You can tease The Mission all you like, but you can’t deny that they’ve got heart… not least because Wayne Hussey is usually waving it at you on the end of a long stick. Even during their full booze’n’powders youthful phase, they had an avuncular, endearing air about them, partly due to Wayne’s effusive need to be loved. Over thirty years later, they’re able to settle into the role more comfortably.
Even though ‘TOS2020’ isn’t quite The Mission in itself – it’s performed by Wayne with a small army of friends and allies under the ReMission International banner – it’s pretty much Mish at heart. Tower of Strength was always the key Mission tune, and it stays timeless when it’s building on its key elements: that elegant spidery twelve-string guitar riff (like a slithering slow jig midway-morphed into a belly dance); that knee-patter of a drum pattern; and, finally, Wayne’s voice (showing less of the cavernous keen of old and more of the intimate warmth underneath it). Drawing on mystic Mediterranean drone, its distant kissing-cousin relationship to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, and presumably Wayne’s childhood memories of old Mormon hymns, it’s a spirit-lifter; an admission of weakness, an expression of gratitude, an affirmation of faith.
This particular version is a covid/healthcare fundraiser for frontline workers, with its profits to be spread globally across a wealth of charities. The array of contributors include longtime Hussey boon companions Billy Duffy, Miles Hunt and Julianne Regan (the latter slipping smoothly back into her old Queen Eve role), plus assorted characters from Gene Loves Jezebel, including the long-estranged Aston brothers. Other Goth-tinged old-schoolers contributing are Kirk Brandon, Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins, ex-Banshees/Creatures drummer Budgie, Lol Tolhurst, Martin Gore and Gary Numan. Also on board are Midge Ure, metal/fusioneer Steve Clarke, Smiths bassist Andy Rourke, Guns N’ Roses guitarists Robin Finck and Richard Fortus (the latter reworking the faux-Hindi string parts), Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and (representing the neo-dark side of things) both Evi Vine and James Alexander Graham of noise-folkers The Twilight Sad. Various packages include a tribal-Goth remix by Albie Mischenzingerze and a lullaby- synthwave one by Trentemøller.
Most all-star collaborations lumber along like a tired old tailback, and you’d expect this one to be the same. Instead, it manages to coast like a streamlined train; a persistent smooth swap-over of duties from voice to voice, guitar to guitar, kit to kit. In its middle age, Tower of Strength seems to have evolved from an individual prayer into a communal round, from lighter anthem to campfire hymnal. The Mission always wanted to be luminous in the darkness. Despite the Goth-y star cast, there’s less glitz in the glow this time around, and it’s all the better for it.
Derw: ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’
Having opened up with the expansive piano pop of ‘Dau Gam’ during early summer, Welsh-language chamber poppers Derw are rapidly going from strength to strength. There was a dash of Celtic soul and sophisti-pop to ‘Dau Gam’; they’ve kept all of that for ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’, but have incorporated it into an ornate slow-building confection which suggests a Cymrification of various sources including Clannad, Queen and Brian Wilson, with both a contemporary pop dusting and a hook into the past.
Derw’s particular dynamic remains the creative triangle comprising the songwriting partnership between Daffyd Dawson and his mother Anna Georgina, and Daffyd’s overlapping musical and performance partnership with singer Elin Fouladi: two different definitions of family which seem to have combined into a larger one. The Welsh title for the new single translates into English as ‘Where Did You Come Down’; the core concept is apparently Welsh hiraeth, or nostalgic homesickness.
Combining with Elin’s own part-Iranian roots, a sense of place pervades the song: more particularly, a sense of place adrift. Elin’s clear, fresh voice zigzags over rolling piano landscapes, a powerful melody skylarking its own way over plenty of places to land but always restless, as if looking for a new locale in which to renew old feelings and to build anew. Stuck in my limited Anglophone world, I’m probably overcompensating, trying to make up for missing out on the Welsh lyric which unfurls alongside the music; but you don’t have to know the Welsh to catch the mood. This is potent stuff; if it’s Celtic soul, it’s of a new, post-insular, hybrid-futured kind, and it’s very welcome.
The Forever Now: ‘Reciprocals’
Mutuality is on the mind of The Forever Now, right now. It’s a little unclear as to where and what they are. Known as Winchester up until last year, previously associated with Toronto but now based across the icy seas in Copenhagen, they’re a duo who seem to be a little reluctant to be a duo. If you take The Forever Now as a solo act, then it’s Monty de Luna; Lauren Austin, however, is the “frequent collaborator” who seems to be something of a fixture and stands to the fore on the cover art. Musically speaking, it’s all a bit friends-with-benefits.
This is probably a bit misleading; but these kind of thoughts are provoked when a song like ‘Reciprocals’ surfaces. With a ruminating electric piano ballad at its core, it’s also a duet with no solo spots (Monty and Lauren sing in strict unison and harmony throughout). Contemporary pop choruses come at us in a rush of synthy planetarium twinkle; but the verses drop, line by line, into bitten-off spaces graced by click and patter, tinkles and rattle-rushes. Monty admits, straight out, that it’s “an honest and naked statement about the end of a relationship” as well as “a metaphor for broader statements about the world”. With his group in flux geographically, nominally and practically, it’s difficult not to read the song as a musing on changing terrain of all kinds.
If you’re looking for direct answers in the lyrics, there’s enough here to suggest a rationale for an honest break – “If we’re honest, I’ve been here before. / If we’re honest, I can’t see a way forward. / If we’re honest it’s not worth the fuss, / and if we’re being honest, you know I never wanted this much.” But it’s also about wordplay; masking full disclosure with abstractions and constructions, and (as Monty points out elsewhere) blurring the language of love with those of analytical equations. “So if you’ve got the time, then its time we go, / and if you’ve got the lines, then it’s time we draw them. / Because in another life I’d never let you go, / but I’ve been spending mine on reciprocals, on reciprocals.”
You don’t need to know or think about any of this, of course, and you might be more comfortable not knowing.
ReMission International: ‘TOS2020’ SPV, SPV 243541 LP/SPV 243542 CD-EP/SPV 24354D (no barcode)
Vinyl/CD/download single
Released: 28th August 2020 Get it from: buy/download from ReMission International store or Beauty in Chaos store; stream via YouTube The Mission online:
Derw: ‘Ble Cei Di Ddod I Lawr’ CEG Records (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 28th August 2020 Get it from: download from Amazon Music; stream via Soundcloud or Spotify Derw online:
The Forever Now: ‘Reciprocals’
Symphonic Distribution (no catalogue number or barcode)
Download/streaming single
Released: 28th August 2020 Get it from: download from Bandcamp; stream via Soundcloud, Deezer, Google Play or Spotify. This is also the lead track from the ‘Reciprocals’ EP. The Forever Now online:
Though still only sixteen, Samuel Travis is already showing signs of being a thoughtful, gifted choral composer. While he’s got family roots in strong, flexible musicality (his father is jazz saxophonist Theo Travis, whose creative, interpretative and collaborative talents also stretch across fusion, progressive rock and loop music, and his mother Madelyn is an accomplished amateur classical pianist who immersed her son in classical music from birth), Samuel seems to be pretty much his own man, exploring sophisticated polyphony and the sound of assorted small classical groupings in a way that reveals a sober, constructive talent and the ability to bring out the best of talent in others.
He’s used current lockdown time to reach out and record a choral piece, in order to reflect current concerns and also to fundraise. The text he’s set – Mary Elizabeth Frye’s ‘Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep’ – runs a delicate track between being a perennial and a contemporary chestnut: eminently familiar from radio readings and funerals, it’s also been set in recent by a variety of classical and pop composers from Eleanor Daley, Kevin Siegfried, David Bedford and Howard Goodall to Peter Chilvers, Geoff Stephens, Seanchai & The Unity Squad and Lizzie West. At this point, if you’re working with it, you have to make it sing afresh.
Working with his own Virtual Lockdown Choir (a rapidly-assembled decet of similarly musical classmates from both the Latymer School and the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music) Samuel does just that; refracting the text through ten voices, taking it away from its encroaching corral of greetings cards and earnest solo voices, and remaking it as something universal again. Along the way, he explores, incorporates and fuses a variety of traditions and influences. The Anglican a capella choral tradition is there, for certain, as is ancient plainsong; although any lingering pale-male monasticism is minimised by the mixed genders and cultural backgrounds of the VLC decet.
While there aren’t many tricks of texture here – no abrasive trills, vocalese, extended techniques, vocal percussion or sound effects – at least some of the more contemporary approaches to choral music also leave something of a mark here. There are echoes of Eric Whitacre’s mixture of absolute melodic accessibility with dextrous, depthful musical touches, and (in the gorgeous drifts and shifting slurs of harmony) something of James Macmillan’s glorious ‘Gallant Weaver’. Given Samuel’s youth, though, it hardly sounds derivative at all: as if he’s drawing from the same sources alongside his predecessors, in command of the language and, crucially, the emotional meaning.
Over to Samuel for some more information on context and fundraising:
“The recent lockdown due to COVID-19, and the murder of George Floyd and other members of the black community, have left many people suffering, either from mental health issues or the injustice to a huge community of people.
“I composed this song shortly before lockdown and have spent over one hundred hours putting this virtual choir together over the past three months. I feel that the words resonate with the current global situation and I would like to use the video to raise £1,000.00 for the mental health charity The Samaritans and Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, which helps young people from diverse backgrounds to overcome disadvantage and discrimination.
“Please help me reach this goal by sharing and donating if you feel able! Thank you.”
There are several reasons that I’ve been following the exploits of The Mantis Opera this year. One is the music: an illuminating synth-rock rush through cunningly orchestrated post-classical complexity and brainiac alternative pop, topped with similarly cerebral lyrics which slide fizzing, thinking ribbons through philosophy, logic and linguistic theory before binding them back into more down-to-earth life situations.
If this sounds hideously dry or snooty, it isn’t. This is simply music which is neither ashamed of its own cleverness, nor too self-absorbed or chilly to invite you along for the ride. They’re among an increasing number of newish, bumping-along-in-the-underground acts who share this kind of quirky enthusiasm and possess the requisite smarts and chops to back it up. Tom O.C. Wilson, Prescott, Thumpermonkey and Lost Crowns spring immediately to mind: bands and songwriters who see nothing wrong with turning out songs with the depth and twists of playful short stories, of compressed novels-of-ideas or of meandering Flann O’Brien-esque digressions.
As regards The Mantis Opera, I’ve been chucking around terms like “wide-awake brain music” and “avant-prog keeping watch from under a dream-pop veil” and I’m not going to drop those yet, although I might have to come up with a few more if the band are going to keep up regular performances.
The other reason that I’m keeping an eye on The Mantis Opera is that they tend to keep interesting gig company. Whether they’re good at being invited or are inordinately good at charming their way into lineups, the band seem to have a knack for fitting onto a wide variety of different bills, and this end-of-the-month gig at Paper Dress Vintage is no exception.
Two summers old, already pegged as “rust-bucket swing” and compared to “Mark E. Smith manning the Hot Five”, Bozo Zoo play rootsy jazz-folk and rhythm & blues on drums, double bass and comfortably sleazy sax. Hollering, theatrical vocalist and off-the-wall lyricist Mark Warren (who also handles the inevitable, ubiquitous ukulele) ensures that they tilt into a similar realm of bulging-vein vigour and twisted circus berserkery to that of The Tiger Lillies. A few decades ago he was bobbing about in the kind of lucky-dip underground bands that showed up on Org Records compilations: now he’s singing up budding cabaret gallimaufries of music hall songs and ditties about chess grandmasters. On top of all this, Bozo Zoo seem to have fused Spinal Tap with Schrödinger, via recent online mutterings about “a new drummer but we’ve also kept our drummer… but it ain’t a band with two drummers… but we have got two drummers… it’s complicated.”
Hailing from east London and extensively festooned with mysticism, The Butterfly Wheel aren’t quite the esoteric revelation that they’d like to make out. Plenty of their surface schtick – the Gothic theatrical trappings, the Early Music dirge-wails, the stripping away of Western pop tropes in favour of frowning middle-continent antiquity – is more than familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Dead Can Dance (or of the host of intense, tousled imitators DCD spawned over three decades). What is refreshing is the shifts underneath those surface. A female duo, their songs reshuffle and transform archetypes for an increasingly feminised new time. There’s the sense of old stone patriarchal gods and legends being chipped away at; of more hopeful alternatives being birthed out of the sea; of the stories sitting up and rewriting themselves. We’ll have to see where it leads.
From Camberwell and Coldharbour, Imogen Bliss reshuffles Eastern European folk songs and tufty pop covers on voice, mandolin and loop station. The examples below are Armenian and Balkan/Romani, sandwiching a reworked Cure hit: the latter may not sound a great deal different to those pixiedreamgirl uke songs which still bog down every other cinema advert, but Imogen sounds awake and illuminated rather than sun-drenched and casually dreamy. I’m guessing that she’s got other tricks up her sleeve…
Paper Dress Presents…
The Mantis Opera + Bozo Zoo + The Butterfly Wheel + Imogen Bliss Paper Dress Vintage Bar & Boutique,, 352a Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HR, England
Saturday, 25 August 2018, 7.45pm – information here and here
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On the same night, there’s this. Lovers of righteous noise, here’s your chance to sample some noise that’s a bit more righteous…
“London promoters Wrongpop and Chaos Theory have gotten together for a one-off special event to raise money for Norwood & Brixton Foodbank: some of the best new underground bands out there have agreed to bring you their sounds for this excellent cause, so it’ll be a phenomenal evening with extra positive vibes. 100% of ticket sales go to the charity.
“Formed from members of Long Slow Dissolve,The Love Me Tenders and Witchfist, Treasure Of Woe play stoner and psychedelic jams on guitar and drums. We’ve seen this duo doing their thing at The Facemelter last September and they just keep on recording their jams and releasing them online, so have a listen at the link and get down for the full live experience.
“Carl White are a guitar/drums experimental rock duo, originally formed in Brighton and now based in London. Over the years they’ve shared the stage with acts such as Nitkowski, Alpha Male Tea Party, Flies Are Spies From Hell, Witching Waves and The Mae Shi.They’re currently working on a new EP, from which there will be a single/video released in the next couple of months.
“Apocalypse Jazz Unit were started in 2013 by Rick Jensen as a recording project, after nearly three years of not making music. After numerous albums, Rick recruited some new and old musician buddies and started playing live. AJU quickly went from a small group to an over-the-top collective of psycho improvisers, with up to seventeen members at any one time. To date, they have released over seventy albums and have played a ton of gigs. AJU harnesses the spiritual fire of free-jazz of the ‘60s, mixed with a bit of disco when the mood takes them. Always high-energy and with a heavy sense of humour, AJU can easily swing from delicate and sombre, to full-blast horn mayhem.”
Wrongpop & Chaos Theory Music Promotions present:
Norwood & Brixton Foodbank Fundraiser: Treasure Of Woe + Carl White + Apocalypse Jazz Unit The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England
Saturday 25th August 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Making a temporary shift from their usual Camden base at the Black Heart, the upcoming month’s Chaos Theory gigs continue to showcase colourfully noisy guitar rock of the post-, math-y and metallic kind (at the Facemelter nights) and mushroom outwards into avant-rock territories elsewhere.
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Chaos Theory Music Promotions presents:
The Facemelter: Memory Of Elephants + Codices + Rad Pitt New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Friday 4th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Bristol trio Memory Of Elephants are “insanely brilliant at making technically perfect math-rock sound like noise and making noise-rock sound like progressive perfection”. Already an established Facemelter act, their music’s a welter of restless multipolar mood changes and psych-cyclones with a bewildering delightful stockpile of guitar tones; from mechanistic hissing growls, fire-ribbon swishes and sudden injections of Detroit proto-punk to great woozy carousing fuzzwalls of MBV dreampop, Chinese orchestras and – at one point – what sounds like a gnarly old organ playing itself.
Codices (spotted by CT last year playing with Lost In The Riots) offer more pared-down, quick-on-its-feet, jump-and-feint riffage. Studded with bursts of spoken-word metaphysics, they’ve got an appealing heavy/light touch; changing between tearing distortion and sighing post-rock chimes like a rapier fighter who suddenly brings out gobbets of flamethrower blast.
Opening (and replacing Midlands slamcore duo A Werewolf!) are the gnarly pop-culture bawls and in-jokes of Colchester post-hardcore rabble Rad Pitt. Showcasing the Facemelter’s more mischievous side, they’re described by ‘Louder Than War’ as “like Enter Shikari without the disco beats and Extreme Noise Terror with some catchy verses attached to the mayhem” and by Chaos Theory’s Kunal as “plenty of screams and big riffs. Ridiculous fun, awesome lyrics, and a band we’ve been dying to work with for ages.”
A week later, Chaos Theory team up with Match’n’Fuse Festival (long-standing promoters of avant-garde jazz, prog and all manner of genre-colliding music) to bring you “a one-off event, a lineup of audio oddities filled with weird and lively sorts. Just because.”
Chaos Theory call London trick-rock squad The Display Team a “prog-punk orchestra creat(ing) a heavy assault of surprisingly upbeat, melodic nonsense, resulting in something like a cross between The Specials and Mr Bungle”. Certainly, as they tumble through their brass-plastered tunes (like a Blackpool drunk being cannon-fired, with suspicious accuracy, through a line of deckchairs), they initially seem like another entry in the long roll of prodigious Zappa-esque loon bands, employing powerful and assertive technique in a circus-act of absurd flamboyance.
Beyond the parping and razzing, though (and beyond the slightly unhinged yell-singing of drummer-leader Chuckles), there’s a steely assurance to them; a determination to navigate to the end of the tangled charts and wrangled music, and to triumph. Ironically, this makes them more Zappa-esque than they’d be if they just larked around. Despite the ska breaks and the post-prog riff blitzing, the looning is secondary – to the point of almost being invisible – and what you’re left with is the vigour of the loops, feints and dives. Regular readers may be surprised to hear that I’m actually quite skeptical about these kind of bands. Not this one. Eyes on the prize.
In the middle there’s something similarly diverse but riddled with deliberate cracks, as sometime Echo Pressure saxophonist Joe Murgatroyd provides “avant-glam-punk cabaret” in his solo guise as Magnus Loom. His songs are a tossed salad of art-rock, post-punk, bizarre ’60s pop and Moonshake-style post-rock: some of them blurting skeletons of manically yawing subbass, oil-tub drum rattle and glockenspiels that sound like eighteenth-century jailers’ keys); others acidic sheets of synth buzz and guitar snag, generally carrying a topping of samples like a small tsunami that’s swept though a warehouse for unwanted toys.
Joe’s voice and songwriting match the vim and brittle wit of his instrumentation. Defiant, slightly lost and only slightly tongue-in-cheek, all of it filters honest angst through defensive satire; capturing the mixture of listlessness and energetic restlessness that gets us through the day while our consumer anxiety, our boredom, our mortality, our unsureties and our appetites keep bouncing off our own noggins.
Launching at this particular gig, show openers Ms Mercy are “a new noise project of total chaos, rock, metal, noise, prog, punk and more…. a brilliant Faith No More/System Of A Down/Bungle-esque experience.” It’s hard to disagree with that as you hear them hurtling through their cut-and-shunt of hard-edged musical fragments; their vocals a pugnacious, hard-eyed, Patton-ish pummel of semi-operatic theatrics through to rap. They sound like a snarling, barking pack of rabid wolves, but one that’s rather enjoying its own crazed death spiral.
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While Chaos Theory aren’t organising the third gig in the post (that’s down to the folk at the Brighton Electric studios) their cheery collective thumbprint’s certain on it – all of the bands taking part either fit the Facemelter template or will do, and Kunal is heading down to run the DJ sets…
Brighton Electric and Chaos Theory Music Promotions present:
‘Help Dan Beesley Beat Cancer’: Poly-Math + InTechnicolour + Thumpermonkey Brighton Electric, 43-45 Coombe Terrace, Brighton, West Sussex, BN2 4AD, England
Saturday 12th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here
Well-loved guitar-messer Dan Wild-Beesley (from Cleft and GUG) has recently conquered the mountain by apparently winning his battle with stage four brain cancer, but he’s still got the journey back down to contend with. There’s ten grand’s worth of medical bills, for which he’s only got about eighty per cent of the costs covered. With a JustGiving campaign in full swing (more on all of that here), quite a bit of what Dan’s needed has been raised by his friends in the math-rock and post-progressive rock community, and the efforts continue with this Brighton show.
Homeboys Poly-Math headline with their cosmic post-prog instrumental landscapes. While it’s tempting to tag them as something like “colourful, heroic NASA-metal”, I should be more careful before flinging the space-rock adjectives around. 2015’s mini-album ‘Reptiles’ implied themes of evolution and metamorphosis and more recently Poly-Math have been turning their impressionistic attention toward the hard knuckles of history. As of the end of last week, they’ve got a new double album out – ‘House Of Wisdom | We Are The Devil’, for which this show is the formal launch.
Hailed by West Midlands zine and promoters ‘Circuit Sweet’ as “thought provoking, intelligent and supremely executed music”, the album’s inspired by the 1258 Mongol siege and overrunning of Baghdad and its caliphate, and the consequential dooming of the enlightened university which lay within the city walls; from which so many pillaged books were cast aside into the River Tigris that the waters turned black with ruined and dissolving ink. Aesthetically speaking, there’s a terrific dark-fairytale ring to that story; but in terms of genuine history it marked the end of the Golden Age of Islam (with its giant forward strides in philosophy, science and cooperation) and the treading under, by brute force and proto-fascism, of its culture of curiosity and education. Bring your own present-day analogy: you’ll have to, since whatever meaning Poly-Math themselves intend is encoded between the notes and sonic surges of their burgeoning instrumentals.
Mid-bill comes the grand, quaveringly hallucinatory post-grunge stoner rock of InTechnicolour. Formed by assorted members of math-rockers Delta Sleep, experimental rockers Physics House Band and the live array for guitar-droners LUO, they regularly assemble to play a speaks-for-itself mass of heavy riffs and doodles through a pink haze.
I’ve said plenty about concert openers Thumpermonkey over the last few years, but thanks to their unceasing wit and creativity there’ll always be more to roll out. The missing link between Mastodon and China Miéville (or perhaps between Peter Hammill and Neal Stephenson), they play plenty of heavy rock gigs rubbing shoulders with the psych-y, the math-ridden and the screamy, and always fit in well; while simultaneously seeming to float above the fray, looking down with affable amusement at both themselves and their billmates. Partially it’s Michael Woodman’s voice – pure theatrical cordon bleu hambone, from the bottom of its ominous deep-tenor declamations to the top of its horror-struck falsetto. Partially it’s the baffling range of esoteric topics which slow-cook throughout the lyrics: a baroque, tongue-in-cheek, post-imperial melange of eldritch secrets, trans-dimensional catastrophes and strange surreal ennuis being visited on hapless pith-helmeted explorers and unwary academics, seasoned with nightmare flashes into surreal Jodorowskian dreamscapes, angsty post-grunge horror or delicately unfolding post-rock gags about Nigerian scam emails.
The music, meanwhile, is an ever-flexing full-spectrum crunch and hush, full of stalking shapes and hovering convoluted melodies. Game-playing geeks for sure, and clearly ones who are proud of their astonishingly broad armoury of sly references, veiled jokes and fantastical imagery; but also geeks who revel in their absolute mastery of those most un-geeky of rock qualities – muscle and poise.
The Audacious Art Experiment presents:
Blood Sport + LOGS + Eşya + Isis Moray + Two Left Foot DJs + more t.b.c. The Leadmill, 6 Leadmill Road, Sheffield, Yorkshire, S1 4SE, England
Saturday 9th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Next week, Sheffield says goodbye to homegrown “aggrobeat” band Blood Sport, who’ve been pumping out their open-ended blend of Fela Kuti afrobeat, dance rock and noise pop for seven years and have decided it’s time to stop. They’ll be missed for their music, which revived and rearranged various dots of New York loft music, classic post-punk exploration and latterday cellar noise. They’ll probably be missed even more for their communality, which saw them collaborating both onstage and in-set with a variety of international musical partners and guests both at small gigs and at the Hybrid Vigour shows (in which they crossed swords, palms or barriers in cahoots with the likes of Egyptian electro-chaabi champion Islam Chipsy, poly-composer/performer Mica Levi, Tokyo experimental rock trio Nisennenmondai and ex-Hype Williams vocalist Inga Copeland).
In keeping with their persistent ethos of collaboration, celebration and sharing, Blood Sport’s final show features a clutch of interesting friends and artists whom they’re shining a generous light onto. A couple of Sheffield acts will be playing sets and unveiling music – psytronic voice-trumental looper and bass’n’drumbox witch Isis Moray, and Sheffield electronic noise “supercluster” LOGS (born out of “a mutual love for fuzzy jams and spacey synth tones” and featuring Ben Hunter – a.k.a. Audacious Art Experiment bleep-and-squeak house technoist Saif Mode – plus assorted members and ex-members of Drenge, Wet Nuns and Seize The Chair).
The show will also feature a performance from Savages bass player-turned-experimental synthpopper Ayşe Hassan. She’ll be debuting a new performance identity called Eşya, with which/whom she claims is going to play out “the duality of conflicting traits, ideas and views that can exist within one being and how one deals with such conflict – the absurdity of being.” Hmm. A part-pixellated half-minute preview is on show below. On spec, Eşya seems to owe something to the brain-wandering club-pop/femme-pop of Ayşe’s existing Kite Base project, but moving deeper into onomatopoeia, sensuality and (given the pixellation) perhaps a little transgression too… We’ll see.
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Another musician whom we hopefully won’t be losing anytime soon is Dan Wild-Beesley, until recently of Manchester “turbo-prog” duo Cleft (known for “condensing fourteen-minute prog songs into three minutes and having a lot of fun doing it”) and more recently of perky post-hardcore/noisepop trio Gug. A couple of years ago, he had the horrible luck of being diagnosed with not just one, but two brain tumours, meaning that he needed to raise fifty thousand pounds for overseas treatment unavailable on the NHS.
While his JustGiving campaign was successful (gratifyingly, it seems that you can still build up a lot of love and fellow feeling from six years of ping-ponging around tiny British venues banging out stripped-down rock weirdness), there’s still more money to be raised for the essentials of drastically shifting to a cancer-crushing lifestyle. There’s still plenty people can do to help – picking up Cleft or Gug music, keeping that JustGiving campaign ticking along, or coming to the series of fundraising shows. I missed the opportunity to post about the one back in October, but here’s a little info about the one in December.
Mentholman Promotions/MADE present:
Dan Wild-Beesley (Cleft) Fundraiser: Porshyne + AWOOGA + Gilmore Trail + Pfaff West Street Live, 128-130 West Street, Sheffield, S1 4ES, Yorkshire, England
Thursday 14th December 2017, 7.30pm – information
“What better way to raise funds than to put on an event with four incredible acts?” What indeed? Expect a friendly, contradictory, noisy/soft post-everything rockquake (complete with raffle and donation buckets). The two Sheffield bands – thoughtful prog-grungers AWOOGA (fresh from their London gig the previous week at the Black Heart) and delicately limpid post-rock instrumental quartet Gilmore Trail (the latter noted for their twinkling cover of the ‘Twin Peaks’ theme) – will be joined by a couple of out-of-towners: three-piece Mancunian math-rockers Pfaff and “heavy atmospheric” rock quintet Porshyne from Brighton. All necessary evidence below…
I think I’ve previously described the Boston Music Room – one of my own local venues – as London’s current home of prog. If so, the Lexington, down in the hinterlands between Kings Cross and Angel, is making a good showing as a second home. Two imminent shows reinforce that reputation, making next week a good one for London’s prog village.
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Resonance, in association with Prog Magazine and Orange Amplification present
The Gift + We Are Kin + Tiger Moth Tales The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Sunday 7th August 2016, 6.30pm – information here and here
The name that’s missing from the promoters’ line-up above is Bad Elephant Music: London’s ever-industrious cottage label for various types of prog, and home for two of the acts on the bill. In some respects, this is a shuffled and re-run of a similar gig back in February, in which The Gift’s mix of symph/prog/folk grandeur plus flashy AOR (and We Are Kin’s exploration of art rock shapes and northern English socialism) lined up with a pair of one-man bands in the shape of steampunk balladeer Tom Slatter and troubadour rocker jh. Now The Gift are back, and so are We Are Kin, with only the choice of one-man-band changed. Here’s the official blurb from the Elephant:
“The Gift, fresh from their triumphant performance at An Evening Of Bad Elephant Music, will be headlining the event, bringing their own particular brand of symphonic progressive rock on stage. The band is currently working on the followup to 2014’s ‘Land of Shadows’, and may well be previewing a song or two here.
“Making the journey down to ‘that London’ all the way from Manchester, We Are Kin will be playing a selection of songs from their new album, ‘The Waiting Room’, as well as from their acclaimed debut, ‘Pandora’. Their twin vocal lineup wowed the audience at Abel Ganz’s Christmas party last year, and is sure to be a highlight of this event.
“Tiger Moth Tales is the brainchild of Pete Jones, who will be performing solo for this event. His live shows have been widely acclaimed for their virtuosity, emotion and huge sense of fun. Pete’s two album releases ‘Cocoon’ and ‘Storytellers Part One’ will both be represented in his performance, and he may well throw in one or two cover versions of the prog classics!”
Just one final note – the gig’s a fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Trust, emphasising a community that’s broader than just the prog one.
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The David Cross Band (with special guest David Jackson) + Richard Palmer-James The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Tuesday 9th August 2016, 7:30 pm – information here and here
Despite nearly five decades in music, David Cross is still best known for his contributions to three albums at the start of his career. During a two-year early-‘70s stint with King Crimson (incorporating ‘Starless And Bible Black’, ‘Larks’ Tongues In Aspic’ and ‘Red’) David added “delicacy, and wood” to what some consider to be the band’s finest incarnation – part proto-punk-Mahavishu Orchestra, part stately electric-classical chamber group, and part droning/clattering/blaring building site. In its relatively brief and always restless lifespan, this particular Crimson lineup lay athwart the path of progressive rock, heavy metal and European improvisation like a splinter-ridden sleeper across the tracks: innovative, stern and ornery.
David’s amplified violin was a key part of the band’s powerful Euronoise, bringing in evocative melodies and moods which varied between Roma scurries, fall-of-Rome dramatics, foggy drones and angry squeals. As was the case with many of the departures from Crimson, David’s was passionate, painful and galling: progressively swamped by the band’s incremental climb towards avant-rock brutality, he was eventually forced out by its bruising, bristling volume and the implacable battering of its rhythm section. It took a few decades for him to salvage a more cordial relationship with Crimson leader Robert Fripp: nonetheless, the reconciliation has led to a return to the large extended Crimson family including guest spots and latterday Soundscape duets as well as recent “electric chamber music” with Crim-connected composer Andrew Keeling.)
Immediately after Crimson, though, David had to follow a different winding path of his own. From mid-‘70s work with trans-Manche psych/prog/fusioneers Clearlight (and experiments with big-band improv whilst leading the sadly undocumented Ascend) he went on to a long learning process during which, by his own admission, he failed at jazz. On the other hand, he successfully honed an affinity with alternative improvisation and with other forms. Theatre, in particular, proved to be a natural home, with David working up on stage and behind the scenes as well as in the pit band or composer’s slot. Theatricality also bled through into his other musical work. A trio he formed with keyboard player Sheila Maloney and saxophonist Pete McPhail took to the arts centres to perform musical interpretations of Samuel Beckett plays, while from the turn of the 1980s David was carrying out interdisciplinary performances with dancers, painters and the like (something he’s continued up until the present day).
After a decade away, a return to fusion and avant-rock in the late 1980s saw David becoming a keystone of Geoff Serle’s Radius band; an interesting, if airlessly pastoral, British answer to Material’s electro-funk. He was also a quarter of one-shot project Low Flying Aircraft, in which he joined forces with Crimson-orbit jazz pianist Keith Tippett, drummer Dan Maurer and budding teenaged guitar whiz Jim Juhn in a leaf-storm of nervy electroacoustic frenzy and scattered early sampler sputters. (For my money, it’s probably his most interesting post-Crimson bandwork to date.). He’s stayed busy ever since – this year, for instance, saw the release of violin-and-electronica duo album with Sean Quinn of Tiny Magnetic Pets, plus a live album from Japanese dates in which he guested with Crimson spinoff trio Stick Men.
All of this suggests the work of a musician whose reputation should be broader and better respected. It’s probably only the taint of grand prog – and of the “wrong kind” of fusion – which keeps him from it. In experimental rock (or, more accurately, in the media commentary which covers it, particularly on the British side) there still seem to be very clear, if dubious and snobbish, rules about who’s allowed credibility, and why. It’s not easy to escape from those fencings; and without this side of his history, David might have had his due.
For better or for worse, David’s most enduring project has been his own David Cross Band. Anchored since the mid-’90s by cohorts and co-composers Mick Paul (bass) and Paul Clark (guitars), it displays his electric violin – by turns stately, romantic, gnarled or locustlike – coursing fluently over a grandiose, detailed bed of prog pomp, deep metal, and flaring jazz-rock gestures. This year, however, the band’s taken an intriguing and strategic left-turn. With their latest album ‘Sign Of The Crow’ barely out of the gate, they’ve unexpectedly replaced keyboard player Alex Hall with veteran avant-prog sax hero David Jackson, once of Van Der Graaf Generator.
David Jackson in full 1970s effect (photographer unknown)
Musically adventurous and visually iconic, Jackson spent his Van Der Graaf years festooned with multiple instruments, blowing double-horn brass sections through brain-buggering electronics and being described as “a Third Reich bus conductor”. Since then, he’s spent much of his time working on the gesture-to-MIDI Soundbeam electronic project (bringing out the musicality of disabled children) while sometimes venturing out for gigs on the strength of his experimental rock reputation. Since crossing paths with David Cross at one such gig in Verona years ago, Jackson has been one of his frequent improvisation partners, making him an overdue natural fit for something like this. Regarding their chemistry, here’s a lengthy fly-on-the-wall video of the two of them playing (alongside Yumi Hara and Tony Lowe) at a release show for the Cross/Fripp ‘Starless Starlight’ album of Crimson-inspired Soundscape duets. Covering the show from rehearsal to performance, it hints at some of what the Cross/Jackson duo might be bringing to bear on the band shows; something which might well be transformational, pulling the band up and out of its shiny prog-metal box and perhaps delivering David Cross some of the broader respect he deserves.
The new Cross Band lineup, completed by Space Cowboys singer Jinian Wilde and by poly-disciplinary drummer Craig Blundell (who displays a heartening taste for post-dubstep playing when people let him off the prog leash), made their live debut in Wolverhampton last month. While no videos have emerged from this, there have been enthusiastic reports; and as King Crimson tours as a grand septet with a long-denied, fervently-delivered battery of archived ’70s classics, the Cross band are studding their own set with live deliveries of 21st Century Schizoid Man and Starless.
The London gig’s also intriguing in that it features a rare-as-rocking-horse-shit British solo slot from Richard Palmer-James. Originally the embattled first guitarist and wordsmith for Supertramp (a long time before they hit big at the American breakfast bar), Richard was the long-distance lyricist for King Crimson during David’s tenure and has subsequently carried out the same favour for twenty years of various Cross bands. Based in Bavaria for forty-odd years, he’s spent most of it embedded in production and writing work for German pop: since the turn of the century, however, he’s revived his original love for playing blues and country guitar. Most likely it will be this side of him that we’ll see at the Lexington on Tuesday. Still, who knows what the sense of occasion might bring out?
Notwithstanding my preview of that Refuweegee concert in Glasgow some time ago, I don’t do enough in contributing to the coverage of the ongoing refugee diaspora. So for now I thought I’d share this story from ‘Folk Radio UK’ about an initiative to cover and offer a platform for those among the refugees who happen to be musicians (not least in offering them the chance to earn money while in transit).
Calais Field Music is a project I recently came across which was set up by Dublin based Isolda Heavey to help the refugees in the ‘Jungle’ camp at Calais. To date they have released five albums via Bandcamp which features field recordings of musicians from the camp – each covering a different region. In each she reveals…
It’s been two years now since the death of Roger Lloyd Pack. Though the eulogies flooded in at the time, hailing his work as actor, pop-culture hero (he played Trigger in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ and Owen in ‘The Vicar of Dibley’) and longstanding man of the people, one of the finest tributes to Roger only surfaced earlier this year when his widow (Jehane Markham) and son (Hartley Lloyd Pack) finally completed ‘Sixteen Sunsets’, an album project which they’d conceived together to help them work through their grief at the loss of Roger, and to raise money to fight the pancreatic cancer that felled him.
‘Sixteen Sunsets’ is one of the most touching records I’ve heard this year, or any year. It might have been a portrait of everyday heroism, or an obituary column with a mawkish soundtrack. It’s neither of these things. At root, it’s a fertile absence: an aching space into which layer of memories and flashes of emotion drift, to be woven into a portrait of love for a partner and father, of the hard-won acceptance of loss, and an exploration of how the recalling of things lost and a new reality of life without those things settle together. It’s a mixture of vigil notes and valediction played out under a wan London sky, simultaneously unfixed in time and subject to its relentless onward push.
Sixteen Sunsets: ‘Sixteen Sunsets’
The words and music (a mixture of Hartley’s organic hip hop delivery and Jehane’s stark poetry, plus voices and traces from r&b, folk, drone music and blues) gradually sketching out the shape of bereavement: sometimes dry and blank, sometimes aching or angry; and sometimes a source of pride and substance, a building block for the future. On hand to help put a shape to things are Kill Light’s Tom Vella and Richard Day, singers Sam Lee and Janai, singing cellist Natalie Rosario and crossover harmony group Trills: also in attendance are jazzmen Patrick Naylor and Michael Storey plus classical composer Keith Burstein (the last making an unaccustomed foray into tack piano and barbed, Weillian cabaret swing).
This is not the first time that Sixteen Sunsets’ songs have surfaced live – some were played at a cancer fundraiser at Wilton’s Music Hall at the end of January this year, while Map Studio Café hosted the project’s formal album launch in mid-February. This show, however, might have been particularly close to Roger’s heart: this particular library on the fringe of Camden (a bracing walk’s distance from the Lloyd Pack family home in Kentish Town, and a mere stone’s throw from his resting place in Highgate Cemetery) was one of his several cause celebres and a place which he vigorously defended in the face of government cuts and economic neglect. It’s not absolutely clear if everyone involved in the project is performing, although it seems that most of them will be (Hartley, Jehane, Natalie Rosario and Trills have all tweeted announcement about their own participation, and I may have missed news from the others.) It’s nominally a free event, but you’re encouraged to make a cash donation to Pancreatic Cancer UK on the door, in Roger’s memory.
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Later in the week, there are some more touches of folk, rhythm and community music at the usual Daylight shindig:
Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 227: Nat & The Noise Brigade + Ellie Ford + The Pop-Up Choir Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 11th June 2016, 12.00pm – free/pay-what-you-like event (suggested donation: £5.00) – more information
“Grabbing anything they can get their hands on – brass, flutes, violins and even saucepans and biscuit tins – Nat & The Noise Brigade will be storming the stage. They’re a ten-piece band from East London, with songs ranging from politically charged grooves to anthems about poor punctuality via some unique cover versions (fancy some “ska Mozart” or “doo-wop Radiohead”?).
Ellie Ford‘s music is both thought provoking and utterly absorbing. Her songs are enchanting with harp and guitar parts underpinning sultry vocals. As a solo performer Ellie Ford is captivating, but she also fronts a five-piece band of multi-instrumentalists who play a mix of modern and classical instrumentation (harp, violin, clarinet, guitar and drums). Taking influence from a range of genres, Ellie Ford has an edge and variation that cements her uniqueness in the alt-folk world.
“There’s also a chance to enjoy south London’s fabulous Pop-Up Choir; a cappella ensemble of twenty-five singers who delight and surprise with their playful arrangements.”
Just quickly mentioning this solo fundraising event initiated by Olga Stezhko: a forty-five minute late-lunchtime piano performance on the north side of central London, this coming Thursday…
Olga Stezhko St Pancras Parish Church, Euston Road, St Pancras, London, NW1 2BA, England
Thursday 21st April 2016, 1.15pm – free entry (with fundraising donations encouraged)
Olga: “Please join me at my lunchtime recital in aid of the Friends of the Belarusian Children’s Hospice (UK). I have been a long-time supporter of this amazing charity that provides children’s hospice-at-home care in Belarus. Their comprehensive palliative care creates positive experiences for terminally-ill children and precious memories for their families.
I will be playing two Debussy suites – ‘Suite bergamasque’ and ‘Children’s Corner’ – and Prokofiev’s ‘Tales of an Old Grandmother’. The event is free and all proceeds from a retiring collection will go to the FBCH. Your support will be greatly appreciated!”
Here’s some quick info on upcoming gigs in early June which I’ve heard about – all of them in London.
Over the last couple of years, Westminster Kingsway College has established itself as one of the capital’s finest homes for quirky art-rock – by which I don’t mean student hobby bands thrown together for campness or for ironic prankery, but a rich, complex, committed electric music spanning the range between gutter-punk and flouncing prog via metal, jazz, folk, avant-gardening and anything else which gets melted down into the stew. Here’s one of those gigs that proves the point.
A Formal Horse + Ham Legion (Westminster Kingsway College, 211 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8RA, Tuesday 2nd June, 6.30pm)
A Formal Horse is a new progressive rock quartet based in Southampton. Although the band’s sound is difficult to pinpoint, their dense instrumental passages are reminiscent of King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra, whilst Francesca Lewis’ lead vocals evoke the whimsical surrealism of the 1970s’ Canterbury scene. Wonky melodies and serene vocals over a brutal sound – their music keeps you on your toes. However, A Formal Horse go beyond simply regurgitating the music of their predecessors. With influences as diverse as Bartók and Bon Iver, the band prove that there is still much territory to be explored in the field of British progressive rock.
In June 2014, the band released their debut EP, which was recorded by Rob Aubrey (IQ, Transatlantic). They went on to perform at London’s Resonance Weekend alongside Bigelf and Änglagård, and were described by Prog Magazine as a “festival highpoint”. Since, they have shared stages with Knifeworld and Lifesigns, cementing their position at the forefront of the British progressive scene.
Ham Legion spent 2014 honing their sound and developing a storming live show. You can expect a collision of beaming up beat power pop, grinding metal outbursts, dramatic changes of mood, sudden passages of twistingly epic prog then moments of restrained delivery and somber reflection. They are striking out in 2015 with the release of their debut album towards the end of the year.
Olga Stezhko (the far-thinking Belarusian classical pianist whose ‘Eta Carina’ album impressed me so much last year) has two London concerts coming up in the first fortnight of the month. The second’s likely to be an all-access crowd-pleaser. Given its charity fundraiser status, I’m not sure whether the first is likely to feature or indulge any of Olga’s intriguing conceptual preoccupations with Scriabin, Busoni, cosmology and early twentieth century consciousness, but even if it isn’t it’s a great opportunity to see a fine musician at work in a grand location.
Programme not revealed – free admission, donations requested.
EC4 Music in aid of The Prince’s Trust (Barbican Hall, Tuesday 9th June, 7:30pm – 9:30pm)
The choir and orchestra of London-based EC4 Music return for their seventh fundraising concert in aid of The Prince’s Trust with a stirring selection of music from both sides of the Atlantic.
Programme:
Leonard Bernstein – Overture from ‘Candide’
Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring
George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
Vaughan Williams – Serenade to Music
Leonard Bernstein – Chichester Psalms
Eric Whitacre – Water Night
Hubert Parry – Blest Pair of Sirens
Performers:
EC4 Music Choir and Orchestra
Tim Crosley – conductor
Olga Stezhko – piano
Claire Seaton – soprano
Roderick Morris – countertenor
Thomas Herford – tenor
Adam Green – baritone
Tickets available here – prices from £10.00 – £35.00 plus booking fee.
Some of London’s most active art-rockers are brewing up a free Zappa homage in Croydon at around the same time. Details below:
The Spiders of Destiny play Frank Zappa (The Oval Tavern, 131 Oval Road, Croydon, CR0 6BR, Saturday 6th June, 8:30pm)
Great googly moogly! On June 6th, nine-piece tribute band Spiders Of Destiny come to The Oval Tavern to play a marathon set of music by the late, great Frank Zappa. Featuring world class performers with a sense of humour from notable prog/alternative bands such as: Knifeworld, Perhaps Contraption, Pigshackle, Medieval Baebes, The Display Team, Hot Head Show, Poino, Spiritwo, First, A Sweet Niche and more. So polish up your zircon-encrusted tweezers, trim your poodle, learn the mudshark dance and join us as we propagate the conceptual continuity instigated by one of the masters of modern music.
More info here – this gig is FREE ENTRY but there will be a donations jug doing the rounds during the intermission.
Anyone with an interest in David Bowie, rock history, cabaret, electropop and all of the other things that get swept up into Bowie’s art should head to Soho on Thursday 11th June for A Bowie Night at Gerry’s Club, at which pianist and writer Clifford Slapper launches his book ‘Bowie’s Piano Man: The Life of Mike Garson‘ (which also has its own Facebook page).
As well as readings and signings there will be performances of Bowie songs from avowed fans Danie Cox (from “flock-rockers” The Featherz), Ray Burmiston (of ’80s heroes Passion Puppets), club siren Katherine Ellis (Freemasons, Ruff Driverz, Bimbo Jones etc.) and acoustic singer Jorge Vadio. There’ll also be a performance from a longtime ‘Misfit City’ favourite – London balladeer, Brel translator and onetime ‘Pirate Jenny’s’ host Des de Moor, who’ll presumably be singing his Bowie-gone-chanson interpretations from his ‘Darkness and Disgrace’ show. (I’m particularly pleased to see that Des is back onstage. It’s been a long time.)
More on the book below, and more on Gerry’s Club here.
“It is pointless to talk about his ability as a pianist. He is exceptional. However, there are very, very few musicians, let alone pianists, who naturally understand the movement and free thinking necessary to hurl themselves into experimental or traditional areas of music, sometimes, ironically, at the same time. Mike does this with such enthusiasm that it makes my heart glad just to be in the same room with him.” – David Bowie
Mike Garson has played piano on sixteen David Bowie albums, including Aladdin Sane, with his celebrated piano solo on its title track, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, 1. Outside and Reality. He has also played live with Bowie on countless tours and shows, and remains his most long-standing and frequent band member.
For some time Clifford Slapper has been working very closely with Garson to write a book which explores the life of this extraordinary and eccentric modern musician. It documents in detail how as a pianist he was catapulted overnight from the obscure world of New York’s avant-garde jazz scene to a close and long connection with Bowie. In addition, Garson is recognised as a classical virtuoso, a jazz master and one of the world’s greatest exponents of improvisation. He has also recorded and performed live with other rock legends such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails. All of this is covered by this first ever biography of Mike Garson.
Its starting point was several days of in-depth and frank conversation with Garson himself, and covers a wide range of themes which will be of interest to all Bowie fans, but also to anyone with a passion for music, social history or the process of creative inspiration. Input has also come from many interviews with those who have worked with him over the years, including Earl Slick, Trent Reznor, Sterling Campbell, Reeves Gabrels, Dave Liebman and many others.
Just because I’m likely to be stuck indoors for the next fortnight doesn’t mean that you have to be. Some interesting gigs are coming up in – mostly in London, I’m afraid – but just in case any of you are London-based, here are some ideas to see you through until June.
First of all, there are two free Daylight Music events over the weekend. Running eclectic free gigs that span from cosy to experimental, and from classical to folk to noise-pop, Daylight Music have been a Misfit City favourite for a long time. See here for reviews of previous events in September and October 2013 and in January 2014; and see below for details on the upcoming concerts…
Join us for a weekend of music with artist travelling from Los Angeles, Wales and Spain to dazzle you. And while you’re reading this, have a listen to a special mix by Ex-Easter Island Head.
Daylight Music 190: Winter Villains + Poppy Ackroyd + Jon DeRosa (Union Chapel – Saturday 23rd May, midday to 2pm)
The new Spring Season kicks off with a name to watch; Poppy Ackroyd is a classically trained pianist and violinist who weaves delicate, atmosphere music by manipulating and multi-tracking sounds from just those two instruments. On the same week, you can hear Cardiff’s Winter Villains and their intricate chamber pop music (the duo were nominated for the Welsh Music Prize in 2013) and Jon DeRosa from the USA, whose new album ‘Black Halo’ is out via Rocket Girl on 25 May. Hannah Lawrence plays some usual and some unusual melodies on the Henry Willis organ in between this week. Full details here.
Colleen with Ex-Easter Island Head (LSO St Luke’s – Sunday 24th May 7.30pm)
A double bill of musicians renowned for manipulating your expectations as much as they do their instruments; creating hypnotic minimalist music from simple arrays of strings, percussion and even just vocals. Colleen mixes acoustic instruments with electronic sampling techniques to create rhythmic, lyrical folk-pop songs. Her new album Captain of None will focus on a melodic repertoire, with fast-paced tracks rooted by prominent bass lines and her instruments of choice, the treble viola da gamba and her voice. Liverpool-based Ex-Easter Island Head turn the electric guitar on its head, to compose physical, droning soundscapes.
Next up, on Bank Holiday Monday there’s an afternoon-and-evening free concert in Bethnal Green, promoted by unplugged specialists Smile Acoustic (who are new to me, but seem very welcoming). Far too many different acts to summarize quickly – although I do recognise Matt Finucane, who first came to my attention doing anti-pop with Empty Vessels years ago and who’s now matured (though he probably wouldn’t use the word) into a sinister songwriter and a horror/science fiction writer. Read on…
SmileAcoustic: Tasting Menu Bank Holiday Special (Rich Mix – Monday 25th May, 4pm onwards)
Smile Acoustic has been making many friends, and all our friends seem to make great music… so we thought it high time for a get together. An extra long weekend requires extra entertainment after all! So we present a feast of flavours, in our first ever Tasting Menu. Full information here.
Yes we’re cramming in a ridiculous amount of talent into an additional late afternoon show, as well as our usual evening gig. An incredible array of original songsters will be gracing the stage, with a line up that takes us all the way from banjo to beatbox. Free entry as ever, as is the cake. See you there!
On Friday 29th May, in west London, UK Music for Nepal are putting on a classical music benefit aiming to raise ten thousand pounds for the victims of the earthquake. It’s mostly performances of Romantic and Baroque work (by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Bach, Liszt and Fauré), but with a few outbreaks of early twentieth century modernism via some Scriabin pieces, plus a world premiere of a new piano work by composer Keith Burstein (a onetime Romantic Futurist and still an ongoing champion of latterday tonal music – see here for a long-ago review of his first String Quartet). It’s also got a striking array of performance talent – see below…
Gala Concert for Nepal (St Barnabas Church, Ealing, London, Friday 29th May, 7.30pm)
Programme:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Chorale Prelude “Nun Komm die Heiden Heiland” BMV 659
Frédéric Chopin – Polonaise-fantaisie in A flat major, Op.61
Gabriel Fauré – Sicilienne, Op.78
Gabriel Fauré – Élégie, Op.24
Aleksandr Scriabin – Etude in D# minor Op.8 No12
Aleksandr Scriabin – Nocturne for Left Hand
Sergei Rachmaninov – Cello Sonata in G minor, Op.19
Franz Liszt – Consolations, S.172
Sergei Rachmaninov – Prelude in G minor Op. 23 No. 5
Johannes Brahms – Variations on a theme by Paganini (Book 1)
(and a world premiere by composer Keith Burstein)
Tickets available here – prices from £20.00 to £50.00.
Also on Friday 29th May there’s the latest London gig by Knifeworld, part of a five-date English tour also taking in Manchester, York, Bristol and Brighton (as mentioned a few posts back). Expect an evening of explosive, tuneful and corrugated art rock played with the vigour of a soul revue and the complexities of a ’70s prog band. For the York gig, they’re supported by motorik rockers Muttley Crew and for the London gig by bounding art-rockers Barringtone (ex-Clor) and Cesarians. The Brighton gig is a Tim Smith benefit gig at which they’re supported by prog-poppers Ham Legion, the mysterious M U M M Y (a brand new project by Cardiacs affiliates Jo Spratley and Bic Hayes) and self-styled bitter and twisted songwriter Stephen Evens (who says of himself that “the songs are beautiful and the words are horrible. I don’t know why you don’t think that’s a good thing…”).
Finally, on Saturday 30th May at 8pm there’s what’s billed as “a night of fun and frolics” at the Wanstead Tap (a craft beer shop in Forest Gate which doubles – or quadruples – as café, bar and performance space). The main attraction is John Ellis (the former Peter Hammill, Stranglers and Peter Gabriel guitarist whom ‘Misfit City’ last encountered via his ‘Sly Guitar‘ album). John’s solo gigs are rare, but he’s something of a master of post-punk art-rock guitar, so well worth seeing. Also on the bill are “post-punk electronic balladeers” Cult With No Name and Kamelia Ivanova (who’s either highly mysterious or needs to fix his or her Facebook page). See below for the flyer.
Various Artists: ‘Leader Of The Starry Skies – A Tribute To Tim Smith – Songbook 1’
Listen. They’re singing at his bedside.
In June 2008, en route back from a My Bloody Valentine concert, the world fell in for Tim Smith. A sudden heart attack (and in immediate cruel succession, a pair of devastating strokes) failed to kill him, but only just. Now he’s in long-term recuperation, condemned to that long wait in the margins. With his damaged body now his enemy, his brain’s left to flick over the days until something – anything – gets better and his luck turns. This is a sad story. Even sadder, given that many similar stories must shuffle out of hospitals every month.
There’s an extra layer of pain here in that for over four decades Tim Smith was a dedicated, compulsive fount and facilitator of music. As the singer, composer and main player of some of the most eerily intense, unique and cryptic songs ever recorded, he sat at an unmapped musical crossroads where apparently incompatible musics met. In turn, his songs were hymnal, punky and part-classical; shot through with crashing guitars, keyboard trills and mediaeval reeds; festooned with swings and changes. They were sometimes choral, or full of martial pomp or playground squabble. They were sometimes ghostly. They were a damned ecstatic racket, or a parched and meditative whisper. With what’s now become a brutal irony they also frequently fluttered, quizzically, across the distinctions of life and death; sometimes seeing little separation between the two states, sometimes hovering somewhere in between; sometimes seeing as much meaning in the wingbeat of a stray insect as in the scrambling for human significance.
Tim’s rich and puzzled perspective on life and the weave of the world travelled out to a fervent cult following via a sprouting tree of projects – the quaking mind-mash rock of Cardiacs; the psychedelic folk of Sea Nymphs, the tumbledown explorations of Oceanland World or Spratleys Japs. In addition (and belying the manic, infantile mood-swings of his onstage persona) the man was generous of himself. Via sound production, video art or simple encouragement, his influence and peculiar energy spread from feisty indie rock bands right across to New Music performers and bedroom-studio zealots. It spread far wider than his nominally marginal status would suggest. For all of this, Smith never received adequate reward or overground recognition for these years of effort – another sting in the situation (though, having always been a stubborn goat, he’s probably dismissed it).
Yet if he’s been slender of pocket, he’s proved to be rich in love. His praises may not have been sung by the loudest of voices, but they are sung by a scrappy and vigorous mongrel choir, scattered around the houses. The Smith influence haunts cramped edit suites and backwater studios. It lingers in the scuffed shells of old ballrooms, and in the intimate acoustics of a handful of cramped Wren churches in London: it’s soaked into the battered ash-and-beer-stained sound desks of rock pubs. Most particularly, it lives in the memories of thirty years of backroom gigs where people baffled at, laughed at and finally yelled along with the giddy psychological pantomime of a Cardiacs concert; and where they lost their self-consciousness and finally stumbled away with their armour discarded.
And now, all silenced?
No.
In many cases, these same people who yelled and sang from the audience (or, onstage, from beside Tim) would go on to form bands which demonstrated that three chords and a crude truth was far too blunt a brush with which to paint a picture of the world. All of this outgoing wave of energy comes rolling back with a vengeance on ‘Leader Of The Starry Skies’. Put together by Bic Hayes (best known for galactic guitar in Levitation and Dark Star, but in his time a Cardiac) and Jo Spratley (Tim’s former foil in Spratleys Japs), it’s an album of Smith cover versions in which every penny of profit going back to raise money for Tim’s care. In effect, it’s swept up many of those people who sang along with Tim Smith over the years (all grown up now, and numbering characters as diverse as The Magic Numbers, Julianne Regan and Max Tundra) and brought them back for visiting hours.
And they sang outside his window, and they sang in the corridors; and from the ponds and rivers, from the windows of tower blocks and from lonely cottages…
Given Tim Smith’s own eclecticism, it’s hardly surprising that ‘Leader Of The Starry Skies’ is one of the most diverse tribute albums imaginable. Despite the familial feel, the musical treatments on here vary enormously. Lost broadcasts, festooned in unsettling noise, rub up against stately electric folk. Psychedelic grunge balances out colourful playschool techno. Unaccompanied Early Music recreations drift one way, while centipedal Rock-in-Opposition shapes charge off in another. None of this would work if Tim’s songs – seemingly so resistant – didn’t readily adapt. Anyone can get around the shape of a Neil Young song, a Paul McCartney song or even a Morrissey song for a tribute: but these rampant compositions with their peculiar twists are of a different, wilder order. However, every contributor has managed to embrace not only the unorthodox Smith way with a Jacob’s Ladder tumble of chords but also his dense lyrical babble, which grafts nonsense onto insight and the ancient onto the baby-raw. Everyone involved has striven to gently (or vigorously) tease the songs out of cult corner and bring them to light.
Take, for instance, what The Magic Numbers have done with A Little Man and a House. This anguished Cardiacs ode to the 9-to-5 misfit has never seemed quite so universal, slowly pulling out from one man’s chafing frustration for a panoramic view of a worldful of human cogs. (“And there’s voices inside me, they’re screaming and telling me ‘that’s the way we all go.’ / There’s thousands of people just like me all over, but that’s the way we all go.”) The original’s pained South London squawk and huffing machinery noises are replaced by Romeo Stodart’s soft American lilt, while massed weeping clouds of piano and drums summon up an exhausted twilight in the Monday suburbs. Likewise, when Steven Wilson (stepping out of Porcupine Tree for a moment) sighs his way through a marvelously intuitive and wounded solo version of Stoneage Dinosaurs, he takes Tim’s hazy memories of childhood fairgrounds and incipient loss and makes them glisten like rain on a car mirror while sounding like the saddest thing in the world. Even with Wilson’s own formidable reputation behind him, this is immediately one of the finest things he’s ever done – an eerie ripple through innocence; a sudden, stricken look of grief flitting for a moment across a child’s face.
Three of the covers have added poignancy from being connected to ends, to new beginnings, or to particular paybacks. When Oceansize abruptly split up at the peak of their powers, their final word as a band turned out to be Fear (this album’s loving cover of an obscure Spratleys Japs track). Rather than their usual muscular and careening psychedelic brain-metal, they render this song as a soft-hued exit, a fuzzed-up tangle of fairy lights which wanders hopefully down pathways as they gently peter out. Conversely, glammy Britpop anti-heroes Ultrasound set an acrimonious decade-old split behind them and reformed especially to record for this project. Their whirling clockwork version of the Cardiacs anthem Big Ship is all boxed-in and wide-eyed. It bobs along like a toy theatre while the band fire off first pain (“the tool, the tool, forever falling down / planes against the grain of the wood / for the box, for my soul / and my aching heart,”) and ultimately burst into the kind of incoherent, hymnal inclusiveness which was always a Cardiacs trademark – “All of the noise / takes me to the outside where there’s all /creations, joining in / celebrating happiness and joy; /all around the world, / on land and in the sea.” It seems to have worked for them – they sound truly renewed.
Some of Tim Smith’s songs have a strangely mediaeval tone or texture to them, and some have a twist of eerie folk music. These attract different interpretations. Foundling was once a particularly bereft and fragile Cardiacs moment: an orphaned, seasick love-song trawled up onto the beach. Accompanied by elegant touches of piano and guitar, the genteel art-rockers Stars in Battledress transform it into a heartfelt, change-ringing English bell-round. North Sea Radio Orchestra travel even further down this particular line – their bright tinkling chamber music sweeps up the hammering rock parade of March and turns it into a sprightly, blossoming cortege. Packing the tune with bells, bassoon and string quartet, they dab it with minimalism and a flourishing Purcell verve: Sharron Fortnam’s frank and childlike soprano clambers over the darker lyrics and spins them round the maypole.
Deeper into folk, Katherine Blake (of Mediaeval Baebes) and Julianne Regan (the shape-shifting frontwoman for All About Eve and Mice) each take an eerie acoustic Sea Nymphs fragment and rework it on their own. Julianne’s version of the children’s dam-building song Shaping the River adds rattling tambourine, drowsy slide guitar and a warm murmur of voice: it’s as if the faded lines of the song had washed up like a dead leaf at her feet, ready to be reconstructed at folk club. (“Pile some sticks and pile some mud and some sand. / Leave the ends wide, / three against the side, / plug the heart of flow.”) Katherine’s narcotic a-cappella version of Up in Annie’s Room might have shown up at the same concert. A world away from the pealing cathedral organ of the original, it slips away into empty space in between its gusts of eerie deadened harmonizing and Tim’s sleepy, suggestive cats-cradle of words (“Fleets catch your hair on fire. / The fleet’s all lit up – flags, flame on fire…”)
Max Tundra, in contrast, sounds very much alive and fizzing. His pranktronica version of the brutal Will Bleed Amen re-invents it as delightfully warm and loopy Zappa-tinted techno. Its abrupt air-pocketed melody opens out like a sped-up clown car: when a convoluted cone of lyrics punches his voice up and sticks it helpless to the ceiling, former Monsooon Bassoon-er Sarah Measures is on hand to provide a cool clear vocal balance, as well as to build a little open cage of woodwind at the heart of the rush. It’s a terrific reinvention, but perhaps not the album’s oddest turnaround. That would be courtesy of Rose Kemp and Rarg – one a striving indie-rock singer and blood-heir to the Steeleye Span legacy, the other the laptop-abusing keyboard player with Smokehand. Rose is a Cardiacs interpreter with previous form: this time she’s fronting a forbidding glitch-electronica version of Wind And Rains Is Cold with all of the cute reggae bounce and innocence pummeled out of it. While Rarg flattens and moves the scenery around in baleful planes, Rose delivers the nursery-rhyme lyric with a mixture of English folk stridency and icy Germanic hauteur, uncorking its elliptical menace as she does – “Now you remember, children, how blessed are the pure in heart – / want me to take ’em up and wash ’em good?… / Hide your hair, it’s waving all lazy and soft, / like meadow grass under the flood.”
While most of the musicians on ‘Leader…’ could cite Tim Smith as an influence, Andy Partridge was a influence on Tim himself, way back in his XTC days. Three-and-a-half decades later he repays the appreciation by guesting on the dusky autumnal spin which The Milk & Honey Band‘s Robert White gives to a Sea Nymphs song, Lilly White’s Party. Redolent with regret (for more innocent times, before a fall), it covers its eyes and turns away from the shadows falling across the hillside. Partridge’s deep backing vocals add an extra thrum of sympathy: “Let’s not reinvent the wheel, let’s not open that can of worms, / Let’s not say what we did, and play by ear. / Back to square one…”
The backbone of ‘Leader Of The Starry Skies’ however, comes from the contributions of former Cardiacs players reconnecting with the family songbook. As with any family over time, they’re scattered. One of the earliest members, Pete Tagg, now drums for The Trudy, who take the bucketing psychedelic charge of Day is Gone and offer a more down-to-earth spin on it for the indie disco, keeping that heady chromatic slide of chorus but adding a suspiciously blues-rock guitar solo and Melissa Jo Heathcote’s honeyed vocals. One of the more recent Cardiacs additions, Kavus Torabi, brings his band Knifeworld to the party. He hauls a particularly involved and proggy Cardiacs epic – The Stench of Honey – back through a 1970s Henry Cow filter of humpbacked rhythms, woodwind honks, baby squeaks and rattletrap percussion. Double-strength art rock, it could have been a precious step too far. Instead, it’s triumphant, its skeletal circular chamber music salad-tossed by stomping bursts and twitches of joy.
Onetime Cardiacs keyboard player William D. Drake offers a gentler, kinder tribute, taking the shanty-rhythms of Savour and spinning them out into soft Edwardiana with harmonium, ukulele and a gently bobbing piano finale. Drake’s predecessor Mark Cawthra brings an eerie sense of pain to his own cover version: back in the earliest days, he was Tim Smith’s main foil, playing lively keyboards and drums as well as sharing the bumper-car vocals. Now he sounds like the head mourner, taking on the heavy tread of Let Alone My Plastic Doll and sousing it with Vanilla Fudge-slow organ, doubled guitar solos and sigh-to-wail vocals. The twitchy, baby-logic lyrics are slowly overwhelmed by an undercurrent of grief, but the kind of grief that can only come from a older, wiser man.
Under his Mikrokosmos alias, Bic Hayes takes on Cardiacs’ biggest near-hit (Is This The Life) and subjects it to startling psychedelic noise-storms and industrial drum twirling. In the process, he shakes out and enhances its original pathos. Blown splay-limbed into a corner by a tornado of white noise, plug-in spatters and buzzing malfunctions, Bic’s voice is nasal, lost and forlorn. It sings of split and rootless identity against a wall of forbidding harmonium: “Looking so hard for a cause, and it don’t care what it is; / and never really ever seeing eye to eye / though it doesn’t really mind. / Perhaps that’s why / it never really saw.” Although Jo Spratley coos reassurance under ululations of alto feedback, Bic still ends up cowering like a damaged crane-fly under showers of distorted harpsichords and Gothic synths. Bewitchingly damaged.
The last word goes to The Scaramanga Six, the swaggering Yorkshire theatricalists who were the main beneficiaries of Smith production work before the accident. By their usual meaty standards, the Six’s take on The Alphabet Business Concern (Cardiacs’ tongue-in-cheek corporate anthem, packed to the gunwales with flowery salutes) initially seems cowed, as if flattened by dismay and sympathy at Tim’s misfortune. But it doesn’t end there. Starting tremulous and hushed, with nothing but the embers of faith to keep it up, it builds gradually from tentative acoustic guitars and hiding vocals up through a gradual build of electric instruments, feeding in and gaining strength: “and now the night of weeping shall be / the morn of song…” Over the course of the anthem the Six go from crumpled to straightened to proud cheat-beating life. By the end, the recording can hardly contain their vigorous Peter Hammill bellows, as they sweep out in a grand procession with rolling guitars, pianos and extended Cardiacs choirs. It’s a stirring, defiant finale to an album that’s done everything it could to blow away the ghosts of helplessness and to charge up not just an armful of Smith songs but, in its way, a vivid sense of Smith. He might have taken a bad, bad fall; but the humming and rustling vitality of the music, the way that it’s become a spray of vivid lively tendrils reaching far and wide, is an enormous reassurance.
Listen. He’s alive. He’s alive.
Various Artists: ‘Leader Of The Starry Skies – A Tribute To Tim Smith – Songbook 1’ Believer’s Roast, BR003 (5060243820372)
CD/vinyl/download album
Released: 13th December 2010
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Misfit City 