As a follow-up to mid-November’s Regent Hall performance of classical works, the London New Wind Festival are putting on this more aleatory occasion, teaming several of the musicians who played last time with some of the improvisatory talent which coalesces around IKLECTIK in groups such as The Horse…
London New Wind Festival presents
London New Wind Festival: An Evening of Art, Film & Improvised Music IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information
“The London New Wind Festival presents a varied programme of new music with focus on wind symphony orchestras, brass ensembles, new music by women composers and improvisation. Musicians: Catherine Pluygers (oboe), Neil Metcalf (flute), Adrian Northover (soprano and alto saxophones), Sue Lynch (tenor saxophone), Sylvia Hallett (violin), Pier Paulo Martino (double bass), Adam Bohman (found objects). Film-makers: Paula Garcia Stone and Adrian Northover. Artists: Martin Harrison and Livia Garcia.”
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No content with pulling double duty at the LNWF, Adrian Northover’s also part of this returning gig from Notes From Underground up at MAP…
Vlad Miller – Notes From Underground MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Saturday 16th December 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
“The effect that Notes From Underground want to have on their listeners is immediate, direct, and accessible in the best sense. They want their music to grab your ears and your body and not let go until you’ve been variously pulverised, pummelled, or pleasured into submission.
“Notes From Underground are Vlad Miller (piano), Adrian Northover (alto and soprano saxophone), Les Booth (six-string electric bass) and Dave Rohoman (drums, vocals). They are a band that has lasted the course of time, using Vlad’s compositions as a starting point for a collaborative repertoire. Largely stimulated by jazz and Russian music traditions, strong melodies weave into colourful improvisation. They wish to present their pieces on the London jazz stage to challenge listeners to enjoy new compositions within the general framework of their set. All the pieces tell a story, for example ‘Between Two Storms’, a real life event on a cruise ship entering dangerous waters in the Russian White Sea.
“Their first album ‘Diaghilev’s Dance’ was inspired by the life of the famous Russian impresario Diaghelev, and his dance troupe ‘The Ballet Russes’. The Vortex magazine wrote: “With the odd ballad providing balance, this is an intelligently programmed, consistently absorbing set from a versatile and subtly interactive band”…”
Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Ashley Paul & Ensemble (performing Mary Jane Leach) + Mette Rasmussen & Sofia Jernberg + Dawn Scarfe Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
The coming month’s Kammer Klang has only a tenuous relationship with contemporary classical, concentrating as it does on musicians who espouse either free improvisation or natural resonance.
The evening centres on an ensemble led by clattering, free-form multi-instrumentalist and composer Ashley Paul (who recently supported Powerdove further north at the Old Dentist) and featuring Hyperion Ensemble bass clarinettist/utility person Yoni Silver, cellist/Kammer Klang organiser Lucy Railton, onetime Sonic Youth guitarist-turned-ubiquitous London art musician Thurston Moore and Charcoal Owls’ multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott on piano (a man who generally brings a specifically Cumbrian twist to his playing, gizmo fiddling and use of field recordings). They’ll be playing ‘Wolff Tones E-Tude’, a cellular Christian-Wolff-inspired piece by American composer Mary Jane Leach (example performance below).
Much of Mary Jane’s work focusses on acoustic properties and how sound environments form in specific spaces with particular resonances and opportunities for difference, combination, and interference tones; in addition, how these may be manipulated by a performer, composer or editor (or by someone who’s a combination of all or some of those things). She herself will be present for the performance, which also includes a stereo-diffused playback of her 1992 radio sound piece/hörspiel ‘Kirchtraum’ (about which she says “Have you ever walked into a church, and it seems as if there is sound rolling around the space that’s been there for a long time? I created ‘Kirchtraum’ to create a sound dreamscape to create that kind of feeling. It uses the phases of a dream, going progressively further back into the past and becoming more chaotic with each phase. I used nightingales to punctuate the different phases of the dream, to differentiate between the dream and the environment…”). In addition, she’ll be present for a pre-concert workshop on Sunday 3rd December from noon until 5.00pm (giving a lecture and offering feedback on pieces any composers care to bring in) and, prior to the concert on the Tuesday, participating in a public talk with Frances Morgan at 7.00pm.
Opening in the Fresh Klang slot is Dawn Scarfe, a sound artist preoccupied with “things that seem to sound themselves, such as resonating glasses, Aeolian wires and self-opening swell boxes”, and who’s brought this preoccupation to sound installations between Cumbria and London, Exeter and Estonia, Brussels and Seoul. Her projects include the livestreamed ‘Reveil‘ “an annual crowdsourced live broadcast which “tracks the sound of the sunrise around the world for twenty-four hours” using open microphones provided by streamers around the world: she’s described it as intending “to open a space for listening to something else – especially from places where humans and not humans meet – and in the course of one earth day to provide a sketch of this emerging field.” 2017’s edition included contributions from Maputo, Tehran, New York, Kolkata, Santiago de Cali, nature reserves in Cumbria’s Walney Island and Australia’s Noosa Biosphere Reserve, and even the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. On this occasion, Dawn will be performing ‘Tuning to Spheres’, written for wine glasses, sine tone generators and turntables.
Closing the evening out will be a free experimental duet between raw Danish Trio Riot saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who works with both plain and prepared instruments) and Swedish/Norwegian singer/composer Sofia Jernberg (who works with a twisting barrage of vocal techniques including split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing)
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Fresh from some well-publicised collaborations with avant-rock godfathers Faust, countercultural Salford sound wizards Gnod are returning to their ongoing “R&D” tour. For more on their London weekender from last year, click here; at the moment, they’re stripped back down to their core duo of Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine in order to explore the next, as-yet-undecided developments from last year’s seethe of slow, dirty riffage on their bed of dub, urban discontent, psychic reportage and ritual. As part of that development, they’re throwing the stage open to volunteer collaborators on the night, “be it singing , shouting, dancing, bringing an instrument/device to the table or just simply tuning in and coming along for the ride.” Dust off your home-made Azimuth Co-ordinator or pocket Tettix Wave Accumulator; grab that Aztec death whistle from the back of the kitchen drawer; head down and dive in.
Following the Italian/Slovenian leg in November (in which they toured with Italian noise-rock guitar/voice/drums duo OvO and Godspeed-associated Montreal wallcrashers Big ‡ Brave), the British tour will see a blurring of support slot and Gnod expansion. The band’s ranks will be pre-swollen in Glasgow by drummer and oscillator king Julian Dicken (from Glaswegian psych-rockers The Cosmic Dead) and in Bristol by murky industral-technoist Tony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and drummer Dan Johnson (from jazz-punkers Run Logan Run). In London, they’ll be augmented by a five-strong gang of John Doran (head ‘Quietus‘ ranter), heavy electronicist Mark Dicker (ex-Trencher, Palehorse, Bruxa Maria), Mark O. Pilkington and Michael J. York of synth-and-bagpipe psychonauts Teleplasmiste and Teeth Of The Sea trumpeter Sam Barton. In addition, the London gig has a clearly defined support act in the shape of URUK, a teamup of bass player Massimo Pupillo (of expansive no-wave trio Zu) and synthesist/multi-instrumentalist Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualized, various Julian Cope bands). URUK originates from 2016 when mutual fans Massimo and Thipe finally got together; the resulting music, debuted on this year’s ‘I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness’ album, references both Coil and Zu but sinks deeper into the world of highly textured dark-ambient drones.
Dates:
Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England, Thursday 7th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
Broadcast, 427 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LG, Scotland, Friday 8th December 2017, 7.00pm – information
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Sunday 10 December 2017, 7.30pm – information
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Just time, too, to mention another Xposed Club incident over in Cheltenham, in which there’ll be a meet-up duo of pianist Alexander Hawkins and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (who between them have notched up work and/or leadership duties with Convergence Quartet, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Decoy and more – we also recently saw Raymond exploring the art of the graphic score in London). Also on the bill is well-respected London experimental vocalist/Resonance FM founder Sharon Gal, engaging in duo work with Ghost Mind percussionist (and Xposed host) Stuart Wilding; and a solo set from avant-garde bass clarinet virtuoso Chris Cundy who, as mentioned here some time back, “dips into everything from the philosophical experiments of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage to out-and-out improv to theatre work.”
Various tasters below:
Xposed Club presents:
Alexander Hawkins & Raymond MacDonald + Sharon Gal & Stuart Wilding + Chris Cundy The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 8th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
As a matter of course, London-based Anglo-Norwegian cello trio Tre Voci (consisting of Torun Saeter Stavseng, Gregor Riddell and Colin Alexander) sit on a triple cusp. Their work focusses on Early music, contemporary compositions (they’ve premiered work by composers including Mica Levi, Alex Nikiporenko, Bryn Harrison, Kit Downes, Peter Wiegold, Edwin Hillier and Sergei Zagny) and improvisations. Much of this early December concert (played twice in a single day, under the aegis of the Nonclassical organization) sees them explore the third of these directions, creating “meditative” new surround-sound music in combination with outstanding Iranian hand-drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. Laid out in the ICA’s performance space, it will be part gig, part walk-through three-dimensional installation, with further synaesthesic dimensions added by the live visuals from Norwegian artist Henrik Koppen.
For part of the concert’s second half, the trio will play unspecified new compositions of their own as well as teaming up with Norwegian soprano Silje Aker Johnsen to premier a new work by David Stephen Grant. In a recent interview on the Nonclassical blog, Colin Alexander states that the Grant piece will “cover the listeners in thick, interwoven layers of sound… David writes rich, warm and engulfing electro-acoustic music that will fill the space at ICA with shifting harmonies and blurred timbres. My first experience of his writing was through a duo for violin and cello with electronics that I performed with Mira Benjamin in Oslo and London. Although simple and relatively short it was incredibly effective through its nuanced beauty and delicately judged movement.”
Nonclassical & Tre Voci Cello Ensemble present:
Tre Voci: Orbits Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, Westminster, London, SW1Y 5AH England, United Kingdom
Sunday 3rd December 2017, 4.00pm & 8.00pm – information here and here
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There was a time when Keith Burstein could barely stay out of trouble. As a conductor and commissioner of New Music, he was a rising pillar of British contemporary classical music during his twenties. However, his discovery of his own composing voice – staunchly tonal, in fervent reaction to the austere high-modernist abstractions of the times – drew him into a series of vicious joustings and spats in the early ‘90s, played out first within the musical community, then in the press, in the concert hall and ultimately in the libel courts. He fought hard. The establishment he’d jilted and criticised fought equally hard. There’s not been much forgiveness on either side.
Ten years later, his opera ‘Manifest Destiny’ (which took a broad-brush metaphysical approach to the War on Terror) was performed in Edinburgh in the wake of the London suicide bombings of 2005. Further spats followed over alleged glorification of terrorism. There was another court case, and a bankruptcy. As before, Keith would argue (and continues to argue) that he was fighting not just for his own right to musical self-expression and political challenges, but for everyone else’s. Subsequent adventures have been quieter (and his rebellions subtler), but even as he approaches his sixtieth year he’s never entirely lost that self-appointed role as vehement high-culture renegade.
With all that said, the ultimate Burstein concerns and preoccupations seem more suited to metaphysical and spiritual realms rather than the political and strategic trappings of the battles he’s fought, and their scale and fervour have tended to overshadow the music: the water-pageant melancholy of ‘Requiem for the Young’, the entanglement of manners and compressed frenzy in his ‘Dance of Love/Dance of Death’ string quartet; the foreboding elegance of his choral Holocaust meditation ‘The Year’s Midnight’ and the lucid romantic panorama of his ‘Elixir’ symphony. When writing to a grander scale, he composes work that in some respects resembles the Whitehall of his beloved London – looming and aspirational; fascinated by the power of architecture and history, yet at the same open to and ownable by passers-by; his structures echoing the antique yet repurposing them to modern ends, and being buffeted and reshaped by contemporary impacts; an meticulous admixture of historicism and retrofitting.
This month’s lunchtime recital, however, provides the opportunity to appreciate his music on a smaller magnitude, at a remove from grander clutter of conflicts and history. Packing various shorter Burstein works for piano, violin and cello into its forty-five minutes, it includes assorted piano preludes and the final movement of Keith’s recent ‘Wiosna’ cello sonata (one of several recent works in which he retraces his family history back through his parents’ work as violinists with the Brighton Philharmonic and Halle Orchestra to their Eastern European roots and Russian/Lithuanian connections). Keith (on piano) is joined by notable solo cellist Corinne Morris – whose ‘Macedonian Sessions’ reached number 2 in the classical charts this year – and by violinist/composer Roland Roberts (Solaris Quartet, City of Oxford Orchestra, Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and many more). Both Corinne and Roland have worked with Keith before; the former premiering ‘Wiosna’… and the latter co-premiering the piano/violin duet Keith composed this year in honour of his late mother Barbara.
Lunchtime Recital of the Works of Keith Burstein (with Keith Burstein, Corinne Morris, Roland Roberts) 1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Monday 11th December 2017, 12.00pm – information here and here
One of the best things about running the gig notification side of ‘Misfit City’ is uncovering unknown venues – ones which were previously unknown to me, at least. The ongoing embittering saga of London’s shuttering venues (gobbled up by flats or zoning, squeezed out by skyrocketing rents or bullying neighbours) is at least offset by news of new ones, be they dedicated performance buildings or reclaimed/improvised spaces. From what I hear, half of Peckham seems to be sprouting pop-up performance opportunities: but on this occasion, I’m taking a look at a couple of spaces nearer the river.
I can’t think why I’ve not heard of Sands Films Studios before – as institution and location, they’ve been in place for forty-two years, nearly as long as me. Based in an 18th century granary in the same corner of Rotherhithe as The Mayflower pub, they’ve made most of their money from costumery (sumptuous hand-embroidery for Merchant Ivory, ‘Wolf Hall’, ‘Doctor Who’, the film version of the Lloyd Webber ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and many more) but over the years have expanded into sound and film staging, some of it contained in a small, sofa-filled, enchanted-looking theatre space like a pocket Georgian dream. Judging the latter to be “an inspiringly intimate place to hear fabulous music”, promoters Tunedin.London have swooped on it. Since this September alone, it’s hosted Chilean flamenco from Natalia Garcia Huidobro, polyglot West African songs from Jean Paul Samputu, Galician music from Uxía, and trans-Manche Celtic songcraft from both Siobhan Wilson and Mary Ann Kennedy, with upcoming baroque and rebetiko concerts to come.
My not knowing about Poplar Union is more understandable. it really is brand new – a dedicated arts and community centre for this neglected London neighbourhood above the Isle of Dogs, adding light and colour to a tower block beside the Limehouse Cut, its name a wry nod to the area’s former Victorian workhouse. Much of what goes on there is community workshops, but they’re also getting up to speed as an interesting gig venue, having hosted a double showcase for polyfusional song outfits 1816 and Land of If, with a vibrant sets of new jazz concerts lined up for next year.
Here’s what they’re doing next…
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Tuned In London present:
Tell Tale Tusk Quartet Sands Films Studios, 82 St Marychurch Street, Rotherhithe, SE16 4HZ, London, England
Wednesday 29th November 2017, 7.45pm – information here and here
Hailed as “clever, witty and deep” by Resonance FM – and based around singing clarinettists/guitarists Fiona Fey and Laura Inskip, singing percussionist Reyhan Yusuf and fiddle player Anna Lowenstein – folk band Tell Tale Tusk Quartet have “grown and developed together over the years, emerging first as an a capella trio, before collecting a fiddle player and setting hands upon new instruments to explore and expand their palette. Their highly collaborative process informs the diverse styles and varied sounds that can be heard within their music. Spellbinding (and award-winning) vocal harmonies weave around melodious instrumentals to reimagine folktales old and give light to folktales new. Tell Tale Tusk’s take on folk is boundlessly creative: as well as being inventive interpreters of music from around the British Isles, the ensemble are prolific writers, adding their distinctive and astute voices to modern day folksong.”
This end-of-November gig celebrates the recent launch of ‘Through The Morning’, the band’s crowdfunded debut EP as a quartet, featuring “an anthropomorphized journey through the changing seasons, a pensive ode to the Moon and a bawdy tale of a (not so) lascivious sailor… just some of the characters that come vividly to life through Tell Tale Tusk’s dynamic storytelling.” In keeping with Rotherhithe’s ongoing celebrations of the three-hundred-and-ninety-seventh anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, expect a few sea shanties too. Meanwhile, see below for the quartet’s arrangement of an old English folk song performed earlier in the year at Sofar Sounds, plus a rip through Ungrateful Wench from one of the occasions when the band goes out as a rhythm-section-bolstered sextet.
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Sefiroth Poplar Union, 2 Cotall Street, Poplar, London, E14 6TL, England
Sunday 3rd December 2017, 6.30pm – information
Via projects such as Otriad, Blue-Eyed Hawk, Future Currents and Yurodny and through collaborations with orchestras such as the London Sinfonietta, the work of multi-disciplinary guitarist Alex Roth covers jazz, improv, contemporary classical, alternative folk and electronic music; and crosses over into dance and theatre events such as the Katarzyna Witek dance project aired earlier this month.
One of the projects closest to his heart is chamber-folk ensemble Sefiroth, founded with his brothers (saxophonist and flautist Nick, drummer Simon) to “explore and reimagine traditional Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) repertoire… Sung in Ladino, these ancient songs weave timeless stories of love, loss and yearning for home, evoking the lands in which the Sephardic diaspora settled: Iberia, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The group’s arrangements are as porous and wide-ranging as the history of the Sephardim, combining acoustic and electric instruments, contemporary harmony, improvisation and trance-inducing rhythms.”
It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything new from Sephiroth, although various combinations of the band, drawn from a pool of mostly Anglo-Sephardic musicians – percussionist Francesco Turrisi, trumpeter Alex Bonney, cellist Shirley Smart and bassist Ruth Goller, with the vocals handled by Olesya Zdorovetska and violinist Alice Zawadzki – have regularly interacted with each other since the ensemble’s last full concert circa 2013. It now seems as if they’re all collectively refreshed and up for more. This Poplar Union show promises to be the first in a new set of dates for the band.
Meanwhile, see below for some excerpts from Sefiroth’s previous multimedia show, ‘Arvoles Lloran por Lluvia (The Trees Weep For Rain)’, which you can also pick up as a Bandcamp EP.
Total Refreshment Centre and Alabaster dePlume present:
Peach #15: Alabaster DePlume + Coby Sey + Capitol K Total Refreshment Centre, Unit 1, Foulden Road, Shacklewell, London, N16 7UU, England
Thursday 30th November 2017, 7.00pm – information
The last show of 2017 for research-and-development pop evening Peach is, as ever, led by saxophonist, composer and wordslinger Alabaster Deplume. To deliver his part-improvised instrumentals (peppered with personal and political spoken-word musings and sincere gamings), Alabaster’s formed a new cross-disciplinary group for each successive Peach. This night’s band includes bass player Clementine March (of punktronica band Snapped Ankles) and Tomorrow’s Warriors violinist Rhiannon Jeffreys.
Adding to Alabaster’s band will be involvements from the other two acts on the bill, a pair of dance producers whose work steeps in and reworks elements of dub, downtempo, cumbia and more, and who cross over into live performance. Over to the Peach publicity machine for more on them:
“The dense and the meticulous combine in the voice of Coby Sey, Lewisham’s unique and powerful producer and live performer. His solo show packs a room to the inch with spirit-driven noise, with a sound matching the fine resonance of his humble character. We’ve been looking forward to presenting this man’s work for ages. An NTS DJ, and collaborator and ally of Micachu and Tirzah.
“As the skulking angel of London’s underground music scene (since 1998 according to Wikipedia) Capitol K (ace manipulator of audio and punk warlord of groove) has crossed a tapestry of styles and approaches with his own secret compass. Tonight that compass points at something in the distance, on the other side of where you’ll be sat. A multi-instrumentalist, label founder and producer, we are blessed and humbled tonight as he’ll bring us a representation of his latest work, in development in isolation in Malta.”
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Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Chiyoda Ku + Low Sun + Archelon The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 1st December 2017, 7:30pm – information here and here
Chaos Theory unleash one last convulsion of “post-metal, math rock and odd atmospheres” before shutting up shop for the year.
On tap this time are nimble yet understated Bristolian instrumentalists Chiyoda Ku (flicking between loping machine dubfunk, math timing jumps and gentle jazzy-postrock sprinkles); Low Sun (who assemble lengthy, vivid and chilly Arctic progscapes from oscillating drone-winds, catchy minimalist riffs and passionate psych-blues guitar wails); and surprisingly lucid post/sludge metal act Archelon, heavy moody rockers who, before they rear up into red-hot guitar and pagan sighing about the stars, show shades of the sullen east London urban glower of Bark Psychosis (and, stretching back even, further, even a tinge of ‘Spirit of Eden’ Talk Talk).
On this showing, Chaos Theory can still pick ’em: they’ve got plans for a delightfully monstrous all-dayer early next year, but more on that in due course…
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Fire Records presents
Hater + Pictish Trail + Dama Scout London Fields Taproom @ London Fields Brewery, 365-366 Warburton Street, London Fields, London, E8 3RR, England
Saturday 2nd December 2017 – information here, here and here
Stalwart alternative label Fire are throwing their own end-of-year party at London Fields. Headlining are rapid risers Hater – ringing, birdlike Swedish indie-poppers sitting midway between Pretenders and late Cocteau Twins (and not a million miles away from the more recent Brill Building/dream pop crossover songs of Elephant), while the gig openers are London trio Dama Scout, who visually flirt with Asian pop imagery, have the ‘90s dream pop warble of the most accessible end of Ride and My Bloody Valentine, but also possess the terser edge of a young John Lennon.
Of most interest to me, though, is the filling in the sandwich – an appearance by Johnny Lynch’s Pictish Trail, a kind of exploded singer-songwriter act which refuses to stick to one course, one sound, even one signature. Instead, Johnny follows wherever his scattered muse takes him – haunting avant-folk along the lines of Gastr del Sol and David Grubb, skewed synthpop, Momus-style experimental disco, noise-weather – and glues the whole thing together with his contradictory, intriguing persona of “svelte, intelligent, adorable balladeer trapped inside the body of an oversized, oft-bearded folk ogre”, something which gives him equal license to clown, to loom in stricken menace, or to wrench your heartstrings with his dream-logic insight.
Although he’s spent the past couple of years happily holed up as a solo singer-songwriter on the Isle of Eigg (out in the Hebrides), Johnny’s bringing down Pictish Trail as a three-piece (featuring multi-instrumentalists Suse Bear of Tuff Love and John B. McKenna from Monoganon) for what he cheerfully calls a “intimate yuletide Eigg-nog of Hebridean Casio folk”.Note that the Fire shindig is one stop on his Winter Rewind Acid Reflux Tour, which is also calling in at Oxford on 29th November and Brighton on 8th December. For a ‘Misfit City’ reflection on a Johnny solo appearance from a few years ago, click here – otherwise, see below for some more recent studio efforts, along with a couple of Hater and Dama Scout clips…
Three interesting shows, all on the same evening in London – I remember when ‘Organ‘ used to do multi-gig hurtles on nights like these, and document the whole adventure. A tradition which could do with being revived, if funds and shoe-leather hold out.
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White Heat presents:
Sleep Party People The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
If, for the last seven years, your idea of fun has been an ‘80s synthpop act refracted through a rippling slowcore/dream pop prism (while dressed like nursery versions of Frank the rabbit man from ‘Donnie Darko’), then you probably already know about Danish one-man music factory Brian Batz and his Sleep Party People project: a budding cult act just about anywhere outside the USA. If you don’t know them, then here’s Brian and co. performing SPP’s 2010 breakthrough online hit I’m Not Human At All (singing a captivatingly blank song of emotional detachment in full ludicrous/mysterious bunnygarb, like the Residents might have done if they’d taken their cues from Beatrix Potter and Dick Luna rather than Moondog and Harry Partch).
Though their music was initially inspired by a battered old piano, Boards Of Canada, Erik Satie and David Lynch, Sleep Party People have subsequently been dogged by lazy comparisions to the calving-iceberg noise cascades of Mogwai and Sigur Rós. A real shame, since it hustles them into the cliched cloisters of that already overpopulated cathedral-of-sound; and it’s unfair to a band who’ve never really opted to slump enigmatically in the middle of a haze of effects pedals. This year’s new album, ‘Lingering’, shows a dramatic evolution and broadening of Sleep Party People’s perspective; Brian losing his fey leveret mewl and adopting a sweet psychedelic coo as he steps up to meet (on the one hand) the fantastically inventive pop likes of Everything Everything or Dutch Uncles, and (on the other) the dreamy rattle and moonshine musings of Pram.
There’s also something of the loping grooves of Can in SPP’s current workings, but in truth there’s a far bigger tranche of sunny wine-blurred ‘60s Europop, dressed up in new trappings of clinking, shattering piano loops and ghostly keyboards, windup bass and bell-clock tinkles. Lyrical preoccupations (blossoming from early mumbles to open-hearted singing) stay half-in and half-out of dreamscapes and betray a transmogrificational fascination with different modes of life, Bryan imagining oceans covered in flesh or himself as a thinking, feeling tree. On ‘Salix And His Soil’, the band beam and pulse like a feyer Everything Everything; on ‘The Sun Will Open Its Core’, they’re a full-on love up between New Order and The Flaming Lips. It’s captivating stuff. See and hear for yourselves as they drop by London via their current European tour.
(Update, 22nd November 2017 – it seems that there’ll be a support act: Marco Pini’s narcotically ambient downtempo electronica project GLOWS…)
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And Now What? presents
Torycore
Sackler Space @ The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, Chalk Farm, London, NW1 8EH, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
Political artscreamers Torycore (or #Torycore) define themselves simply, succinctly and savagely – “bullshit Tory rhetoric + brutal avantgarde metal = #TORYCORE”. They’re made up of two theatre-makers – Lucy Ellinson (Third Angel, Deaf and Hearing Ensemble, the RSC) on bellowing vocals and Chris Thorpe (Unlimited Theatre) on scourging guitar – and one full-time musician, Steve Lawson (better known as a cuddly looping bass guitarist with ambient jazzitude and a knack for equally loopy stand-up patter, but here unleashing the roiling social indignation and sharp musical wit behind the cute moves and the granny specs… as well as indulging his love for Cannibal Corpse).
Making no bones about their loathing of Tory ethics and economics (although Steve has described the performance outcome, to his own surprise, as “weirdly non-partisan”), their performance is “part gig, part metal-recital, part exorcism… combin(ing) sludge and doom metal with the Budget speech 2015; a pounding subverbal deathgrowl with text samples from the blue suits at Tory HQ, George Osborne and the architects of austerity… a verbatim record of a government ripping society’s guts out… a fiercely political convergence of death metal and theatre, vocalising a response to Conservative Party policies through music, speeches, PowerPoint and rage. It’s a guttural, expressive experience made up of Tory doctrine, political contexts and the impact of austerity over the past seven years.”
You can find out more about Torycore’s own political, theatrical and musical ethics at Chris’ interview in ‘The Guardian’ a couple of years ago – in which he states that theatre is “a national laboratory for thinking about how we think and how we are and what we are” and that “at its most basic, making theatre is just a way of meeting people… part of an ongoing conversation that can take place anywhere.” – or in this 2014 interview for the Mayfest homepage, in which Lucy and Steve discuss the more complex concerns behind the blunt hammerblow of the music: notably Lucy’s fascination with government perversion of language, reinforced by Steve’s point that “they’ve colonised the language that ought to be used to tear down the structure that protects them. So everything from ‘fairness’ to ‘democracy’ has been corrupted. Hence the need for a project like this, that throws those words back, stripped of all the pomp and bullshit that parliamentary process wraps around this rarified implementation of fascism-lite.” Lucy, meanwhile, fleshes out her mirror-method condemnation: “I’d like them to be sent to their run-for-profit detention centres. To be “visited by Atos”. To spend time with the families of those people who have killed themselves rather than fall further into fear and poverty. “We’re all in this together” right?”
The #Torycore event is part of the Roundhouse’s And Now What? season of shows between enquiry and protest which also includes contributions from, among others, Wax Lyrical and The Guilty Feminist.
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On a considerably lighter note…
Diego Brown & The Good Fairy present:
Clerkenwell ARTSlab: Diego Brown & The Good Fairy + Hannah Lovell + Maya Levy + Streatham Common (Station) + Alys Torrance + Parenthesis
Upstairs @ The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Rd, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 3BL, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 8:15pm – information
The evenings which evolved into the raffish, absurdist Clerkenwell ARTSlab events were originally run by beloved performance poet/proto-antifolker John Hegley. Although they’re now run by “twisted folk” band Diego Brown & The Good Fairy, much of Hegley’s sense of fun has stuck to them: they’re ongoing salons of “mind-bending song, stories and weird stuff… comedy and cha-cha from the kings and queens of all that”.
As usual, Diego and co. headline with their spooky, surreal, pointed London chansonnerie (puppets and automata optional), but also rolling up are three other songwriters. Parenthesis is a “prince of smooth-talking, forward-thinking, backward-walking electronic pop”. New Yorker-turned-Londoner Maya Levy, when not acting or otherwise making theatre, turns to the piano to write darkly funny folk/classical/theatre crossover songs either for herself or her band The Kitchen Quartet, (covering “medieval werewolves to Pocahontas to crazy teachers”). Hannah Lovell delivers soft-spoken, almost conversational portraits of domestic life and then hangs them askew – the solicitous hatred of one’s partner, the mental breakdowns over cooking the perfect Italian meal.
On the more overtly theatrical side, storytelling clown Alys Torrance will deliver her story of “the amazing feats performed by Stanley Gibbons’s’s’s Amazing Stamp Collection (bring binoculars/reading specs).” Somewhere in the middle is the Julian Fox/Bob Karper collaboration Streatham Common (Station): fifteen minutes of offbeat theatre songwriters Julian Fox and Bob Karper, “accordions and beats, deadpan and dance, songs and maybe film.” (The latter are still too much of a elusive fringe phenomenon to have much web presence, but I’ve included a Julian song below: a Kraftwerkian one about designing airports).
Three diverse types of folk show coming up in London: a selection of straight Americana, folk baroque fusion, Welsh archivism, post-rock-tinged acoustica, Appalachian-inspired imaginings, and hauntological dub/field recording-infused psychedelia. (One of the gigs, in Homerton, will be of particular interest to fans of psych folk ensemble The Owl Service…)
There’s quite enough existing press release verbiage for me to just quote in bulk, slip in a few audio/visual clips and waltz away…
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New Roots Promotions presents:
New Roots: Jack Cheshire + Robert Chaney The Old Queen’s Head, 44 Essex Road, Islington, London, N1 8LN, England
Thursday 23rd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
“Jack Cheshire brings his four-piece band to New Roots at The Old Queens Head. His contemporary alt-folk sound with a post-rock twist has led him to share bills with luminary peers Songhoy Blues and Josh T. Pearson, and grace the stages of The Green Man Festival and Kings Place. The ghosts of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett skirt the edges of his songs, embellished by what ‘Uncut’ magazine calls an “Ian McCulloch-style croon”, with a “burnished psychedelia (that) takes this music to the skies”. He released his 2017 album ‘Black Light Theatre’ to universal press and radio acclaim, making fans of 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne and Tom Robinson along the way.
“A rising star on the London folk scene, American singer-songwriter Robert Chaney counts Townes Van Zandt, Hank Williams and Judee Sill as influences. A remarkable songwriter with a voice to send shivers down your spine, sown deep into his songs are threads of the dusty blues of the 20s and 30s, pulp noir tales of the 40s, the cable-knit folk revival of the 50s, and the French celluloid new wave of the 60s. His recently released debut album ‘Cracked Picture Frames’ garnered high praise in the music press, with Folk Radio UK making it their featured album of the month.”
A monthly evening of the finest folk music live at the Old Queens Head in Islington.
“Described as “an immersive, trance-like musical treat” by ‘Songlines’, contemporary contemporary folk trio Effra are guitarist Alex Bishop, fiddle/mandolin player Tom Newell and accordionist Aidan Shepherd (accordion). Heralding from Bath, Shrewsbury and Canterbury respectively, they met in London in 2011. Although coming from rock, classical and jazz backgrounds, a strong connection was quickly formed, and they began meeting regularly to write and develop music that shared a common ground.Early performances were well received, and the band soon grew an identity of its own, fuelled by innovative ideas brought to the table by all three members. In 2012 after only a year since their first meeting, the band won the Bath Folk Festival ʻNew Shoots Competitionʼ on the strength of their compositions and high-energy performance, being hailed as “a trio of the highest order that, despite their young age, sound like they have always sat comfortably among the greatest of the folk scene.” In 2014 they released their debut album, ‘Lose An Hour’ and toured extensively through 2015-16 with performances at BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, Cambridge Folk Festival, and EFEx/Homegrown festival.
“In Spring 2017 Effra released their highly-anticipated second album, ‘Below Ground’, which captures the unseen subterranean world beneath our feet. The recording process saw the band trek to the source of London’s only fully concealed waterway (and their musical namesake) the Effra river, as well as venturing within ninety-six kilometres worth of tunnels underneath the UK’s largest limestone quarry, Box Freestone Mine. This gig at the Old Queen’s Head is their official album launch.
“Cynefin (a Welsh noun with no direct equivalent in English) is somewhat of a linguistic enigma. Originally a farming term used to describe the habitual tracks and trails worn by sheep in hillsides – the word has morphed and deepened over the centuries to conjure a very personal sense of place, belonging and familiarity. The artist Kyffin Williams describes it as ‘that relationship: the place of your birth and of your upbringing, the environment in which you live and to which you are naturally acclimatised.’
“This particular ‘Cynefin’ is the musical brainchild of Clettwr valley native Owen Shiers and is a journey to discover the musical landscape and contours of Ceredigion and West Wales. Following a chance discovery of a long forgotten song by a local ballad singer, Owen was inspired to uncover more of the untold stories of the locals who’s voices have been lost over the centuries. A research scholarship from the Finzi Trust has further aided the project, enabling him to delve through unseen archive material, look through rare books as well as source songs from ballad singers and cultural historians.
“From the grumbles of millers past, musings of balladeers to the every day tales of ‘y werin’ (the common folk) – the resulting material is unique both in its originality (some of the songs have not been sung for over hundreds of years) but also in the arrangements which are ambitious and distinct.”
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Rif Mountain and The Old Dentist present
‘When The Night Falls’: Bare Bones + Robert Sunday + Hold Music + Nancy Wallace The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Thursday 30th November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
“Bare Bones are a duo of Jason Steel (solo, Hold Music, The Owl Service) and Dom Cooper (United Bible Studies, Circle/Temple, Unknown Heretic, Zensunni, Unit One, The Straw Bear Band, The Owl Service). Their latest release ‘Moon Phases’ is informed by improvisatory techniques, ethnographic field recordings, and the sonic spaces of dub; a narcoleptic Ennio Morricone soundtrack. The music is carved out of ritualistic drones, creating nuanced textured soundscapes. Tracks inhabit a moonlit world, reminiscent of the hazy pacing of Peter Fonda’s film ‘The Hired Hand’ or the fragmentary/searching writing of Fernando Pessoa’s ‘The Book of Disquiet’. Bare and layered, simple and nuanced, Moon Phases has a somnambulistic grace all its own.
“Robert Sunday is a solo acoustic singer-songwriter who combines elements of traditional folk, Americana, poetry, and cinematic allusions. He played his first gig at Cecil Sharp House in March 2011 on the release of his debut EP ‘Butterfly Hairslide’ on the Rif Mountain label. Since then he has played regularly in London. ‘Halcyon Bloom’ and ‘Cold Little Roses are his latest EPs. The ever-chipper Mr. Sunday deliver more trademark lyrical gold, set to melodies that would make a hungover Kris Kristofferson blush (in his prime!). Sunday deals with concepts around memory, love and time. For fans of Bill Fay, Palace Music and Lee Hazlewood. Stark and quite wonderful.
“Hold Music are Jason Steel (guitar, banjo, voice) and Daniel Gardner (percussion).The duo’s eponymous debut outing offers tightly wound compositions that twist & contort in unexpected directions; spare yet expansive, precise yet rambling. Gardner’s percussion is locked into Steel’s deft string work throughout. Consisting of four tracks over thirty minutes, recorded live with John Hannon (James Blackshaw, Chris Corsano). The lyrics touch on Appalachian murder ballads, original sin and poor grammar. At turns pretty – ritualistic – odd. A banger, for sure.
“Nancy Wallace is a singer and musician from East London, having been born and raised in a folk-singing family in a Suffolk seaside town. She came to notice singing with the Memory Band and later as part of the cult alt-folk collective The Owl Service. A guitarist and concertina player (as were her father and grandfather before her), her approach to both instruments, and her interpretations of both traditional material and her own songs, set her apart on the contemporary folk scene. Her solo releases began with the critically acclaimed Young Hearts EP and her debut full length album, Old Stories, released to glowing reviews, garnering her a cover feature in fRoots magazine and a BBC Folk Awards nomination. She has performed throughout Britain and Europe, including at festivals such as The Green Man, Glastonbury, End Of The Road, Sidmouth Folk Week, The Big Chill and Towersey Folk Festival. She is currently writing and recording material for her next “proper” album.”
Quick news on a couple of perspective-expanding baroque music events later in the month…
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Wilton’s Music Hall presents:
Peter Sheppard Skærved: ‘The Voice of the Violin’ Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, Whitechapel, London, E1 8JB, England
Tuesday 21st November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
“Peter Sheppard Skærved, leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, explores the beginnings of the virtuoso violin, playing a series of extraordinary instruments from the 17th century in this intimate solo performance featuring Benjamin Hebbert and including two special world premieres. There’ll be a talk before the concert (at 7.00pm).
“The programme consists of music for solo violin by Giuseppe Torelli, Biagio Marini, Pietro Locatelli, Nicola Matteis, Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, Giovanni Bassano, Carl Heinrich Biber, Thomas Baltzar, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Le Sieur de Machy, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giuseppe Tartini, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johan Sebastian Bach; and will include music from the Klagenfurt Manuscript. There will also be world premieres of new works by composer Edward Cowie (‘Gad’) and David Matthews (‘Capriccio-Fantasia’).”
Here’s Peter playing some Telemann and a newer piece by David Gorton:
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Schott Music presents:
‘Folk-Barokk!’ From Norway: Anette Bjørnenak/Krishna Nagaraja/Masumi Yamamoto
Schott Recital Room @ Schott Music, 48 Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London, W1F 7BB, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 7.00pm – information
“Anette Bjørnenak (recorders), Krishna Nagaraja (viola/Norwegian hardingfele fiddle) and Masumi Yamamoto (harpsichord) explore folk music of Norway from an eighteenth-century music book, and also look at the way folk music influenced composers of the Baroque era.
“Works by Telemann, Morel, Jacob Mestmacher, C.P.E. Bach and Francesco Barsanti.”
Brooklyn contemporary percussion quartet Sō Percussion (a.k.a. Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting) are travelling to England in late November to tour a particular commission around various churches in the heart of former coal country. More information below:
“Sō Percussion present an audio-visual exploration of the social history of British coal mining in ‘From Out a Darker Sea’. For two centuries, the coal industry formed the backbone of many towns and cities across England. Entire communities sprang into existence as fervent mining activity fuelled the industrial revolution. Integrating art, narrative, photography, film and an original musical soundscape performed live, Sō Percussion – known for their innovative and original productions – capture the environment, personal stories, and aspirations of a community fighting against industrial decline.
“Born out of a collaboration between the quartet and Amber Films, ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ is inspired by the reinvention of East Durham after the crushing loss of its mining industry. Combining live performance with community education programmes, Sō Percussion are bringing ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ to sacred spaces in former coal mining areas, from Derby to Deal, this Autumn.”
‘From Out A Darker Sea’ was originally initiated by East Durham Creates and premiered back in August at St John’s Church in Seaham, East Durham – in the heart of the region which inspired the original work. The original show dressed out the church interior with an immersive audio-visual installation created by people of the region, and incorporated personal stories and memories contributed by local residents including students from East Durham College.
Regarding the other visual content, Amber Films comment “we’ve wanted to make a film with Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photographs of The Coal Coast since the completed exhibition was premiered at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art back in 2003. We’ve also been talking about doing a live score film project for a while. When Forma/East Durham Creates suggested a possible Coal Coast collaboration with Sō Percussion, we were more than happy to meet up with them. Sitting round a table in a cafe in Seaham, both Amber and Sō felt the collaboration could work… Sirkka set to digitising her negs, expanding the range of the imagery. We experimented with timelapse video and the rhythms it generated. We exchanged material with Sō Percussion, who were writing pieces back in New York. In the middle of this we were drawn to the storytelling of Easington ex-miner Freddie Welsh. We’re currently working on the standalone film – watch this space!”
See below for band and audience responses to the Seaham show, plus a discussion between Sō Percussion and EDC’s Nikki Locke:
Dates for the autumn tour:
Derby Cathedral, 18-19 Iron Gate, Derby DE1 3GP, Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here
Fresh off a September tour with ex-Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Mr Jukes (and an October one with actor-folkie Johnny Flynn and Holly Holden Y Su Banda), one-man experimental pop orchestra Cosmo Sheldrake is finally gearing up to release his debut album. He’s celebrating with an entirely premature string of headlining dates in England, Germany, France and Switzerland during the second half of November.
They’re only premature in that the album’s still at least a season away, but why stop when you’re on a roll? “Am soooooo happy to announce my debut album ‘The Much Much How How And I’ is finished… it has been a very long time coming. Three years in the making! I’m very excited and can’t wait to have it out in the world.” Though this isn’t happening until 6th April 2018 (on the Transgressive label), pre-orders are here if you’re already intrigued – and meanwhile, you can take a peek at the hilarious, macabre Josh Allott-directed video for one of the tracks, Come Along, which “explores the experience of both having head lice and being a head louse. Microscopic worlds expand and consume the world of the large. Human heads become continents, scalps become landscapes, salons become solar systems. Come along now.”
With its skewed but loosely unified focus on nature, myth, science and intuition, both song and video are typical of Cosmo’s work – an generous and omnivorous corpus enveloping traditional folk and glitch mashups; hipster chic and novelty records; Bjork, Bobby McFerrin and the Fariñas; process music, Partch and prog; rhymes, reels and street parties; old Lomax recordings, beatboxing and Edward Lear. Cosmo himself is an extraordinary collagist and multi-instrumentalist whose roster includes thirty or so instruments (from guitar and piano to samplers, euphonium and duduk topped off with the distinct, lilting and mustardy twang of his vocals) and who’s spurred by a restless urge to reinvent anything he touches and any place that he plays. He’s been rumoured to pursue extinct animal recordings in order to get the noises and voices he wants, so not even death is an obstacle to curiosity. Of course, as one of the children of therapist and vocal shaman Jill Purce and of rebel biologist/parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, he’s long been growing in interesting soil. In many respects, it’s hardly surprising that he’s turned out the way he has.
As the further video clips below show, Cosmo is not someone whose talents and ideas are best contained by a support slot. It’s best to see him when he’s more in command of the evening, even if he’s just up on a little stage somewhere rather than out there subverting a swimming pool or model village, capering in front of a brass band or preparing to keelhaul an accordion.
Fresh news in for the London gig – as well as a DJ set from Gentle Mystics (like Cosmo, unpeggable underground everything-ists whose own records yaw wickedly and knowingly between Balkan folk, Brit-hop, 2 Tone, Eartha Kitt and occasional world/prog/folk re-arrangements of Stravinsky), there’ll be support via a performance of Jenny Moore‘s ‘Mystic Business’, emphasing just how far Cosmoworld stretches from the average pop show. A member of drum-heavy art/femme/punk/party trio Charismatic Megafauna, Jenny works across a variety of performance art fields from radio show to performance installations, turning up live investigations of artistic responsibility, sexual “humanifestos“, proposals for rock operas and more.
‘Mystic Business’ is one such project: originally a set of communal workshopped songs for percussion and voices which explore and shows off a range of expressio. These range from single-voice-and-slapped-thigh rap to involved group-drumming chorales and minimalist loft-music singalongs (like post-Riot grrrl echoes of Philip Glass and Arthur Russell). Topics explored include body politics, doubts/immediacy/questioning, ripples of revolt, premature ejaculation and marimba-assisted paeans to feminist science fiction hentai. See below for a five-minute excerpt (a kind of post-structuralist spiritual/canon) and for the full forty-two minute version. I’ve no idea how this might work in the more structured context of a formal gig, but I’m sure that Jenny will come up with a new twist.
Every Sunday on Oxford Street a bland corporate doorway disgorges a full Salvation Army wind band which, rain or shine, tramps up and down past the shoppers, playing hymns on busy corners or (at Christmastime) adding a numinous aural glow to the grandeur of Selfridges storefront. Should you choose to sneak inside the same door, you’ll find yourself in Regent Hall, a five-hundred-and-fifty seat venue, once a Victorian rollerskating rink but subsequently transformed by Sally Army founder William Booth into a worship hall. It’s one of central London’s hidden-away concert glories, much like the splendid Bolivar Hall tucked away at the Venezuelan Embassy ten minutes northwards (which you’re only likely to have heard of if invited to a Latin American event).
I’ve only recently discovered that Regent Hall hosts the annual London New Wind Festival, directed by oboeist and composer Catherine Pluygers, and that the 2017 concert takes place next Friday. The evening sports a double-quintet ensemble of Simon Desorgher and Gavin Morrison (flutes), Judy Proctor and Catherine Pluygers (oboes), Phil Edwards and Ian Mitchell (clarinets), Henryk Sienkiewicz and Gillian Jones (horns), Glyn Williams and Anna Feild (bassoons) plus pianist Robert Coleridge and conductor David Sutton-Anderson; promising “a concert in our usual style… a varied and memorable programme of new music with focus on wind symphony orchestras, brass ensembles, new music by women composers and improvisation.”
The concert notes add “as is our trademark, we are presenting an exciting concert of new pieces especially written for double wind quintet (ten wind players) as well as piano and electronics, composed in a huge variety of styles ranging from the edgy ‘Rape Of The Moone’ by Elisabeth Lutyens (for eight wind instruments), and the mobile ‘Shadow Play’ (for flute and clarinet) by George Nicholson, to the atmospheric ‘Windchanges’ (for ten wind instruments) by Michael Christie and the dynamic ’Metropolis’ (for all eleven players and electronics) by Catherine Pluygers.”
Full programme:
George Nicholson – Shadow Play for Flute and Clarinet
Giorgio Coslovich – A Winter’s Tale (world premiere)
Michiko Shimanuki – Ordinary Things in My Garden (world premiere)
David Sutton-Anderson – Nachtritt
Elisabeth Lutyens – Rape of the Moone (Op.90)
Catherine Pluygers – Metropolis
Michael Christie – Windchanges
Paul Patterson – Phoenix Sonata (2nd movement) for oboe and piano
London New Wind Festival, The Hinrichsen Foundation, Holst Foundation & the Performing Rights Society present:
The 20th London New Wind Festival Regent Hall, Salvation Army, 275 Oxford Street, London, W1C 2DJ, England
Friday 17th November 2017, 7.30pm – information
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With his roots and his heart in Broadway (where he debuted as a musical director at the tender age of nineteen), recognition which includes four Emmy Awards, and skills that span piano, composing, lyric-writing, conducting, opera translation and producing, Glen Roven is pretty much the complete musician.
This is particularly true if you start by looking at things through the rosy lens of adult contemporary music. Glen’s a globetrotting polymath of those spangled and sometimes self-regarding spheres within which Presidential inaugurations and all-star galas, light and heavy concert music blend with tuxedo-donning pop stars, power brokers and opera premieres. His adventures include writing a musical with Armistead Maupin, conducting high-profile live Steven Spielberg extravaganzas and Leonard Bernstein tributes, and leading orchestras for (among others) Sinatra, Domingo, Sammy Davis Jr and Kermit the Frog.
Yet for all of the pops-gala glitz that can surround Glen, he’s also deeply embedded in the formal classical world, translating Mahler, Schubert and Mozart and generating prolific amounts of his own original work – notably, thirty-five different song cycles which have worked their way into repertoire around the world). In part, he’s the deliverer of a kind of sumptuous, sugarplum American classical – deceptively complex and with a shrewd mind brought to bear on its audience, bridging the inclusive easy-listening dynamics of pop-orchestral and classical fusion with the edgier harmonic depth of unsublimated modern music. He’s arguably best known these days for his adaptations of classic children’s narratives ‘The Runaway Bunny’ and ‘Goodnight Moon’, both of which are latterday successors to the likes of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and Don Gillis’ ‘The Man Who Invented Music’ (and, all right, Kleinsinger and Tripp’s ‘Tubby the Tuba’) – accessible and dramatic music full of colours, moods and ready universal emotion: functioning both as stepping stones into a wider classical world and as witty, heartfelt works in their own right. On a harder note, his taut and emotional contributions to ‘The AIDS Quilt Songbook’ project suggest a man who’s anything but lost in showbiz.
If you fancy an up-close London evening in which Glen himself pares his work down to its greatest simplicity and directness – just his own piano plus three leading singers from classical and musical theatre – you’ve got a chance to attend one. At Waterloo’s 1901 Arts Club, Glen will be joined by Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch (soon to be seen in the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s ‘Marnie’ at English National Opera), and international mezzo sopranos Lucy Schaufer and Kim Criswell for various UK premiere performances, including a world premiere.
Jonathan Blalock & Tintagel Music present:
Kim Criswell, Daniel Okulitch and Lucy Schaufer sing The Music Of Glen Roven 1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Programme:
Two Songs by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Love Is Not Love, An Ancient Gesture) (performed by Lucy Schaufer) (UK premiere)
Saraband from ‘Symphony No.2’ (performed by Glen Roven) (world premiere)
Songs from the Underground (performed by Daniel Okulitch) (UK premiere)
The Hillary Speeches (performed by Kim Criswell) (UK premiere)
Goodnight Moon (performed by Daniel Okulitch) (UK premiere)
For examples I’ll leave you with performances of ‘Goodnight Moon’ in its full orchestral/soprano version, a Roven Yeats setting and the AIDS Quilt piece ‘Retro’ (the latter two sung by Daniel Okulitch) plus a hour-long interview with Glen himself, which ought to throw his work into a more detailed light as well as displaying his own confident, breezy pragmatism about his method and motives (pragmatic enough to make most of my critical hopscotching above a little redundant).
A quick sweep through three diverse mid-month gigs in London and Birmingham, covering duets of loop-bass and trumpet, some global acoustic fusion, and a double-bill of experimental guitar trio plus double-bass-accompanied dance piece…
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Hattori Foundation presents:
Hattori Foundation Rush-Hour Recital: Kabantu 1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Thursday 16th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
“Reinventing global sounds, rewriting the rulebook – winners of the Royal Over-Seas League Competition 2017, Kabantu (meaning “of the people”), is a five-piece hailing from Manchester who unravel new marriages of music from around the globe to celebrate the space where different cultures meet. Formed in 2014 at the Royal Northern College of Music and combining the virtuosity of classical training with the opportunity to explore music from around the world, Kabantu musically reflect their interest in global cultures, arrangement and improvisation.
“The instrumentation comprises violin (Katie Foster), cello (Abel Selaocoe), guitar (Ben Sayah), double bass (Ali McMath) and percussion (Delia Stevens). Vocal harmonies from South Africa coalesce with everything from Celtic reels and Brazilian samba to Balkan folk music and beyond. Kabantu use music to bridge countries and cultures, creating an exuberant and joyful sound. They have just recorded their debut album with Mercury-nominated producer Gerry Diver and very much look forward to releasing it alongside a UK-wide launch tour in February 2018.
“The programme will include Scotland/Good Call (a set of two tunes, one penned by the group’s Edinburgh-born violinist Katie Foster and one traditional, fused with Kabantu’s take on Scottish music, including bowed banjo woven with intricate rhythmic decoration) and Ulidzele (a traditional song brought to Kabantu by their South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, using a blend of African vocal harmonies preceded by vibrant chanting and percussion to tell the story of a funeral celebrating a life, rather than mourning it.”
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London Jazz Festival presents:
Kasia Witek’s ‘One Wall of Me’ (featuring Olie Brice & Ruth Goller playing music by Alex Roth) + Future Currents Jazz Cafe POSK @ POSK (Polish Social & Cultural Association), 238-246 King Street, Hammersmith, London, W6 0RF, England
Friday 17th November 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Conceived specifically for a new company of three dancers and two musicians, Kasia Witek‘s new performance piece ‘One Wall of Me’ investigates and celebrates the intelligence of the body. Through the practice of embodied awareness, the performers awaken a sense of belonging, togetherness, and joy. Watch and listen as the meditation on endless interconnectivity unfolds before you.
“An original score by award-winning composer/improviser Alex Roth, drawing on the deep sonorities and physicality of double bass (played live by renowned improvisers and “double double bass team” Olie Brice and Ruth Goller), provides an integral counterpoint to Kasia’s highly physical choreography, danced by Elisa Vassena, Stella Papi and Tora Hed.
“Future Currents is an electric guitar ensemble formed by Alex Roth to explore the full range of the instrument’s sonic potential. Bringing together three of the UK’s most acclaimed improvising guitarists, (Alex, Chris Montague and Chris Sharkey, who between them are members of Troyka, Sephiroth, trioVD, Otriad and Blue-Eyed Hawk), the group creates new music of extremes, informed as much by composers like Morton Feldman, Frank Zappa, Olivier Messiaen and Richard D James as by pioneering guitarists such as Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Marc Ducret and Bill Frisell.”
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Steve Lawson with Bryan Corbett Tower of Song, 107 Pershore Road South, Kings Norton, Birmingham B30 3EL, England
Sunday 19th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
Back at Tower Of Song in Birmingham, bass guitarist, loop musician and ToS/’Misfit City’ regular Steve Lawson embarks on a launch gig for his latest album ‘PS, You Are Brilliant’.
The sunny title may seem to counterpoint Steve’s recent set of more sombre-toned releases such as ‘If They Had Won’ and ‘Referendum’, mourning the enmity, deprival and confusion of Brexit and the austerity age (as well as providing a restful break before he reimmerses himself in the polemical communitarian thrash/protest metal of Torycore later in the month). However, it seems that the music is more of an extension of the work on his last full album ‘The Surrender Of Time’ (“dark, dissonant layers of sound coupled with glitchy, wonky hip-hop beats and odd time-signature chance-based loops that bring an even more complex set of relationships between the various layers at work”).
The title itself is a quote from and tribute to the late arts producer Roanne Dods (of the Jerwood Foundation and Small Is Beautiful) whom Steve describes as “one of the most relentlessly encouraging people I’ve ever come across… she brought a sense of possibility to every conversation, and alongside that was so, so good at actually making things happen, at organising and pulling together teams to make sure that those ideas, that impetus and all that amazing encouragement came to fruition. I think about her pretty much every day, as I do things that she encouraged me to do, as I reach to be the best that I can be in every area of my life, and pass on that encouragement to others.”
Joining Steve at Tower of Song is “one of my most favourite collaborators ever as special guest – Bryan Corbett on trumpet. Bryan is one of the most brilliant improvisors I’ve ever worked with – he has an otherworldly ability to arrange and orchestrate his sounds on the fly, using subtle effects and exemplary technique to lift everything he plays on to a higher level. It’s been way too long since we last played together, and this will be our first ever duo gig.”
The eticket deal includes a free download of If They Had Won (one of the tracks from ‘PS, You Are Brilliant’). Have an advance listen to it here…
There’s a pair of interesting female-focussed gigs coming up over the next two weeks in two of London’s more creative music corners, mingling elements of latterday folk, post-punk, Rock In Opposition, experimental noise and avant-garde pop…
Partly due to the pressure of time, and partly due to the eloquence of the press releases, I’ll let them speak for themselves…
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Club Integral presents:
‘Anonymous Was A Woman’: Anne Garner + Mary Currie + Lis Stewart IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 9th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here
“A night of music by women. Three very different sets from three extraordinary artists.
“Anne Garner‘s lyrical work is inspired by curiosity and a sense of wonder, a hunger to explore and explain the emotional inner life. The magic lies in the ambiguity, in the unanswered question and the breath between notes. It’s in poetry and harmony that Anne finds her safe space, in enveloping and beguiling moods, a place from which to speak the unspoken. Anne will be performing music from her upcoming album, joined by Jack Hayter on pedal steel guitar, Nick Samuel on saxophone and James Murray on guitar.
“Mary Currie is a singer perhaps best known for her work with Gareth Williams (This Heat). Williams and Currie recorded a limited-run cassette-only album, ‘Flaming Tunes‘, in 1985, which over time has become a classic of the lo-fi DIY underground. Since Gareth’s death at forty-eight from cancer, Mary has worked with several collaborators including Howard Jacques (These Records, Bermuda Triangle Test Engineers) and Mick Hobbs (Officer!) in folk group Bucket, and with Mick, Howard and Monica Ruud on a project called Whole New Concept. Mary will be be singing with Alison Craig (Shötley Crüe) – essentially traditional sea songs and modern folk songs.
“Lis Stewart plays mostly folk music on a 1918 Lachenal 55 key Maccann Duet concertina. She plays from time to time with south London folk collection The No Frills Band. For Iklectik, she will be performing English, French and Scandinavian folk tunes, both traditional and modern. Expect driving rhythms and haunting melodies.”
Tonochrome The Spice of Life, 6 Moor Street, Soho, London, W1D 5NA, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 7.30pm – free entry – information
London progressive pop band Tonochrome have been away for a while – they were last onstage towards the end of 2013. This new gig towards the end of the month is something of a return and reshuffle – it’s their first with the newest in a run of bass players (Andres Castellanos), and an opportunity for singer Andres Razzini and his other cohorts (keyboard player Steve Holmes, drummer Jack Painting and, on guitar, transdisciplinary musical wanderer Charlie Cawood) to show us the latest developments for a promising band. Over an increasingly interesting pair of EPs, Tonochrome have explored glam pop, aspirational indie and a touch of expansive prog, building towards a definitive, textured statement. I don’t know if they’ve got there yet, but this show is free, so get in and see what they have to offer.
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Hyena Inc. presents:
Dirty Bare Feet + All Hail Hyena + Sleepy People + Soldato Ships And Giggles, 3 Fylde Road, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 2XQ, England
Saturday 11th November 2017, 7.00pm – free entry – information here and here
Meanwhile, up in Preston, herky-jerky odd-rock band All Hail Hyena (who’ve made an initial name for themselves by storming and/or organising assorted Tim Smith benefit gigs) continue their work as promoters Hyena Inc. via a free DIY gig celebrating “one night of pop-punk-rap-reggae-soul-psychedelic space ska nursery-rhymes rock lo-fi metal bossa-nova prog tri-fi music from four diverse and very different brilliant northern bands”. As well as putting on the night and providing the lollipops, they’re performing themselves, bringing new songs of “neon lipstick, the thrill of a stolen kiss, and powerful pop ballads infused with filthy guitars and hot sex”. The gig will be closed by another growing Preston institution, Dirty Bare Feet, playing an audience pleasing “myriad of rap, soul, reggae, dance, pop, disco and jazz”; and opened by Chorley hard rockers Soldato (“four hairy northerners making noise with wood and wire”).
Of most interest to me, however, is that this gig marks a long-overdue return to live action by Tyneside underground heroes Sleepy People. Teasers and tinkerers at the coalface of psychedelic pop, they’ve always been a wilfully eccentric bunch; mingling the countercultural clowning and cosmic glissandi of Gong with bursts of twinkling synth melody, pulses of ska and post-punk guitar chug, set off by moonstruck flute and held together by Paul Hope’s odd yet jaunty songs (which chunter along like sugar-frosted tank engines). The last time they trod the boards was back in 2001: reunited with original singer Tiny Wood (better known as the frontman for ongoing cult-glamsters Ultrasound) they’re seeing what the contemporary world offers them, and vice versa.
Despite a strong work ethic Sleepy People never got as far as they should have done during their first lease of life; partly thanks to a constant stop-start of personnel turnover (with Paul and Rachel Hope the only consistent members) but also due to their continual goofiness and repeated nose-thumbing at any conception of cool. Daevid Allen might well have applauded, but the insouciant clowning tended to obscure surprisingly thoughtful songwriting which – while it happily dipped into a soup of esoterica from Gurdjieff to Freemasonry – frequently raised an arch, quizzical eyebrow at contemporary concerns. Among the tales of the frieze of myth and of men turning themselves into birds, the Sleepies also sang about the encroachment of shopping malls, about futile attempts at freezing yourself into immortality, or about modern-day nightmares in orphanages and retirement homes. At other times they’d cast numinous halos of wonder around everyday occurrences (a winter walk home which slowly becomes freighted with significance; the joy of a child running across a beach; or, perhaps on the same beach, the uncomprehending travails of a newly-hatched turtle perilously navigating by the moon).
Things can only be improved by the ongoing reunion with Tiny (who actually rejoined for part of the band’s final stint as Blue Apple Boy around 2002 before they called it a day). Striving to be Wakefield’s own David Bowie and its David Thomas; possessed of a hulking, dramatic stage presence; singing in foreboding and flinty tones like a pop crooner reincarnated as a battlefield crow… he’s always been the best, and the edgiest, foil for Paul’s songwriting. The tail end of the Blue Apple Boy period saw them writing together, Tiny’s more personalised art-punk anguish proving the perfect sour complement to Paul’s sweet, playful tunefulness: let’s hope that they’ve kept that up for the revival.
As for Sleepy People on the web, they’ve still got much to improve on their Facebook page (you’re better off checking them out on Wikipedia) and embeddable delights are few and scattered. Here’s what I could come up with, though – a twirl through Halfway World (with Tiny’s original replacement Phil Sears); recent rough’n’ready rehearsal footage of Every Wave Is Higher On The Beach and Nicky’s Little Army; and half an hour of grainy, raucous footage of a Tiny-fronted band lineup in 1993 (complete with three-fifths of the original Ultrasound).
I’m late to the party as regards Wood Green’s regular Collage Nights (which play in the same lively vegan restaurant that also houses the Society of Imaginary Friends soirees and some of outer London’s most vigorous jazz sessions). Just as I discover it, the current every-second-Wednesday-of-the-month season is rolling to a close; but a couple more gigs will see out the autumn. Though November’s gig is billed as a clash (or at least a head-on nuzzle) between straight folk and electrofolk, I’m not sure that it’s as simple as that.
Collage Nights presents:
Electrofolk meets Folk: Rivers Of England + Boe Huntress + The 150 Friends Club Kabaret @ Karamel Restaurant, The Chocolate Factory 2, 4 Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6UJ, England
Wednesday 8th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
In the “straight folk” corner, Bristolian quintet Rivers Of England (fronted by songwriter Rob Spalding) are a fine example of how latterday Anglo folk attempts to hone and counterbalance its nostalgic tendencies, keeping a foot in tradition while steering away from twee fustiness and trying to stir in a contemporary consciousness. Much of their sound has a clear ’70s electric folk lineage (the Fairports or the Albion Band, the stirring in of jazz and blues elements a la John Martyn) but there’s also a conscious effort to get away from that wipe-down synthetic sound that’s plagued many such acts as they hit the studio or deal with increasingly digitised technology.
While there’s plenty in their music to link them to folk roots, their current album ‘Astrophysics Saved My Life’ displays the band’s eclectic instrumental flexibility and takes pains to explore the broadened scope of the present-day educated rural/urban person attempting to make sense of life across a much broader conceptual canvas, with “themes ranging from the inner self to the outer cosmos – the emotional to the scientific… a nautical theme present with a blend of rivers and the sea, alongside the more common personal themes of failed relationships, mental illness, memories of family holidays, childhood bicycle adventures, jobs woes, loneliness and universal love.”
If Boe Huntress really is occupying the electro-folk corner, it’ll be yet another alteration in a career built on transformations. Once known as Rebecca Maze (under which name she came to attention via a set of songs critiquing the misogyny around Gamergate), she changed her name circa 2013 in order to dive deeper into her troubadour impulses, mystical femininism and social protest.
Her first album as Boe saw her exploring her own fluid identity via journeys into deep mythology and archetypes from wild women to transformative green dragons to self-examining witches. Inspired (among others) by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Bikini Kill and Eve Ensler, Victor Jara, Fela Kuti and The Clash, her follow-up EP (2015’s ‘And I Became A Student Of Love’) saw her moving into more clearly defined spiritual protest songs, turning her evolving feminist voice outwards towards the world to advocate awareness while still keeping a toehold in mythology (as in the Inuit-inspired fable of Untangling The Bones, in which compassion overcomes fear). I’ve no idea whether there’s been a billing goof and whether Boe really has set aside the acoustic guitar and solo voice in favour of keyboards, loops or whatnot; but if she has it will be in keeping with her spirit of adventure and motion.
As special guests, there’s collapsable party guys The 150 Friends Club (led by “money-crazed, delusional, imbecile”David Goo, who describes the band as his “evil twin sister”). Based around the theory that “society is best managed at a hundred and fifty people”, they’re a band built for small, intimate, cheerful gigs. The music’s a messy-haired lo-fi folk-pop-rock with attention deficit disorder, which sometimes throws on a skuzzy electric overcoat and reels around the room pulling reggae, rap, post-rock and various other stylistic swerves out of its manky pockets.
David, meanwhile, plays it all up to the hilt – sometimes a chirpier, skiffling Lou Reed continually pricking any romantic balloons in sight, sometimes a Tom Petty who shucked the dedication and dived headfirst into cabaret, sometimes a skinny London echo of David Lee Roth cribbing and cherishing his old-time R&B. Apparently, this performance is some kind of comeback. I’m not sure that they’d care about having something to prove, but expect them to warm things right up.
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On the same night, over in east London, there’s the option of “a musical journey that will take you across the world in just over three hours”…
Firefay + The Scorpios + Bread and Circus Cafe 1001, 91 Brick Lane, Shoreditch, London, E1 6QL, England
Wednesday 8th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here
Formed from “storytelling, wyrd folk, Middle Eastern flavours, things that can only be defined as otherworldly, and still a bit of France somewhere in there… urban baroque, world folk noir, jazz and chanson music… whisky and sailors’ songs” as well as influences from John Dowland and Gabriel Fauré to kletzmer and the Canterbury Scene, Firefay blend keyboards, guitars, ouds, violins, brass and cello underneath Carole Bulewski’s trilingual vocals in a polycultural blend of colourings.
Compared to Art Bears, Françoise Hardy and Broadcast as much as to the Fairports and Pentangle (see the rave review of their 2015 album ‘The King Is Dead’ over at the ‘Active Listener‘ blog), they’ve also recorded with Mellow Candle’s Alison O’Donnell and have spent the last five years becoming one of the London folk world’s most joyous rising secrets. They’re planning “a full set of entirely reworked old songs, some from the ‘The King Must Die’ and some older even, some that took years to complete, and some brand new ones from the album we are currently recording”.
Firefay themselves are playing in the middle of the bill. Their cellist Fraser Parry will be opening the show with his own project Bread And Circus, a “musical vanity project (of) songs about anxiety, enjoying oneself, the passage of time and solipsism” with added piano, accordion, brass, and allsorts (depending on which other musicians he can plug in on the night).
Closing the show, Firefay’s sibling band The Scorpios will be playing a set of their own material: a Sudanese-based world funk in which “Arabic rhythms and guitar chops (and a kind of swooning cyclical ecstasy) with a raw Eastern funk feel (and) heavy bass, synths, horns and percussions drive through traditional Sudanese forms to create a sound owing to both Detroit and Khartoum.” Expect plenty of crossover, both in terms of musical traditions and in terms of how many members of Firefay also show up in this band.
French experimental keyboard player Christine Ott – a sometime collaborator with Radiohead, Yann Tiersen and Tindersticks – is about to visit England as part of an ongoing European tour.
There are only three dates on this part of the tour, but they reveal a constantly shifting focus as Christine moves between different projects and presentations. In Salford, she’s part of a Gizeh Records-sponsored triple bill shared with two Manchester area experimental acts. In Leeds, she’s performing a live, self-penned soundtrack to a classic 1930s silent film blending romantic drama and docufiction, while in London, she’s got an evening split between a solo set and a performance of her duo project Snowdrops, in which she and fellow keyboard player Mathieu Gabry blend assorted keyboards and soundscapes. All will feature Christine’s work on piano and on the ondes Martenot, an antique années folles proto-synthesizer from the 1920s using vacuum tubes, slide controls, early filters and a selection of varied speaker devices to create eerie swooping cadences and strangely-coloured sonic outputs.
Dates:
The Eagle Inn, 18-19 Collier Street, Salford, M3 7DW, England, Sunday 5th November 2017, 7.30pm(with A-Sun-Amissa & ARC Soundtracks) – information here and here
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England, Wednesday 8th November 2017, 8.00pm(solo performance + Snowdrops performance) – information here and here
More on the film project:
“F.W. Murnau’s last silent film classic, the poetic and moving ‘Tabu‘, is the story of an impossible love on Bora-Bora island, between Matahi, a young pearl diver, and Reri, a young woman promised to the gods. Christine Ott’s soundtrack alternates modern classical piano pieces with avant-garde tracks on the mysterious and mesmerising ondes Martenot.”
More on Snowdrops:
“Alert launchers. A rogue wave. A burning forest… Musical landscapes in chiaroscuro, from melodies to “sculptures sonores”… Christine’s work in the Snowdrops duet goes beyond certain lines outlined in ‘Only Silence Remains’. An eminently powerful and spontaneous music, but also open and natural. A mixed universe of jazz, neo-classical, cinematographic and improvised music, which could vaguely sketch in the features of Sigur Rós, Steve Reich and Claude Debussy.”
More on Christine’s support acts in Salford:
“The audio/visual project of K. Craig and David Armes, ARC Soundtracks combines a dense, multi-layered sound-world with ritualistic visuals to create an immersive, hypnotic work. New album ‘DERELICTION//MIRROR’ takes us into a bleak auditory realm of post-industrial structures and traces the role of the body within these liminal spaces. Strained harmonics and industrial, discordance mesh with veiled rhythms and spoken-word narrative to create a heavy, static energy to both sound and visuals.
“An instrumental music collective founded and led by Richard Knox (The Rustle of the Stars, Shield Patterns, Glissando), A-Sun Amissa has featured an array of members and collaborators since it’s formation in 2011. To date they have released two albums on Richard’s own Gizeh Records label. The group produce a dense, drone-like atmosphere, accompanying evocative, melodic string and woodwind sections, intertwining guitars and field recordings. The live show features sections of the recorded output combined with improvisation to unlock new movements and progressions in the music. The subtle, considered textures and the hypnotic interaction between players and instruments provide an intense live performance.”
For the launch of their new season, Kammer Klang team up with the London Sinfonietta for a set of chamber pieces performed by Sinfonietta solo instrumentalists or as playback items, all of which dovetail into the Sinfonietta’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
Kammer Klang & London Sinfonietta present:
Kammer Klang: Tim Gill + Alistair Mackie (playing Javier Álvarez/Jonathan Harvey/Lauren Marshall) + Trevor Wishart Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Wednesday 8th November 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Cellist Tim Gill and trumpeter Alistair Mackie (assisted by sound design setups from Sound Intermedia) will be applying their talents to electro-acoustic pieces. One, by the late Jonathan Harvey, sees a solo trumpet transformed into a garrulous ensemble. Another, by the Mexican-Korean-influenced Javier Álvarez is a fabulously dramatic ritual, teeming and menacing, for string sounds and and-bowed-gong ritual inspired by a pairing of two short silent films from the 1920s (a Man Ray image sequence, preceded by horribly compelling footage of a feeding snake). There’ll also be a stereo diffusion playback of Trevor Wishart’s software-driven studio piece ‘Globalalia’, a rapid-fire collage of vocal samples which he describes as “a universal dance of human speech as revealed in twenty tales from everywhere, spoken in tongues”.
In addition, Tim will be performing the evening’s usual ‘Fresh Klang’ item – in this case, a cello-and-electronics piece by Lauren Marshall, principal composer with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Online examples of Lauren’s work are still quite rare, but I’ve included a couple of her Soundcloud clips in the roundup below: ‘Hi-Seas’, her violin/string ensemble/electronics mediation on disassociative loneliness, and her luxuriant expanded-orchestra fantasia ‘Suspended Between Earth And Air’ (hailed in ‘Seen And Heard‘, after its premiere back in January, as “a miracle of inspiration (with) stupendous impact”). Both display the work of a young composer with a remarkable flair for slow reveal and the implementation of artful drones with a dreamy Romantic melodicism. Her assured talents translate down well from full Wagnerian orchestras to smaller ensembles, so the same should hold true of this new duet between cellist and software.
Programme:
Fresh Klang: Lauren Marshall – Chang’e flies to the moon (for cello and electronics) – performed by Tim Gill
Jonathan Harvey – Other Presences (for trumpet & electronics) – performed by Alistair Mackie with Sound Intermedia electronics
Jonathan Harvey – Ricercare una Melodia (for trumpet & electronics) – performed by Alistair Mackie with Sound Intermedia electronics
Javier Álvarez – Le repas du serpent & Retour à la raison (for cello & electronics) – performed by Tim Gill with Sound Intermedia electronics)
Trevor Wishart – Globalalia (stereo diffusion)
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For those of you interested in the workings and applications of the graphic score, there’s an event a couple of days after Kammer Klang which delves into the world of this intriguing avant-garde tool, as part of the Royal Academy’s Jasper Johns exhibition…
Club Inégales & EFG London Jazz Festival presents:
‘Visualising Music: The Art of the Graphic Score’
The Reynolds Room @ Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, Mayfair, London, W1J 0BD, England
Friday 10th November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here
“In response to the dynamic that brought Jasper Johns and John Cage together in the 60s, musicians from Club Inégales combine with trumpeter/composer Kim Macari (leader of Family Band, founder of the Apollo Jazz Network and the Orpheus Project) and saxophonist/composer Raymond MacDonald (Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at Edinburgh University, co-founder of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and veteran of over sixty album releases), for a performance and discussion exploring the world of graphic scores, improvisation and structure.
“A ground-breaking composer and associate of Jasper Johns, John Cage was a keen graphic score composer, using visual symbols beyond traditional music notation to guide musicians in the performance of his work. Since then, composers and artists have played with pictures to create extraordinary visual scores to redefine the possibilities within composition, merging art and sound.
“In this exclusive event, Kim Macari will then be joined by founder of Club Inégales Peter Wiegold and Professor Raymond MacDonald, chair of Music Psychology and Improvisation at The University of Edinburgh, to explore the art of the graphic score.”
Baba Yaga and Chaos Theory rattle the first bones of November with two London instrumental rock shows in the first week of the month, showcasing their usual mixtures of (respectively) unsettling/exultant psychedelic noise and blitzing proggy mathematical structures.
Irish noiseniks Woven Skull (who apparently wowed the audience at last year’s Raw Power festival) make strange freeform whirlwinds of churning bramble-feedback guitar, treated mandola and lava-spurt drumming – sometimes repetitive; sometimes tremendously intricate but packed into trapped, webbed layers.
Barring the electricity and the drum kit, they barely sound like rock. Since they take inspiration from “haunted woods and burning bogs”, there’s clearly some dark-folk intent in what they do, but they sound more like a kind of sub-folk or subconscious folk – the burring jostle of hedgerow life in frantic fast-forward, but smeared across protracted time. They clearly have larger ambitions: this summer’s release, ‘ They Were Pebbles But I Call Them Stones’, features additional space and an extended ensemble (including viola, flute and synth) without letting up on the myriad scramble.
I know less about support act Mésange beyond their interest in Neil Young, Dirty Three and Nadja and that they’re a collaboration between post-classical noise-violinist Agathe Max (Kuro) and guitarist Luke Mawdsley (Cavalier Song). Both Agathe and Luke have already shown up in here last year with their other bands – the first at the Rocket Recordingsshowcase, and the second being raved about in my preview of another Baba Yaga show (“on a cusp between Swans and King Crimson… like a prog band in which the brain hemispheres are falling away from each other….panic, chaos and a liberated excitement loom as possibilities among the brutal rips of guitar, the resonating overtones and the low-hanging atmospherics; yet the band lean on – and sustain – that moment when form and skills of structure and rapid response still remain. Other noise bands simply plod and accumulate: Cavalier Song sway and shift; light-footed knife-fighters, their eyes and attention flicking this way and that while keeping a deadly focus… This is how it’s meant to be done.”)
So let’s look at the way the new band describe themselves – “their music is possessed and steered by a solemn power that embraces the elements and careers through dense electric skies; exposing signs that flutter and flare in dark elegance. Respective strings correspond and meander across ancient fields, while layered voices evoke serene pools of tropic sound, soon to be engulfed by inescapable tides of noise. Unfettered, yet critical, Mésange invites the listener to explore a downy and magnetic earth-scape, teetering between lightning and thunderclap. The tracks unfold like magic spells, each evoking chimes of hope, despair, freedom and oblivion.”
And here’s what it sounds like: a shattering ghostly grind that manages to simultaneously evoke grand and lonesome country structures, unfettered prog hallucinations, the flair of baroque choirs and (for once, without a slavish imitation) My Bloody Valentine’s honeysick psychedelia. A pretty staggering new jump, one that pretty much damn well needs its own genre name.
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Meanwhile, back in Camden Town…
Chaos Theory Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Poly-Math + Masiro + Asian Death Crustacean The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Friday 3rd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here, and here
Again, all three bands have a familiar ring. Headliners Poly-Math are a heavy Brightonian math-rock trio who last crossed my radar in April last year, and whom the ever-enthusiastic Chaos Theory are now hailing as “the perfect balance of intricate musicianship, infectious hooks, heart-pounding melodies and nuanced buildups…. a pinnacle and example to all fledgling bands in the math rock scene.” Tonight they’re debuting their upcoming “massive prog record” ‘We Are The Devil’ and teasing that the gig may be ” one of our last performances in our current format, maybe…” Hopefully that’s not a hint of chafing personnel wanting to move on, and more a hint that the entire band wants to move up to the next stage: if they were to call it a day, they’d be missed. Here’s an example of them in full spark – a heavy band who are delightfully light on their feet.
Post-mathcore middle-billers Masiro are from Oxford and continue that town’s tradition of incubating and spitting out tight, technical rock bands with omnivorous tastes. In their case, these are a melange of prog, metal and funk grooves… and if that makes them sound like early ’90s macho blokes in shorts, imagine a trio who went the other way, reframing and reappraising those elements from a confusing refracted perspective. As a listener, they make you work to get back to the sources, but it’s a compelling game of reconstruction. They played the Facemelter again back in February and were hailed as “second to none”. Judge for yourselves:
Finally, Asian Death Crustacean continue to excel in the ridiculous name stakes and to impress as a new, hungry band who bait and switch sour-metal growls and luminescent post-rock coils with equal facility.
Three of the imminent, interesting classical gigs in London this coming month… some contemporary solo piano in Shoreditch, some disparate contemporary chamber music taking over an Islington theatre, and a celebration of women composers by a female music collective in Stoke Newington…
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SOLO presents:
SOLO 04: Eliza McCarthy Shoreditch Treehouse, 34 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PB, England
Tuesday 7th November 2017, 7.00pm – information
“SOLO is back and this time we’re heading to a cosy loft right in the heart of Shoreditch for an intimate recital from acclaimed pianist Eliza McCarthy! Eliza specialises in contemporary music and has worked with a whole bunch of composers from John Adams to Tansy Davies and Andrew Hamilton to Mica Levi. Expect a veritable smorgasbord – contemporary pieces by John Adams, John Luther Adams, Mica Levi and more, a side order of J.S. Bach, and the world première of ‘Curved Form (No. 4)’ by Alex Groves.”
Here’s Eliza playing some Levi at Kammer Klang a while back…
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At the moment, there’s no more info on which Bach, Levi and Adams(es) pieces Eliza will be playing: but you might like to know that the next in Alex’s sequence of ‘Curved Form’ pieces – ‘Curved Form (No. 5)’ – will be played the following week at the Rosemary Branch’s informal Chamber Sundays evening, curated by mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, at which you’ll also hear compositions by Adam Gorb and Jonathan Dove.
Chamber Sundays: Rosie Middleton & Friends The Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, De Beauvoir Town, London, N1 3DT, England
Sunday 12th November 2017, 7.00pm – information
Sorry – I’ve not got much more information on that either, other than what’s above; but here are some sample pieces from Adam, Alex and Jonathan…
“Scordatura Women’s Music Collective is a group of musicians who want to extend the established repertoire by performing and championing music written by women. With interests ranging from Baroque Historical Performance to contemporary composition to world music, members of the collective will be performing from a huge, varied and beautiful body of music.
“On this occasion, the group are performing an evening of duos for cello, clarinet and viola composed by some of the most exciting women of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”
Encouraging that this is going on: encouraging, too, that I managed to track down performances of seven of those nine pieces in a further attempt to persuade you to go along.
Pickled Egg Records presents:
Tom O.C Wilson + Eley Williams + Beetles Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England
Sunday 22nd October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Until recently operating as Freeze Puppy, Tom O.C. Wilson is now venturing out under his own name with ever-more-intricate and compositionally complex conversational songs, venturing into hitherto unexplored territory between (to pick a few loose examples) Stephen Sondheim, Frank Zappa, Neil Hannon, Django Bates and The Carpenters.
‘Tell A Friend’ – his debut album as himself – is “lovingly crafted, infectiously playful arthouse pop… a frothy, colourful twelve-song collection that pushes the raw materials of pop into dazzlingly surprising shapes, from the polyrhythmic fervour of Give Yourself Some Credit to the Steve Reich-meets-Motown stomp of The Ones. Yet as with similarly cerebrally-minded pop acts such as Field Music, Max Tundra and Dutch Uncles, the intricacy of the music is coupled with an unusually high hooks per-minute quotient — these are songs to sing along to as much as ponder.” While previous records have revelled in a certain literary playfulness, each song on this one is based on Tom’s own life and friendships. It’s in keeping with Tom’s decision not to hide behind kooky project names any longer: he’s never likely to create a standard-issue confessional album, but this is explicitly “a celebration of human interaction” in all its richness. Judging by the tone of start-up single The Ones, it’s predominantly positive.
Tom was originally providing his own support as half of his other band Beetles, but they’ve had to pull out. Fortunately, a more-than-worthy replacement’s been found in the shape of singer-songwriter Kept Cairns, a mysterious pseudonymous friend and fellow traveller from Tom’s Bristol days. His songs (which he himself describes as “gradually accret(ing)” rather than being written) “sketch and explore the unseen world of interiority: mental health, transcendence, relationship breakdown, the limits of communication, ambiguity, time and love.” Generally that’s a recipe for broken-handed strumming and murky lo-fi mumbles; so it’s surprising to find percussive, intricate acoustic guitarwork (recalling Michael Hedges and John Martyn) and carefully-drawn lyrics and vocal lines as crisp as new book pages (detailing complicated and frequently unresolved situations but describing them with an immaculate grace and economy). To see what I mean, you’ll need to take a trip over to his music page: bar a quiet presence on Spotify, he’s so far underground that gigs like these are the only other chance to get the measure of him.
Appropriately for an evening of literary pop, the middle act on the bill is a writer. Eley Williams is an acclaimed prose-poet of confusions, mental transformations and fairytales whose stories sweep across their settings like an investigating light passed over text. Here she is in action:
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The following day, Chaos Theory will be vibrating the rafters as they take over St Pancras Old Church and shake out its more shadowy corners for a particularly ambitious gig. Expect an evening of dark drones and noises, Euro-American cloister-folk and cinematic/industrial music textures, filled with dark-refracted Catholicism and a decidedly ecclesiastical tone.
“Original Swans member Jarboe joins forces with Italian occult propagators of insight-through-terror Father Murphy, as they perform a single set in three parts. Father Murphy will open with their avant-garde dark creations, to be joined by Jarboe to perform their new collaborative EP (which came out on Consouling Sounds on 22nd September). Jarboe will then perform her own material, with Father Murphy providing their own twist to her sounds as her backing band.
“Ambient darkness will be provided before and after the performance by producer Metalogue, who will create a whole new set for the evening and release it as a new album. This will be an experience like no other.”
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.
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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.
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.
Coverage of the complex, perverse and joyful musical work of the sadly incapacitated Tim Smith – whether inside or outside his mothership Cardiacs band – frequently figures in here. It’s good to bring you all more about his continued crossover from cult status to something wider: this time, with news of a conservatory jazz gig in Amsterdam and of the continued afterlife of Spratleys Japs.
Broedplaats Lely & Steim present:
Connector V Steim, Schipluidenlaan 12-3E, 1062HE Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thursday 2nd November 2017, 8.00pm – information
“Composers are not necessarily dead. They also do not necessarily write symphonies in D flat minor in a 4/4 time signature.
“Tim Smith, frontman of the British band called Cardiacs, is a great composer who wrote lots of music permeated with energy, humour, beauty, Britishness. By people who only partly open their ears (or their minds for that matter), his music has been defined as being “chaotic”. The opposite is true, however: it is strongly organised music and all one needs to be able to do is count past four (and not forget about prime numbers). This challenging mix of punk, prog rock, orchestral and live electronic music (also known as “pronk”) will be performed by BarmyFiveseveN, a “small big band” ensemble of around fifteen players from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, armed with live electronic extensions.”
Connector V is part of a monthly series at Steim: regular readers should recognise this particular one as a follow-up to the Smith-covering set by Alex Brajkovic Ensemble at Amsterdam’s Jazz Ensemble Festival back in April, and it does in fact feature most or all of the same players, put together by rebel prog professor Jos Zwaanenburg. No-one seems to have recorded/posted evidence from the last time, so I can’t show you how it went – but as before, I can give you some very loose indications as to how this concert might might turn out by referring you to English Rose Orchestrations’ string quartet version of one of the featured pieces, The Duck And Roger The Horse.
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The following month, Spratleys Japs consolidate the success of their Brighton and London reunion shows over the last couple of years by setting out on a bigger, broader English tour taking in Yorkshire and the West as well as the south east, with a mass of current/former Cardiacs and friends coalescing as support around the tour dates.
Read more about SJ here: in brief, though, they’re a short-lived and swampy alternate-universe pop project (part alien folk maunderings, part glam-punk punch and part spindly antiprog) which Tim put together in the mid-’90s with then-girlfriend/muse Jo Spratley. Now revived by Jo and a collection of Brighton art rockers, they’ve got a second wind and have been rattling through fresh gigs partially in tribute to Tim and partially because the enthralling, infuriating puzzle-box songs have a peculiar life of their own.
As regards the backup, looming raconteur Stephen Evens brings his scowling, sardonic British pop along to the London, Brighton and Bristol shows (possibly with full band in tow for all of them). In a similar vein, Yorkshire dark-melodrama rockers The Scaramanga Six pile in at the Huddersfield date, while the Brighton show also sports vigorous dream poppers Hurtling and noisy art-rock goons Ham Legion (the latter performing their Syd Barrett tribute as “Vegetable Men” (plus another acoustic set from Kavus Torabi, squeezing in time in between fronting Gong, Knifeworld and his radio broadcasts). At Bristol there’s another onetime Cardiacs guitarist, Jon Poole, possibly bringing both solo stuff and one-man versions of his clever-pop work with The Dowling Poole; plus ZOFFF (the reverberant south coast kosmische/deep-psych band featuring Crayola Lectern‘s Chris Anderson and yet another ex-Cardiac six-stringer, Bic Hayes).
As with most Cardiacs-related events, these give you a cross-section of a under-celebrated ongoing British sub-scene; stretching from surprisingly accessible, sharply written latter-day take on Britpop right through to mantric pedal noise and squirts of lysergic space-cadet juice. Here’s a selection of sundries from all concerned:
Full dates:
The Parish, 28 Kirksgate, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, HD1 1QQ, England, Thursday 14th December 2017, 7.30pm(with The Scaramanga Six) – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market, Bristol, Avon, BS2 0EJ, England, Friday 15th December 2017, 7.30pm(with Jon Poole + ZOFFF + Stephen Evens) – information here and here
The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton BN1 4FQ, England, Saturday 16th December 2017, 6.00pm(with Kavus Torabi + Stephen Evens (full band) + Hurtling + Ham Legion As Vegetable Men) – information here and here
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, England, Sunday 17th December 2017 (with Stephen Evens + others tbc) – information t.b.c.
UPDATE, 18th October – apparently we can also expect a couple of imminent fundraising Cardiacs cover versions from Spratleys Japs and Stephen Evens (Odd Even and Two Bites of Cherry), plus other surprises they’re keeping a little tightlipped about for the moment.
Meanwhile, Cornish psychedelic folkie Emily Jones (another Spratleys friend from previous gigs) has been added to the Brighton concert, which now also features a Torabi/Steve Davis DJ set. Support for the Brixton Windmill show in London is going to be thrashy prog-pop stuntmeisters The Display Team and rapidly rising Windmill favourites Black Midi. Below are a couple of moments from Emily and the ‘Team. (There’s not much more I can give you about Black MIDI. They’re so new that the paint’s hardly dry on them, and their Soundcloud page is still empty; but I did manage to establish that they’re an experimental/instrumental rock five-piece of teenage Croydonians and that they’re “purveyors of the darkest dreamscapes”…)
I’m less and less inclined to cover anything which could be described as standard indie rock. In spite of that, some things do slip under my guard.
Between October and December, Matt Finucane’s making periodic ventures out from his Brighton cave in order to bring his sardonic solo songs to a grateful nation. I think it’s the first time he’s gone this far afield, so probably most of them won’t have heard of him yet. Hailed by ‘Ringmaster Review‘ as “happy to be an explorer and purveyor of the wonderfully unconventional and confrontational”, Matt takes his influences “from Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith and horrible electronic noise (despite primarily performing on acoustic guitar).”
If Matt’s got a keynote as a songwriter, it’s his knack for seamlessly juxtaposing the macabre with the ordinary (as befits someone who’s a horror fan and occasional horror author). Don’t expect Cave-ian Southern Gothic, though. Though he’s not above using the mythic or the Biblical as a lyrical springboard, Matt leans more towards a sly, wilful British irreverence – a mocking vein of low/no-budget bungalow-bizarre. Something like a blunted Bowie if the latter had never hit the big time but had carried on regardless, sitting on the sidelines chopping out dryly acerbic guitar songs; or like the workmate who suddenly and joltingly reveals that not only is he smart but he also thinks very differently to you; or like the abrupt weirdness in the eleven a.m coffee cup.
At one time, Matt was the driving force behind luckless indie rockers Empty Vessels, who were full of good ideas but had all the strategy of a severed brake cable. These days he’s a little wiser and friendlier, but just as stubborn; and still worth spending time with.
Dates below – more info available nearer the time.
Bar Metro, 109/111 Bradshawgate, Bolton, BL1 1QD, England, Saturday 14th October 2017
Fab Cafe, 109 Portland Street, Manchester, M1 6DN, England, Sunday 15th October 2017
The Palmeira, 70-71 Cromwell Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 3ES, England, Sunday 29th October 2017
Market Bar, 32 Church Street, Inverness, IV1 1EH, Scotland, 31st October 2017
The Alleycat, 4 Denmark Street, St Giles, London, WC2H 8LP, England, 7th November 2017
The Brunswick, 3 Holland Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 1JF, England, Thursday 16th November 2017
The Hope & Anchor, 207 Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 1RL, England, 23rd November 2017
Mr Wolf’s, 32 St Nicholas Street, Bristol, Avon, BS1 1TG, England, 11th December 2017
Blue Man, 8 Queens Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 3WA, England, Sunday 17th December 2017
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About five years ago, The Many Few‘s wobbly but appealing demo, with its boy/girl vocal fencing and its shaggy-dog pop fumbles made its way to ‘Misfit City’. I was rude about their guitar playing, and about other things (the phrase “a thorough fucking shambles” popped up at one point) but nice about their appealing rubbery songs and the flashes of insight which showed through their gangling home-made pop throws. The band took both the slapping and the stroking with robust good humour, and have swung in and out of my blog orbit ever since. Now they’ve finally completed their debut album ‘Sharkenfreude’ (sometimes it takes a while for a plan to come together) and have a launch gig lined up.
While The Many Few have retained their band-in-next-door’s-garage feel (though the guitar’s less wobbly now, they’ve never entirely lost that shambling gait, nor their habit of being distracted by gags), they continue to bowl shots down the art-pop alleys of bands such as XTC or B52s – artists who thrived on crowd-pleasing quirk and the odd cheery subversion. They’re still likely to go cute, lolloping after a list song or a moment of lyrical parody, but when they’re on course they can produce thoughtful suburban songs populated by interesting, flawed characters engaged with the day-to-day business of staying alive and staying functional. Hopefully ‘Sharkenfreude’ is well packed with these; it might be less close to the band’s heart than is the freedom to roam and wrangle, but it’s where their particular talent flowers.
To ease the delivery of ‘Sharkenfreude’, the launch gig sees The Many Few “backed by our fabulous and talented friends who share our passion for real original music, quirks, grooves and eccentricities… Flying Tailor (hyperactive sweet dreams, modern introspective folk with touches of trip hop); the spiky spontaneous blended art pop, folk and blues of The Squares (featuring ex-Blue Aeroplanes-ers Caroline Trettine and Nick Jacobs); the top-notch synthy indie alt-pop of Money And Family; and the stage debut of folk trio No Direction. With more t.b.a., this will be the art pop party of the year!”
Note also that the ticket gets you a discount on the album. As for the support, watch and listen below:
The Many Few present:
‘Sharkenfreude’: The Many Few + Flying Tailor + The Squares + Money And Family + No Direction + Stew Whoo DJ set The Alleycat, 4 Denmark Street, St Giles, London, WC2H 8LP, England
Thursday 2nd November 2017, 7.00pm – information
There’s a couple of classical concerts at the end of the month: not necessarily groundbreaking in what they play (although there is one premiere involved) but interesting in how they arrange their programme or in how they perform it.
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Conway Hall Ethical Society presents:
Music-in-Motion Ensemble & Gildas Quartet, directed by John Landor Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1R 4RL, London
Saturday 28th October 2017, 3.30 pm & 7.30pm; Tuesday 31 October 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Following his powerful staging of Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ with the Gildas Quartet at Conway Hall last May, John Landor returns with the quartet and the newly-formed Music-in-Motion Ensemble of thirteen string players to present an eclectic programme of music from Purcell to Pärt.
“Immersive, visual and theatrical, Music-in-Motion brings a bold new aesthetic approach to the traditional classical concert. Turning the whole auditorium into a “theatre of music”, the musicians become embodied channels of the musical drama, dissolving boundaries between performers and audience. You are welcome to sit, stand, or even lie down pretty much anywhere during the performance, so you can bring your own cushion or mat, or use ours. It’s a social event too! At the evening concerts, you can bring in drinks from the bar, and everyone is invited to the ‘after-party’ where audience and performers can mingle and discuss the performance, or indeed anything else!”
What this means in practise is the exploding of the orchestral positioning and of orchestral uniformity – while retaining the hidden discipline of the orchestral units, the musicians wander out on their own across the performance space and through the audience as individuals rather than remaining en bloc, with each performer free (and encouraged) to act out the emotionality of the music. The set’s a selection of well-known repertoire war horses: the presentation and implications are less familiar.
Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G BWV1048
Antonio Vivaldi – Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro in B minor RV169
Arvo Pärt – Fratres
Leoš Janáček – String Quartet No. 1 ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Henry Purcell – Chacony in G minor
Edward Elgar – Introduction and Allegro Op. 47
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The Ligeti Quartet present “Remembering the Future: Tradition and the Contemporary String Quartet” IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 28th October 2017, 7:30pm – information
Since their formation in 2010, The Ligeti Quartet (violinists Mandhira de Saram and Patrick Dawkins, viola player Richard Jones and cellist Val Welbanks) have commissioned multiple new works and collaborated with artists from all types of musical backgrounds including Anna Meredith, Elliot Galvin, Kerry Andrew (Juice Vocal Ensemble, You Are Wolf), Laura Jurd, Meilyr Jones, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), Seb Rochford (Polar Bear), Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming), Shed 7 and Submotion Orchestra. They are currently working on a long-term project with Ernst von Siemens prize-winning composer Christian Mason to create a series of ‘Songbooks’ for string quartet, based on overtone singing traditions from around the world.
For this performance, the Ligeti Quartet are performing traditional (20th century) and contemporary pieces. These include two Bach related works (a Sofia Gubaidulina tribute and a Birtwistle rearrangement of fugues, , a revival of the debut composition by http://www.plusminusensemble.com Plus-Minus Ensemble co-leader/Cut and Splice curator Joanna Baillie (originally written for Apartment House, and performed here in its 2006 string quartet version) and a brand new piece by former Unthanks member/ Streetwise Opera composer-in-residence/Timeline Songs director Stef Conner (whose body of work as a composer has revealed her as a walker and crosser of fine lines between classical, folk, jazz and antiquity).
Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr. Harrison Birtwistle) – Three Fugues from the Art of Fugue
Anton Webern – String Quartet, Op. 28 Joanna Baillie – Five Famous Adagios (2006 string quartet version) Stef Conner – (LQ Commission, title tbc) (premiere)
Igor Stravinsky – Concertino for String Quartet Sofia Gubaidulina – Reflections on a Theme B-A-C-H Georg Friedrich Haas – String Quartet No. 2
There’s an imminent brief English tour for acoustic fusion guitar ace Pierre Bensusan this month. Here’s what I said about him last time:
“World music’s an often-abused term, especially when you can see crude joins within it. Yesterday’s exotic-record discovery shopped and slopped onto whichever beats selling; or the sound of one particular city’s overbearing acquisitiveness, engulfing and pickling the music of its immigrants rather than fostering it. Pierre’s music is an example of how you can revitalise and justify the term.
“I’ve spoken before about the French-Algerian-Sephardic background which gave him a head start as regards polycultural vision, but perhaps what he actually embodies is the mixed grain of musical acceptance: the travelling tunes and the more intangible freight of cultures soaking and blending into his playing without strain. Neither jazz nor folk nor Spanish classical, neither rai nor chaabi, nor flamenco (old or new), it nonetheless contains all of these – a translucent, fully-realised and seamless chamber-acoustic melange, played softly and without affectation.”
As before, among the venues Pierre is playing are some out-of-the-way ones which it’s a pleasure to find out about. Full tour dates below:
Chapel Arts Centre, St. James’s Memorial Hall, Lower Borough Walls, Bath, Somerset, BA1 1QR, England, Thursday 12th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Ale House, Mill Lane, Colwall (near Great Malvern), Hertfordshire, WR13 6HJ, Friday 13th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
St Mary’s Church, Alveley Village (near Kidderminster), Shropshire, WV15 6ND, England, Saturday 14th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Half Moon, 93 Lower Richmond Road, Putney, London, SW15 1EU England, Tuesday 17th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
The Greystones, Greystones Road, Sheffield, Yorkshire, S11 7BS, England, Wednesday 18th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
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Meanwhile, back in London, there are a number of jazz or jazz-inspired dates this month at another undersung out-of-the-way venue – Kentish Town’s MAP Cafe. I’ll just run through them below…
Abstract Word MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 12th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“A chance to see a unique blend of music & spoken word fused with vocal and poetic verse… A night of music & rhythmic words featuring performers from the Abstract Word collective, as well as a range of performance poets and spoken word artists crafting their words to a rhythmic backdrop provided by longtime Jazz Jam collaborator Oliver Staines on eight-string guitar plus trombone and saxophones provided by Richmond “Journeyman” Trew and other horn players. Also a songwriter and performer, Richmond is the spearhead of Abstract Word and has been providing his unique “abstract rhythmic” style since 1995.”
Alexander Dubovoy/Eli Bown MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Friday 14th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“While attending Yale University, Alexander Dubovoy and Eli Brown played in the quartet Newspeak. They are featured on its debut album Machinery of Night, recorded by 11-time Grammy-winner Jack Renner. After touring domestically and internationally, Newspeak put its work on hold after its older members graduated.
“Now, Dubovoy and Brown have moved to London – having played at top New York venues and toured internationally, Alexander’s first piano-and-songs solo album ‘Portraits Drawn Without You‘ was released in summer 2017, while Eli is currently a student in the conducting department at Royal Academy of Music (while remaining active as a trumpet player focusing primarily on new and Early music). The two will be performing their first gig together in the UK at MAP, playing improvised duo music (including old and new repertoire) as part of this reunion.”
Jazz In Cinema MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Saturday 21st October 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Germana La Sorsa and Joe Boyle come together as Jazz In Cinema. In this harmonious Italian/English duo they bring you the finest jazz music as written for, or used in, movies over the course of the last century.
“The interesting arrangement of just voice (Germana) and double bass (Joe) creates some interesting textures, from wistfully open to tense and sinister, with bountiful experimentation and freedom. Neither, however, strays too far from the roots of the music or the mood they create.”
Grain Of Sand MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 26th October 2017, 8.00pm – information
“The fruits of excessive people-watching, eradicating anonymity one tale at a time. From the flaneûr’s eye, humorous characters, drenched in poetic language, retell their adventures. Accompanied by the finely tuned fingers of pianist Alexi Bromsky, maestro prose performer Alex Glendinning graces these sketches with his musical mystique.
“Investigating the fantastic potential of the city, the stories give reign to the bizarre and hopeful conjectures of everyday observation – the passing glance at the bus stop, the sombre couple in the coffee shop – and delight in its quotidian beauty, discarded daily amongst the infernal throng. With piano and bass, an hour of snapshot stories awaits. Drop in and out as you like and enjoy the stories with a crowd’s fluidity. Imagine the face, as you brace the morning commute, which recalls a lost lover, beloved brother, or terrifying sister. The glimmer of bewilderment, terror, or joy in those fleeting seconds, swept away in the tube’s slipstream, now becomes a seed for reflection.
“These stories are also a sentimental conversation with the whims that we deem trivial. Lively, satirical, laced with romance and introspective nostalgia, they are performed through the eye of a brash, sharp romantic, lavished with mortal pathos.”
Swoon. /swo͞on/ A verb. To be emotionally affected by someone or something that one admires; become ecstatic. Here are some people and things that make me swoon. #swoon #swoonage
Misfit City 