’s harrowing war film ‘Come and See’ – and thrive there – speaks volumes about its own strident power.

https://youtu.be/ohja5S0cJtw

In line with the soiree theme, the Society will be presenting a miniature new temporal project of their own. “The briefest of rock operas – ‘On The Third Stroke’, based on the life and times of Ethel Jane Cain, the very first speaking clock, (‘glamorous and exact, the living embodiment of precision… she sat between the tick and the tock… swinging in the hammock strung between the Sun and the Moon…’, as ‘The Idler Magazine’ put it.” No preview samples are available, unfortunately, but here’s that original clock with that original voice…

Society guitarist Brian O’Lenehan puts in double duty on this concert, since he also plays in skeletal-spacey instrumental fusion band Taktylos. The Society hail them as “live from the event horizon”: a little more helpfully, the ‘Guardian’ describes them as “Philip Glass meets Soft Machine”.

It’s a fair description of a band in which a collection of London musicians – the others being journeying drummer Tom Cambata, wind-synther Rod Arran, German keyboard player Chris Bihlmaier and bass guitarist David Rees – seem to gingerly and painstakingly align their ingredients (squishy late-‘70s fusion tootles, pared-back guitar shapes, mathematical percussion arrangements) into place as if they were jellied blocks of unstable explosive, rather than chunks of musical conversation. I’m not sure whether the resulting minimalist leanings are the results of being tentative or of attempting to dab a tune into shape with the fewest and most economical strokes (like a Japanese ink drawing). Still, assuming that Taktylos don’t go roaring off down more standard bulked-up jazz-fusion lines in the future, they’ve got themselves a potentially interesting niche.

Topping the bill (I think) are the most recent iteration of The Astronauts – longstanding post-punk absurdists spun off from onetime new town Welwyn. Formed in 1981 (and, despite langours, never quite gone since then), they’ve sometimes had to singlehandedly hold up the town’s early ‘80s anarcho-punk reputation, standing defiant and crooked to the “affluent deadzone” qualities into which the place has sleepwalked. It’s kind of de rigeur to include ‘Rock & Reel’s description of front man/last man standing Mark Astronaut as “the post-punk Dylan of Welwyn Garden City” and add that certain people also risk a Prestwich verbal maiming by mentioning him in the same breath as Mark E. Smith.

He’s actually much more straightforward than either (perhaps “a kitchen-sink Robert Calvert” might be a better description). As for the band, while they never quite match the driving, morphing truculence of The Fall they’re accomplished post-punk chameleons – flicking between West Coast punks or hippies within the same few bars, suddenly huddling in dank subways with the young Paul Weller, or morphing into a studiously awkward Zombies as they back Mark’s singular satellite-town vision.

This particular evening may be bolstered with actor, autism ambassador and mordant performance poet Cian Binchy dropping by for a return appearance; meanwhile, Nighmar Ascousky (hyperactive polymath, Soiree evening regular, fantasy geek and friendly Laveyan Satanist) will be taking time out from his acting, modelling, painting, film-making and singing work in order to deliver some “shock and awe” poetry (and perhaps just take the opportunity to sit down for a while). Beyond that the evening starts to rampage further into the astrological and mystical, with returning “fabulously, beautiful, talented, rising star singer/songwriter Beth Jones“ representing the sun, and “supremely talented multi-instrumentalist Marius French“ covering the same task for the moon. There’s a chance of further off-the-list performers; and there’s a DJ set until the early morning.

Regarding Beth and Marius – they might be gigantic talents, or even catalysts for sympathetic magic; but I can’t find more information on either of them anywhere. Those glowing references could all be hype, or the Society could be lining up a genuinely impressive bill. The chances are that it’ll be the latter, since the roll-call of previous Soiree performers is a delightful array of present-and-correct, past-blasts and future shinings. Just to give a partial picture, past shows have included music contributions from William D. Drake (the endearing grand-and-gawky ex-Cardiac keyboard wizard); harpsinger Sheila Moyan; Virginia Plain (a.k.a Nick Watkinson, cross-dressing ex-frontman of late-’70s power-pop heroes The Jags); psychedelic keyboards warrior Kosmic Troubadour; Kirsten Morrison (rising folk-baroque queen and Lene Lovich ally); and woodwind player William Summers (who’s had Circulus, The Loki Broken Consort and Princes In The Tower in his bagful of bands). The same run of shows have had recitation, chats and rants from (among others) Camden rapper Lid Lid, poets Keleigh Wolf, Ernie Burns and Gabriel Moreno, and ‘New Internationalist’ artivist/activist/commentator Jamie Kelsey Fry.

Best to enjoy this kind of thing while it lasts. Who knows – it might not be long before occasions like this are pushed out by encroaching cash and a tidal wave of karaoke salsa; but even if that turns out to be so, I don’t think the Society will take it lying down. They’re irrepressible. We’d see them pop up somewhere else, soiree in tow; somewhere where they were least expected.

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Meanwhile, showing no signs of slowing down (and still in residence in long-gentrified central Islington), Daylight Music returns after its half-term break.

Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 237: Revere + Alasdair Maclean + Colm Mac Con Iomaire
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 5th November 2016, 12.00pm – free event (suggested donation: £5.00) – information

Slightly tweaked press release:

“When it comes to influences, Revere has had a firmly open-door policy over their fifteen years of existence, incorporating chamber pop, dance music, post rock and progressive elements into their trademark wall of sound, garnering a great live reputation for their multi-layered wall of sound. After fifteen years, two albums, nine EPs and a clutch of singles (and with around fifty musicians having passed through the band), they’re amicably calling it quits, with the current and final six-piece choosing to play their last British show at Daylight Music.

(For fans of occasion, the actual last ever Revere show is a Dutch farewell at Vessel 11 in Rotterdam on 3rd December).

“In the middle of the bill is a set by Alasdair Maclean, singer, songwriter and guitarist for legendary band The Clientele, who formed a long time ago in the backwoods of suburban Hampshire (initially playing together as kids at school, later rehearsing in a thatched cottage remote from any kind of music scene but hypnotized by the magical strangeness of Galaxie 500 and Felt and the psych pop of Love and the Zombies). Alasdair still recalls a pub conversation where the band collectively voted that it was OK to be influenced by surrealist poetry but not OK to have any shouting or blues guitar solos. From that moment on, they put their stamp on a kind of eerie, distanced pure pop, stripped to its essentials and recorded quickly to four-track analogue tape.

Instantly identifiable, The Clientele sound like no one else, although they are cited as an influence by bands as diverse as Spoon, Panda Bear, The War on Drugs and the Fleet Foxes. It’s been said that the greatest bands always create their own individual sound; The Clientele have gone one further and created their own world.

“In a crowded field of outstanding Irish fiddle players and interpreters of traditional music Colm Mac Con Iomaire is unique. From school trad band Kila and street busking to wildly popular days playing fiddle with The Frames, his voice is unmistakably his own and his music bears distinctive creative hallmarks which have as much to do with his personality and character as with his impressive technical mastery, musical authority and exquisitely expressive playing. Almost twenty years ago Colm struggled to describe his early attempts at composition and made a distinction between ‘tunes’ and ‘music’. With his father’s people coming from the Irish-speaking Conamara Gaeltacht, Colm learned ‘tunes’ (the dance music which makes up much of the instrumental repertoire in Irish traditional music) and sean nós unaccompanied singing; on his mother’s side there was classical instrumental ‘music’ on the violin and piano. The creative tension between these two notions produced a player, composer and film score arranger who seems always to have been aware and inspired by the dualities in his musical and cultural world.

“During the late nineties Irish broadcaster TG4 offered Colm opportunities to write scores for film, allowing him to allowed him to progress and mature as an orchestrator of his own compositions. The compositions Colm made for these productions came from an interior place whose deep roots lay in traditional Irish music but also in an older way of life and thought, consciously mediated through his personal life lived out in the contemporary space. The title for Colm’s first solo album ‘The Hare’s Corner/Cúinne an Ghiorria’ signified not only an acknowledgement of the importance of that old culture but also an urgent plea for ‘the hare’s corner’ in contemporary culture… a still place where space and time are set aside for something beautiful for its own sake. The title of his second, ‘And Now the Weather’, refers to the introduction to the final item on radio and tv news bulletins, viewed as a means of keeping the distress of reality at bay: it is a title riven with irony.”

https://vimeo.com/142443347

Tags: Alasdair Maclean, Arctic Circle (promoter), Beth Jones, Cian Binchy, Colm Mac Con Iomair, Daylight Music (event), fiddle music, Kabaret @ Karamel (event), London (England), Marius French, Nighmar Ascousky, Revere, Society of Imaginary Friends, Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree (event), Taktylos, The Astronauts, The Clientele, The Frames

September/October 2016 – upcoming gigs – Jane Siberry on tour in Britain and Ireland (9th Sep – 7th Oct) with The Blackheart Orchestra, Balsamo Deighton, Ruth, Delilah Montagu, LeeSun and Carol Laula

5 Sep

This week, Jane Siberry embarks on her first tour of the British Isles for a good while.

Whelan’s, 25 Wexford Street, Dublin 2, Ireland, Friday 9th September 2016, 8.00pm (with Ruth) – information
The Queens Hall, 85-89 Clerk Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9JG, Scotland, Friday 16th September 2016, 7.30pm (with Carol Laula) – information
The Convent, Convent Lane, South Woodchester, Stroud, GL5 5HS, England, Sunday 18th September 2016, 9.00pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
Henry Tudor House, Barracks Passage, Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury, SY1 1XA, England, Monday 19th September 2016, 8.00pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
The Trades Club, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 8EE, England, Thursday 22nd September 2016, 8.00pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
The Greystones, Greystones Road, Sheffield, S11 7BS, England, Friday 23rd September 2016, 7.30pm (with Delilah Montagu) – information
Kitchen Garden Café, 17 York Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7SA, England, Sunday 25th September 2016, 7.30pm (withThe Blackheart Orchestra) – information
St John’s Church, St John’s Street, Farncombe, Godalming, GU7 3EJ, England, Wednesday 28th September 2016, 7.45pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
The Stables, Stockwell Lane, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, MK17 8LU, England, Thursday 29th September 2016, 8.45pm (with LeeSun) – information
Brighton Unitarian Church, New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UF, England, Friday 30th September 2016, 7.30pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
Chapel Arts Centre, St Oaks Memorial Hall, Lower Borough Walls, Bath, BA1 1QR, England, Sunday 2nd October 2016, 8.00pm (with Balsamo Deighton) – information
St James Theatre, 12 Palace Street, Westminster, London, SW1E 5JA, England, Monday 3rd October 2016, 7.15pm (with The Blackheart Orchestra) – information
Stromness Town Hall, Church Road, Stromness, Orkney, KW16 3BA, Scotland, Friday 7th October 2016, 7.30pm (solo show) – information (note – this date is listed on some places but not currently on Jane’s own site, so check before committing)

Sometimes, to her chagrin, Jane’s been tagged as “the Canadian Kate Bush” – a tag which is at least as constrictive as it is helpful. Unfair as it might be, the comparison holds true and is a good place to start. Early musical developers, women of a similar age and independent-mindedness, Jane and Kate both realised their full powers and creative approaches during a boomtime of studio-bound 1980s art pop. Pioneering later self-propelled female studio auteurs, both kept absolute control of their songwriting and mastered enough of the necessary technology to dictate form as well as content, working as meticulous musical painters, dramatists and refractors. Both have favoured carefully-chosen instrumentation, sonorities and song structures, neither of which necessarily follow common practise or expectations (and neither of which they’ve felt obliged to stick to, preferring to change formulae whenever inspiration and craft took them there). Most crucially, both of them have a sweeping emotional effect on listeners, transcending both genre and gender.

The differences, though, are as significant and illustrative as the similarities. Genius notwithstanding, Kate’s creativity was cosseted in an indulgent arts-and-crafts family background, and the recording and development deal she’d gained by her mid-teens ensured that she didn’t have to slog her way up with hard gigging in parallel with grinding dayjobs. This, plus the overwhelming commercial success which came from her first single onwards, ensured the shape and circumstances of her work to come. Hers was a unfettered imagination fuelled by spliff and arts and cocooned in recording studios, voraciously processing mythology and literature to spin out detailed and immersive storydramas in pop form, all contained within a wary privacy she’s maintained to this day. In some respects Kate’s never left the book-lined bedrooms of her childhood: she’s simply extended them, and grown within the bigger space she made there.

Jane’s, on the other hand, has been a less charmed or settled road. An uneasy family life and childhood led to a voyage into a university degree which soon morphed, dissatisfied, from music to microbiology, then work as a waitress in order to self-fund a tightly-budgeted debut record. Perhaps it’s these elements which have inspired the elements of research quirk and observational stillness in parts of her songcraft, from the twinkling electronic dissections of beachlife on her first hit (Mimi On The Beach) to the moments, when in otherwise warm and involved musical landscapes she appears to pull back, tilting her gaze askance, casting a cool bright birdlike eye on the matter: not necessarily making conclusions, but grabbing a quick and open assessment of what’s going on, whether or not details have fallen into a conclusive pattern.

Certainly her songcraft reflects an edgier, more marginal, creative life; intelligent and existential, but fully in touch with the irrational and perverse. While Kate’s catalogue dramatizes odd states and situation, Jane’s songbook seems more of a recounting. She has, in moments of straightforward generosity or acceptance, delivered art-pop singalongs such as The Life Is The Red Wagon or the rapturous k.d. lang duet Calling All Angels; in bouncier times, she’s delivered songs about dogs and people or childhood hockey games. When certain moods have taken her, she’s carved out monumental, borderline-impenetrable audio-literary mysteries such as The Bird In The Gravel.

Yet she’ll also touch uneasily, obliquely, but always openly on subjects such as alcoholism and mental disturbance which might or might not be first-hand, and in ways which tide the listener into the heart of the situation – the compulsive, brittle, confessional dream-suite Oh My My which swallows up the second half of 1989’s ‘Maria’; the title track to ‘The Walking (and Constantly)’, which casts a heartbreaking light on the trudge and hysteria of grieving; or the disturbingly open-ended half-story of The Lobby (a incomplete, displaced female narrative with a chillingly sad tune, which might be about dementia, bereavement, social defiance or a mixture of all three).

Over thirty-five years Jane’s music has flowed and curved from her early folk-and-synths period to the grand studio-as-instrument art-pop shapings of ‘The Walking’ and ‘When I Was A Boy’ to the embracing of tones from Canadian country, big-band soul and Celtic fusion. In more recent years, you can hear her conceptual thumbprint (if only in the shape of an elusive transmitted meme and method) in the work of a newer crop of independent female songwriters such as Jenny Hval. Her latest record, the crowd-funded ‘Ulysses’ Purse’, takes elements of all of these strands only to strain and diffuse them into gentle atmospherics around a core of some of Jane’s finest songs to date.

As with form, so with content. As Jane turns sixty, the focus of her songcraft has turned towards the significant but under-explored passage out of middle-age, in which neither work or life is over and done yet, but old disagreements must be put to rest and the scattered aspects of personhood and affection allowed to settle into the character you’ll need to take you through the next stage. Perhaps committed to communicating the album’s simplicity in action as well as concept (and perhaps transforming her budget restrictions into a broadening of the message), Jane’s been touring it low-budget and solo, with the minimum of instruments. For the British gig, she’s even laid some troubadour plans to make the journey between gigs on foot (when possible), accompanied only by her dog.

* * * * * * * *

The range of Jane’s tour guests – straightforward, but telling in tone – suggest that she’s put active thought and choice into the arrangements.

In the studio, The Blackheart Orchestra‘s Chrissy Mostyn and Richard Pilkington sometimes make the mistake of corraling multi-instrumental skills into recordings which over-egg and over-slick the substance of their songs. Live, however, is where to catch them and where everything works: with Richard carrying out carefully-timed and layered instrumental changes under Chrissy’s storyteller guitar and full, mesmeric voice, their compelling, atmospheric storytelling pop comes into focus. They’re with Jane for around half of the tour dates, an arrangement and environment which seems set to bring out the best in them: maybe not so much a learning environment as one which might convince them to bring their leaner, more spontaneous live strengths fully back into their recordings.

In place for the Bath date, Balsamo Deighton (a spinoff duo from late Brit-country band The Storys, featuring sometime theatre-musical star Steve Balsamo and former Deighton Family singer Rosalie Deighton) have a confident, Gram-and-Emmylou/Alison Krauss-inspired West Coast sound, nicely reflecting Jane’s own rootsier country leanings (as well as providing a more traditional songwriting style for her to kick off from).

For the Edinburgh show, Jane’s scored a coup by enticing her friend Carol Laula into a support slot. Carol’s one of those adult pop artists – thoroughly successful in their own sphere – who can slip clear away from the radar of younger, more experimentally-inclined listeners only to rush back in unexpectedly, a welcome gust of fresh air and vision. Noted for the warmth, engagement and humility of her gigs, Carol is another tourmate choice reflecting a past and current aspect of Jane – this time, the rapport with an audience through melodic and personal openness, the dedication to dynamiting preciousness in favour of rapport.

https://youtu.be/uhPWH3g2ONY

Kerry-based popster Ruth (who opens the first show of the tour at Whelan’s in Dublin) is less of an established quality, having only begun making a name for herself this year/ That said, her debut single Who Are You Living For? has already revealed prodigious depth and subtlety. Exploring anger, hurt, sympathy, reproach and concern in a single package, tied together with rapier-sharp insight: one to add to the list of big-hearted/let-down woman songs. While I suspect that Ruth might be turning up to the Siberry gig with minimal instrumentation, it also shows that she can flush a current dancetronic wallpaper-of-sound production style with the vivid intelligent personality of the expert singer-songwriter, moving from probing Wurlitzer-chime verses to explode into a grand CCM pop chorus. Ruth’s next single, out this month, is called Queen Of The Con. Clearly I’ll need to pay careful attention.

Similarly fresh on the scene but much, much more elusive is Delilah Montagu, who’s supporting at Sheffield and who keeps a bizarrely low media profile, with nary a song or a picture to be found to help build a profile. Apparently a gifted Joni Mitchell/Laura Marling-inspired singer and guitarist, she’s another early starter (first song written at eight, work being performed by choir and orchestra by the time she was eleven), and while she’s apparently been making a small, solid splash at selected regional folk festivals this year, her highest profile one seems to have been supporting similarly obscure art-folk trio Paradisia in a Stoke Newington pub cellar.

It seems as if this new support slot’s a jump up for Delilah… or maybe not. Despite the radio silence, she already comes garlanded with industry praise (from the likes of Simon Climie), and a little digging does reveal that she’s a scion of the eye-wateringly costly liberal-arts school Bedales, who’ve already rolled out pop alumni such as Marika Hackman, Lily Allen, baritone moodist Gabriel Bruce and blues-rocker Leah Mason – plus Cara Delevingne – and for whom she scored the school musical ‘Sound of The Night Feather’ before graduating). Everything about Delilah seems to mutter “carefully groomed for stealth success”, but, as ever, you can’t fake that kind of a thing in front of a cult audience like Jane’s; so I’m assuming that whoever picked her (and it could well be Jane herself) knows what they’re doing.

Amongst the tour guests, maybe the closest to Jane in terms of spirit is LeeSun, who’s supporting her at Milton Keynes. Korea-born, Canada-raised and now Leeds-based, Lee originally comes from witty, deceptively whimsical jazz-pop (if her Calgary-recorded, Wurlitzer-chiming 2011 debut, ‘Prime’, is anything to go by – check it out, since it’s a secret gem, and in line with Jane’s own lighter, perkier musings). Since then, changes in life and perspective have led her towards stretched-out, semi-spiritual chamber pop ballads which explore from the creche to the cosmos: swaddled but epic, tinted with rocking lullaby rhythms and touches of sleepy string jazz. I’m not sure what she’ll bring to the party at this point – hopefully some of the brave, open fragility of her recent singles, some of the Blossom Dearie wit of ‘Prime’, and some of the cool, defiant, musing commentary that’s evident from her podcasts in which she questions the way in which a patriarchal Western world distorts her situation (single mother, south-east Asian roots, self-possessed singleton) into that of some kind of resident alien.

Tags: Balsamo Deighton, Bath (England), Birmingham (England), Brighton (England), Carol Laula, Delilah Montagu, Dublin (Ireland), Edinburgh (Scotland), Farncombe (England), Hebden Bridge (England), Jane Siberry, LeeSun, listening to women, London (England), Milton Keynes (England), Paradisia, Rosalie Deighton, Ruth, Sheffield (England), Shrewsbury (England), Steve Balsamo, Stromness (Orkney - Scotland), Stroud (England), The Blackheart Orchestra, The Deighton Family, The Storys, women of heart and mind

August 2016 – upcoming gigs – odds and ends – Dennis bring North-Eastern mining-town pop to London (19th); noisy psychedelic rackets cooked up by Three Dimensional Tanx in Lancaster (20th) and by the Rocket Recordings All Dayer in London (20th – with Teeth of the Sea, Gum Takes Tooth, Necro Deathmort, Housewives, Anthroprophh, H.U.M, Kuro, Coldnose)

17 Aug

I’m not even going to pretend that there’s a connecting thread within this post – it’s just a roundup of Friday and Saturday gigs while I try to fit some more updates into what’s going to be a busy August outside of the blog.

It seems that my rant about ersatz brass bands and the appropriation of Northern British folk forms earlier in the month has borne some fruit, or at least generated some kind of knock-on effect. I’ve just been emailed about Dennis, an eight-piece “folk pit-pop & colliery brass band” from Hetton-le-Hole in the minelands of County Durham, who claim heirdom to “a working class cultural heritage and community spirit.” and who are playing a free gig in London on Friday. In many ways they’re a sugared-tea version of ascerbic ‘80s Hullensians The Housemartins – a soul-touched ‘60s guitar pop, with the soul horn section transmogrified into the distinctively mournful, dusty sound of a pit head brass ensemble.

While some of that comparison’s on point – they’ve certainly got the tunes, and spring even more directly from the culture, with even the guitarists learning pit brass back in primary school prior to an apprenticeship in indie – Dennis do lack the Housemartins’ explicit political bite. There’s little of the gadfly lyrical attacks, or an equivalent to Paul Heaton’s upfront socialism and targeting of privilege and exploitation. Instead, much of their ethos is expressed via their visual identity. Artwork and videos are festooned with mining and trade union banners and footage of workers’ marches, while some clips make use of elderly retirees in mining town social clubs (notably, the latter are invited to join in with the singing, instead of being treated either as craggy scenery or as crushing embarrassments).

Outwardly, Dennis seem to deal in softer topics – more personal, adolescent or universal, or more diffuse folky sing-alongs – but a quick closer look reveals an undercurrent of glowingly nostalgic communalism (the band are veterans of fundraisers and community support events), and lyrics which hanker back, obliquely, to community spirit and mutual help. Perhaps more will be revealed on their debut album ‘Open Your Eyes’, due at the start of September when they’ll be playing on home turf at Northumberland’s Coquetfest.

Dennis, and Sapien Records Ltd. present:
Dennis
Mau Mau Bar, 265 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London, W11 1LR, England
Friday 19th August 2016, 7.00pm – free event – information

* * * * * * * *

Over in the North-West, Lancaster psych-punk five piece Three Dimensional Tanx are playing a hometown gig on Saturday. With Stooges, Can and Velvet Underground comparisons in the bag, they’re following a pretty clear lineage: personally, I’m also hearing Question Mark and the Mysterians plus the garage rock end of the Sy Barrett Floyd; while other songs beat relentlessly at the forehead like Suicide or embark on long, stewed musical journeys.

What I like about this band is the dogged way in which they conduct themselves, and the way in which they seem to have colonised this particular Lancaster pub – circling around in its schedule like a persistently returning comet and playing several sets each time, as if pushing themselves through an arts lab. Turning the show into a five-decker lysergic sandwich, North-Western vinyl archivist Sie Norfolk (Sunstone Records/Psych Fest) will take slots before and after the band as well as during a break between sets, playing a “psychedelic dance party” from his record collection. If they’re going to continue to make this thing a regular event, I hope that they succeed in turning it into a psychedelic node, feeding more mindstretcher bands into and through Lancaster and beyond.

Three Dimensional Tanx + DJ Sie Norfolk
The Golden Lion, 33 Moor Lane, Lancaster, LA1 1QD, England
Saturday 20th August 2016, 9.00pm – information

* * * * * * * *

Staying in choppy psychedelic waters, the Rocket Recordings label has an eight-band concert back down in London, hosted (inevitably) by those persistent stewards of noise at Baba Yaga’s Hut. Many of the names are familiar – certainly to the dedicated noisies who follow the Hut and swing hard with ‘The Quietus’ – but for those who might not know them so well, here’s a quick primer.

As Baba Yaga favourites, Teeth Of The Sea keep popping up in here: a craggy yet celebratory electro-psychedelic throb from a full-band rock lineup embracing techno, polytextured brass, analogue synthwarp, tough corners of metal, and dance imperatives that span Chicago clubs and mud-sodden English field parties. Meanwhile, Necro Deathmort were among the electro-industrialists running rampant at at Cafe Oto last October: an all-out banger project which swings like a macabre wrecking ball across the borders of hard techno, blootered industrial electronica and doom metal. This year’s album ‘The Capsule’ takes a step into the scuzzy pack-ice of dark ambience: glowering, and majestically dour.

An explicitly magickal Anglo-French-Swiss trio of Mark Wagner, Heloise Zamzam and Olmo Uiutna, the spiritually/psi-ritually-inclined H.U.M. played at April’s Gnod Weekender. Back then I described them as a “psychic cross-cultural art coven”, creating consciousness-expanding installation-cum-ritual sound performances via chants, drones and drums, with both the music and Mark’s improvised narratives drawing on cybernetics, the occult, sound visualisations, and ancient alchemical ideas. They also like Rimbaud, Artaud, Colombian shamans and the Gallic pop of Francois Hardy, which makes for one hell of an art-sprawl.

Both Housewives and Anthroprophh showed up in ‘Misfit City’ only the other day, as participants in the current Sax Ruins/Massicot tours – the former an amelodic No Wave-inspired noise quartet, the latter a trio led by a sludge-guitar hero balancing “fifty years of psychedelic culture and esoteric art” on his shoulders.

That leaves Gum Takes Tooth, Kuro and Coldnose. Two of these, at least, are two-person teamings. Gum Takes Tooth are drummer Thomas Fuglesang and singer/synth-player/electronoise generator Jussi Brightmore, who pursue a rhythmic communion with their audiences inspired by psychedelic rituals and sound-system block parties (their recent single, Bone Weapon, sounds like a choral mass conducted inside a floor polisher). Kuro is a new project uniting bass guitarist Gareth Turner (an Anthroprophh contributor and half of Big Naturals) with French amplified violinist Agathe Max (a classical music escapee who’s been making improvised sonic textural music for two decades). As for who Coldnose are, nobody seems to know. Perhaps they’re just an idea to fill up the poster. Perhaps they’ll simply coalesce on the day.

Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Rocket Recordings All Dayer (featuring Teeth Of The Sea + Gum Takes Tooth + Necro Deathmort + Housewives + Anthroprophh + H.U.M + Kuro + Coldnose)
Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England
Saturday 20th August 2016 – information

There’ll also be barbeques and beer, the latter an Intergalactic Pale Ale devised by Rocket label people in collaboration with London hopsmasters Brewage à Trois. Yep, there’s a signature beer for psych-happy London heads now…

Tags: Agathe Max, Anthroprophh, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Big Naturals, Coldnose, Coquetfest (festival), Dennis, Gareth Turner, Gum Takes Tooth, H (Heloise Zamzam), H.U.M, Housewives, Kuro, London (England), Mark Wagner, Necro Deathmort, Sie Norfolk, Teeth Of The Sea, Three Dimensional Tanx, Uiutna (Olmo Uiutna)

August 2016 – upcoming British tours – Kiran Leonard & Secret Admirer (22nd-27th), joined variously by Early Ghost, Sweet Williams, Felka and DUDS.

13 Aug

Wildly experimental Oldham songwriter and multi-instrumental pop wizard Kiran Leonard (who comes across on record as a latterday Todd Rundgren, but who shows more of his affinity with loose-limbed avant-garde noise rock when playing live) is out on another English mini-tour towards the end of the month.

As before, Kiran’s taking out his freeform power-pop quartet of himself, Dave Rowe, Dan Bridgwood Hill and Andrew Cheetham, but he also seems to be expanding his touring circus of Manchester music, as burbled below…

“Boy am I excited for this… If that wasn’t enough to make me grin like a fool from ear to ear, we’ll be joined by Manchester’s finest Nick Ainsworth, almost known as Secret Admirer! accompanied by some sort of incomprehensible supergroup (“the stunning Cheeseman” logging two sets a night behind the kit, Edwin Stevens aka Irma Vep on bass I think, Aldous RH on keys, the legendary Jon Collin on guitar!? what!?! and that’s not all ! Sweet Williams w/ us in Brighton ! Early Ghost w/ us in LDN! DUDS w/ us in Manchester! Mint jamz wall to wall woooowwwwww. Alright? So come and see!”

Full tour dates:

The Louisiana, Wapping Road, Bathurst Terrace, Bristol, BS1 6UA, England, Monday 22nd August 2016, 7.30pm (with Secret Admirer) – information
Patterns, 10 Marine Parade, Brighton, BN2 1TL, England, Tuesday 23rd August 2016, 7.30pm (with Secret Admirer + Sweet Williams) – information
The 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, Soho, London, W1D 1LL, England, Wednesday 24th August 2016, 7.30pm (with Secret Admirer + Early Ghost) – information
The Deaf Institute, 135 Grosvenor Street, Manchester, M1 7HE, England, Friday 25th August 2016, 7.00pm (with Secret Admirer + DUDS) – information
The Trades Club, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 8EE, England, Sunday 27th August 2016, 8.00pm (with Secret Admirer + Felka) – information

I’ve dredged up some of the usual support band aural evidence below –
the faux-West-Coast post-punk surfings of DUDS (complete with bobbing reminders of Syd Barrett and Link Wray), a little of Sweet Williams’ deep-blues/dream pop hybrid (from their upcoming new album in September), a delightful twangy chunk of Early Ghost’s grand and well-made pop, and a shot of the bewildered/bewildering world of Secret Admirer.

Possibly due to late scheduling, Kiran hasn’t mentioned Felka, the striking young Keighley-based folk duo who are joining in at the Hebden Bridge show. Here are a couple of videos of Felka’s Rose and Tanisha at work, showing off their sharp-witted folk storytelling with its dips into country, blues, and even Elizabethan catches.

Tags: Bradford (England), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), DUDS, Early Ghost, Felka, Hebden Bridge (England), Kiran Leonard, listening to women, London (England), Manchester (England), Oldham (England), Salford (England), Secret Admirer, Sweet Williams

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Misfit City

February/March 2018 – Minute Taker mini-tour of England with Runes (2nd, 3rd, 10th, 17th February); Holly Penfield’s rescheduled Fragile Human Monster dates in London (23rd February, 23rd March); Joss Cope and Emily Jones in Worthing (2nd February)

January/February 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 1) with Kronos Quartet, Xenia Rubinos, Face The Music, Adam Schatz’s Civil Engineering and Bang On A Can (27th January, 5th February, 15th February)

January 2018 – upcoming London rock and folk gigs – twists and weaves with Prescott, Lost Crowns and Kavus Torabi (11th January); a carpet of acid-folk/chanson dreams with Alison O’Donnell & Firefay (18th January); a lysergic lattice with a Knifeworld double-set (20th January)

December 2017 – various upcoming gigs in Bristol and London – Seitz, Tom O.C Wilson and Northwest (17th December); Colonial Sun, Mally Harpaz and V Ä L V E (19th December); The Secret Crowd and The Many Few (15th December)

November 2017 – Cosmo Sheldrake’s new album news and European mini-tour (17th-30th November) including an appearance by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

October 2017 – upcoming London gigs – art pop and stories from Tom O.C Wilson, Eley Williams and Kept Cairns (22nd October); holy electro-noise folk and beats from Jarboe, Father Murphy and Metalogue (23rd October)

October 2017 – upcoming gigs – Anglo coastalysergia and Americana with Crayola Lectern, Dr Spacetoad and Billy Bad Band in Hove (21st October); Austrian psychprog with Blank Manuskript in Ramsgate, Leicester and London (26th-28th October)

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – The Magic Lantern, Nick Ereaut, Amy Walker and Sky Coloured at Rain Today (May 18th); Vanishing Twin and Dijf Sanders at Total Refreshment Centre (May 19th); Quiet Boy, Roxanne Tataei and Brigitte Aphrodite at Total Refreshment Centre (May 25th)

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – Beatrix Players + King Of The Opera (May 11th); Cosmo Sheldrake + A House In The Trees (May 12th)

April 2017 – upcoming London gigs – three songwriters – Momus (10th); BC Camplight (20th); David Vaughan (29th)

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – Society of Imaginary Friends Soiree, 3rd March – guitars, sopranos, art-pop, poets etc

March to September 2017 – upcoming gigs – North Sea Radio Orchestra out and about in England and Wales (sometimes with Crayola Lectern or William D. Drake)

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – Coven ’17 English tour, 2nd-13th March (fightin’ women’s folk from O’Hooley & Tidow, Lady Maisery and Grace Petrie)

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – 1816 (featuring Wenche Losnegård, Audun Ellingsen and Gregor Riddell) in Frome (19th); Woodpigeon, Cevanne & Crewdson, More Is More and Matt Stewart-Evans at Daylight Music in London (19th); The Nightjar and Ys in Bristol (20th)

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – iamthemorning’s two shows with Tim Bowness in London and Ulft (12th, 14th) and three more in the Netherlands (16th-18th)

November 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Society Of Imaginary Friends’ ‘Time Saturated Soiree’ with The Astronauts, Taktylos, Beth Jones, Marius French and Nighmar Ascousky (4th); Revere, Alasdair Maclean and Colm Mac Con Iomair play Daylight Music (5th)

September/October 2016 – upcoming gigs – Jane Siberry on tour in Britain and Ireland (9th Sep – 7th Oct) with The Blackheart Orchestra, Balsamo Deighton, Ruth, Delilah Montagu, LeeSun and Carol Laula

August 2016 – upcoming British tours – Kiran Leonard & Secret Admirer (22nd-27th), joined variously by Early Ghost, Sweet Williams, Felka and DUDS.

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