Quick news on a couple of London dance events next week…
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“We have been sent synchronistic signs from another metaphysical plane. We are the glitch-seekers exposing the Holes In The Holoverse.”
Multimedia dance moves (swirling around various esoteric, psychedelic and club culture tropes) come from Lost Souls Of Saturn, playing at Village Underground. “Lost Souls Of Saturn is a multidisciplinary live project, primarily piloted by Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa, with opaque additional participants congregating to combine music, imagery, and storytelling into an inextricably linked whole, all wrapped up in a philosophy of their own making. Attempting something creatively that’s above-and-beyond, LSOS explore new ways to open doors of perception and challenge the reality vs. simulation paradigm whilst capturing the spirit of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Philip K. Dick, Sun Ra and The KLF within their music, live experiences, and forthcoming films… which is basically catnip to us.
“Having released their debut EP ‘Holes In The Holoverse’ on 1st March (with a debut album to follow in June), on Thursday 18th April the full LSOS live experience will be unveiled with DJ support from Seth Troxler, Phil Moffa and others – make sure you’re here for it.”
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Walthamstow avant clubnight More News From Nowhere, generally known for avant-tronica, texture music and various other delightful musical miscegenations, have recently returned “after a year-long hiatus… back with a new venture and spreading further afield – showcasing the best in London’s underground and experimental music with a series of occasional one-off events around the capital. The show takes place at the newly re-opened Brew Club in Hackney Central – a fantastic new warehouse venue a stone’s throw from their original location in Clapton, which played host to the raucous ‘Fresh Hell’ series of New Years parties which hosted, among others, Sly and the Family Drone, and UKAEA.”
I missed the first one, but the coming week’s event is part of MNFN’s sister event Total Cult, which “showcases some of the most interesting homegrown dance music London has to offer, with a headline set from 2018 Daphne Oram award winner Loraine James.
“James combines influences from the world of electronic music such as Aoki Takamasa, Telefon Tel Aviv and Toe, with an eclecticism borne of growing up in London in the 1990s and 2000s. Garage, rave, math-rock and chart pop references are combined into a pulsating, and intricate collage which is as joyful as it is thought-provoking. After releasing her debut album ‘Detail’ with DIY collective Fu Inle records in 2018, she returned with the four-track EP ‘Button Mashing’ on New York Haunted in 2019 – a more personal record which speaks to her experience as a queer black woman, while also developing her sound (which combines glitch, footwork, ambient and bouncing techno) even further.
“In support will be dub-techno veteran Matt Spendlove (a.k.a. Spatial), with his first London performance of a new audiovisual piece for 4.1 surround, originally performed at Grey Area in San Francisco. Spatial’s work pushes the dynamics of sound system culture incorporating low frequency vibration, hacked code, and optisonic experiments. An unconventional artist in the turbulent realm of bass music, he combines a preoccupation with emergent behaviour, rule based repetition and chaotic systems with an ability to shape dubbed out, cracked and reductive sonics into audible geometric form. Through textured intricate production, Spatial’s releases and live sets bring corporeal presence carved out with a minimalist’s scalpel.
“Also playing is Mike Neaves, whose intricate, hypnotic techno (showcased on 2019 release ‘Black Sauce’) combines delicate, hypnotic instrumentation with visceral, body-first bangers. ‘The Ransom Note‘ tagged him as an artist “mix(ing) drum machines, pianos, Wurlitzers and field recordings to create something forward-thinking. Imagine CJ Bolland reworking Pierre Schaffer’s musique concrete compositions, but with an ear on the dancefloor, and you’re on the right tracks”…”
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Dates:
Lost Souls Of Saturn Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ, England
Thursday 18th April 2019, 8.00pm – information here and here
Total Cult presents:
Loraine James + Spatial + Mike Neaves Brew Club, Hackney Walk, Arches 7-8 Bohemia Place, Hackney, London, E8 1DU, England
Friday 19th April 2019, 8.00pm – information here and here
More News From Nowhere presents:
MNFN Good Friday All-Dayer (featuring Kodian Trio + Warren Schoenbright + V Ä L V E + Marlo Eggplant + Minus Pilots + Ow Te + Blick | Trio + Grave Threat + Red Team) New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Friday 30th March 2018, 3.00pm – information here and here
Walthamstow experimental evening More News From Nowhere hops the Lea again for another stint at the New River Studios in Harringay: this time an all-dayer.
A number of improvising threesomes are on hand. Kodian Trio (tagged as “meticulously disjointed free improv” by ‘Cyberinsekt’) unites saxophonist and Raw Tonk label head Colin Webster (who played at MNFN’s February event), Belgian dronetronic guitarist Dirk Serries (better known as Vidna Obmana or Fear Falls Burning) and Shatner’s Bassoon drummer Andrew Lisle. A more directly ambient-jazz approach is offered by Blick | Trio (comprising Blowpipe/Gyratory System veteran Robin Blick on assorted wind and brass, Andrew Moran on drums and James Weaver on bass, synth and programming). It’s a bit of a competition, but probably the least formal of the lot are Stoke-on-Trent-based “math-jazz wizards”Ow Te (featuring members of Stokie punks Amateur Assassins and Bong Idle, and citing a love of Karate, Codeine and The For Carnation, among others).
Another trio is being brought in by reedswoman and experimentalist Chlöe Herington: her increasingly industrious V Ä L V E project continues to build on its beginnings (synaesthesic graphic scores created and realised by Chlöe, bound in with specific memories and events) while simultaneously evolving into a R.I.O./Raincoats-friendly three-woman exploration vehicle via reeds, bass, concert harp and voices. Further female input into the all-dayer is provided by Marlo Eggplant (the Corpus Callosum label head, onetime Olympia punk and lead figure in the “Ladyz In Noyz” initiative), whose own dense drone improvisations are built with processed autoharp and contact mics.
As regards duos, there’s an appearance from Minus Pilots (percussionist Matt Pittori and bassist Adam Barringer, who “weave sparse textures, crumbling atmospheres and fractured drones with currents of gentle crackle”) and from slithering, thickety London drums-and-electronics pairing Warren Schoenbright (Daniel McClennan and Matthew Pastkewicz) who craft lengthy, ambitious and luminous experiments from poised near-silence to hammering viciousness.
A collaboration between two other projects (the “hard Brexit/funeral electronics” of Ashcircle and the effects-chain noise of MNFN’s own Tim Cowlishaw as Violence) was scheduled to lead to Cruciform Passage Grave: something slanting towards the New Weird Britain end of sinister occult soundcraft. In the event, this needed more rehearsal than time allowed; so instead, Tim’s bringing in Cowboy Flying Saucer drummer Dave Bamford to open up the evening with a reunion of their “kraut-psych-improv-noise” duo Red Team (while Ashcircle’s Tom Macarte and Ciaran Mackle reformat themselves as the siren-in-a-washing-machine screech of Grave Threat).
More News From Nowhere presents:
MNFN #15: Matt Cargill + Sam Edwards + Ashcircle The Victoria, 186 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 4QH, England
Wednesday 29th March 2017, 8.00pm – information here, here and here
From MNFN: “We’re really excited to announce that we’re putting out our first tape – a super-limited run of thirty hand-decorated cassettes featuring Matt Cargill (Sly & The Family Drone)’s blinding solo set from of tape processing and live loops (featuring a surprise banger) from the Rose and Crown last year. On the flip side is multi-instrumental improviser Sam Edwards‘s amazing performance from the William Morris Gallery at Stowfest last year – it’s a nice contrast to Matt’s with contemplative, harmonic synth drones and skittering, pulsing percussion. You’ll be able to pick one up on the night for a fiver (or a tenner in total on the door for a ticket/tape bundle), or subsequently on Bandcamp.
“Both of them will be playing live on the night with support from Ashcircle (aka MNFN’s own Ciaran Mackle, collaborating with South Circular’s Tom Macarte).”
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In early April, down at the Horse Hospital, there’s a two-day celebration of the life and work of the bolshy, challenging art-polymath Tony Conrad, marking the first anniversary of his death. Crash course here:
“Tony Conrad was one of the great American artists of our time, yet to the world at large he remains criminally underappreciated. Since the early 1960s, Conrad’s films and compositions have been the stuff of legend for artists and musicians everywhere. His vast, inter-disciplinary repertoire has single-handedly created and influenced major film and compositional movements. He performed in and recorded the soundtrack to Jack Smith’s legendary ‘Flaming Creatures’; he turned the paradigms of cinema upside down with ‘The Flicker’, a film composed of only black-and-white frames; his development and practice of just intonation and minimalism through his work with Stockhausen and La Monte Young still has the music establishment scratching their heads; his pivotal role in the formation of The Velvet Underground has directly or indirectly influenced everyone who has picked up a guitar since; as an early adopter of activist public access television he democratized the emerging medium of portable video. In his later years he continued to perform and make work that pushed the boundaries of reason for which he has finally begun to receive worldwide attention.”
The celebration consists of one Conrad-inspired gig, and one documentary screening:
Muckle Mouth presents
Neil Campbell & Michael Flower The Horse HospitalThe Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Wednesday 5th April 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
“Neil has been active on the lunatic fringe of underground music since at least 1979. In that time, as well as his work with Vibracathedral Orchestra he has performed and recorded widely as solo performer, ad hoc collaborator and core member of groups such as A Band and Astral Social Club. His collaborations are myriad, including work with Richard Youngs, Campbell Kneale, High Wolf, Grumbling Fur, John Clyde-Evans, Filthy Turd, Oren Ambarchi, Ashtray Navigations, Spider Stacy, David Larcher, Blood Stereo, John Olson and Matthew Bower. Writers have described him variously as “a one-man subculture”, a “grandfather figure” with “a hallucinogenically inclined pallet.” Neil shares his birthday with Grace Jones, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Joey Ramone – look out!
“Michael operates in a similar musical territory which focuses on the droning element of strings, guitars, wind instruments and handheld percussion. Occasional vocal mutterings may remind people of traditional Indian ragas, while other parts of his work hints more at the academic influence of, say, a Henry Flynt or Tony Conrad. Mick has also played with everyone from Chris Corsano (as Flower-Corsano Duo), Pete Nolan’s Magik Markers side project Spectre Folk, MV&EE w/The Golden Road and Sunburned Hand Of The Man.”
‘Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present’ – full screening The Horse HospitalThe Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Thursday 6th April 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here
“Director Tyler Hubby (editor of ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’ and ‘The Great Invisible’) makes his directorial debut with ‘Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present‘, a non-fiction film examining the pioneering life and works of artist, musician, and educator, Tony Conrad….
“Utilizing intimate footage of Conrad and his collaborators shot by the director over the last twenty-two years, as well as Tony’s own archive of recordings and films, Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present mirrors Conrad’s own playfully radical approach to art making. The non-linear structure allows Conrad to wildly free associate his streams of consciousness, revealing an honest and humane way of navigating a remarkable, creative life.
“Chronicling Conrad’s life, work and pervasive influence over the years and through multiple mediums, this highly anticipated film is on tour of some the world’s most esteemed museums, galleries and film festivals – the Viennale, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Big Sky Film Festival, The Tate Modern, Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art, Brighton CineCity Film Festival, HOME Manchester, CCA Glasgow, among more than fifty others.”
“Starring: Tony Conrad, Tony Oursler, Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs, Marie Losier, John Cale, Moby, Branden Joseph, Jeff Hunt, Charlemagne Palestine, Jay Sanders, Jennifer Walshe.”
Sundry experimental music shows in London during mid-March:
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Pefkin + Bell Lungs + Russell Walker + David CW Briggs New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Sunday 12th March 2017, 7.00pm – information
Words from the organiser:
“Scotland comes to New River and it’s going to be a spooky psychedelic affair.
“Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, one half of Glaswegian vintage synth duo Electroscope and ex-proprietor of the Boa Melody Bar mail order. She has been recording as Pefkin since 1999 and released albums on Morc, Wild Silence, Reverb Worship, Pseudoarcana etc. More recently she has been recording with the Kitchen Cynics‘ Alan Davidson, creating psych-folk hymnals inspired by a mutual love of folk songs and nature, and has been recording with United Bible Studies. On her own Gayle creates a dreamy rural psychedelia from looped vocals, guitar, analogue synth and violin. She is currently recording an album inspired by the recumbent stone circles of Aberdeenshire.
“Bell Lungs (vocals/electric guitar/electric violin) is from Scotland and has previously performed in the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, in curious locations such as an abandoned grain silo, a hydro-electric power station inside a mountain, the top deck of a double-decker bus and amidst the eerie, moving sculptures of Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre. She will be playing an immersive continuously-morphing set that will carry you from the Western Isles of Scotland to the rainforest and outer space.
“Support from Russell Walker of Pheromoans fame and Bomber Jackets infamy. He has also written a book. The book is great, very funny. I saw Russell play at Tatty Seaside Towns‘ most recent event in the famed ‘Naughty Corner’. Me and Barney Wakefield were trying to have a serious conversation but it was IMPOSSIBLE because of this set. He was reading some very funny, misanthropic, storioes/poetry about some ‘people’ either real or unreal. Scathing and mundane in equal measure which is the sign of a good cook. Great with kids. (His son is the spitting image of my nephew… I didn’t want to mention it at the time, ‘cuz that’s probably a strange thing for stranger to bring up on first meeting).
“David CW Briggs will open the proceedings! Dave used to play in Unlabel band Cove and was playing solo under the moniker Hills Have Riffs for a while. He drinks a lot of tea and is great with kids.”
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Ellis Gardiner presents:
openJack – Yoni Silver + Eden Grey + |V|I|O|L|E|N|C|E| + guests New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Wednesday 15th March 2017, 7.30pm – information
“Yoni Silver is a multi-instrumentalist (specialising in bass clarinet and electronics), composer, improvisor and performer. He plays in a number of projects, including the Hyperion Ensemble. This is Yoni’s first openJack appearance, but he’s back a few weeks later with his trio, Denis D’or.
“Eden Grey‘s music is an experimental mix influenced by electro, dub, d’n’b, techno, drone, ambient and hip-hop. Her music took a major shift towards the collage-based methods of the historical avant-garde while earning her Masters’ degree in music technology and after she began building her modular synthesizer in 2013. Eden also hosts the CV FREQS meetups for the London Modular Synthesis Group.
Chlöe Herington presents:
Magnus Loom + Zoey Gunshot + Flying Saucer The Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, London, WC1H 8JF, England
Thursday 16th March 2017, 7.00pm – information
This is another of the leftfield gigs organised by reedswoman/noise-fiddler and curator Chlöe Herington (Chrome Hoof, Knifeworld, V A L V E, Half The Sky), and here’s what she has to say about it:
“Magnus Loom wildly turns and tumbles through a cornucopia of brightly burning pitches and rhythms, howling and whispering, in his own world of avant-punk cabaret. According to his Facebook page, “Magnus Loom makes a noise, and lives in hope that one day others might enjoy it as much as he does.” It’s really good noise. I reckon you’ll enjoy his noise.
“The two support acts are both performing debut gigs. Zoey Gunshot is political noises and anti-folk; Flying Saucer is experimental noises, a bit Jonathan Richmond tinged with Bob Drake.“
From where I’m standing, it’s looking like a mostly noisy and left-field week. Here’s the first bit of it…
More News From Nowhere presents:
More News from Nowhere #4 – Simon Bookish + Sharon Gal + Deathcount In Silicon Valley The Victoria, 186 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 4QH, England
Wednesday 24th February 2016, 8.00pm – more information
From the organizers:
“More News From Nowhere – Walthamstow’s regular night of new and interesting music – returns with a double headline performance.
Experimental vocalist Sharon Gal is a widely respected figure on London’s improvised and avant-garde music scene – she’s worked with Steve Noble, David Toop. Steve Beresford and Thurston Moore amongst others, and is a founder of Resonance FM.
Simon Bookish, the alter-ego of performer/composer Leo Chadburn, fuses his classical training and experimental leanings with electronic instrumentation and a pronounced pop sensibility. He’ll be performing his latest release – ‘Red And Blue’, released this January (“a collision between digitally-processed brass and distorted synthesizer drones; atonal electronic pop and drifting field recordings; spoken word and unearthly vocalisations” inspired by the ‘special relationship’ between the US and UK governments during the Cold War) as well as a new version of his ‘Trainwreck’ project from 2007.
Support comes from Walthamstow’s own Deathcount In Silicon Valley aka MNFN friend and co-conspirator Andi Nixon, who makes “ominous frazzled sci-fi scores” and will be performing his tribute to the film ‘Scanners’.”
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For the following three nights, there are three Baba Yaga’s Hut events in a row. The first one’s for lovers of scuzzed-up song…
Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Joe Gideon + John J. Presley
Corsica Studios, 5 Elephant Lane, London, SE17 1LB, England,
Thursday 25 February 2016, 8.00pm – more information
This week sees the return to live action of Joe Gideon, who first came to attention in 2002 as leader of Americana-tinged post-rockers Bikini Atoll (which also featured his sister Viva on keyboards). Joe and Viva went on to form the critically acclaimed brother/sister avant-blues duo Joe Gideon & The Shark, in which Joe clanked trash guitar and drawled absurd, witty tales in Beatnik slang while Viva drummed, mixed in keyboards and beats, and layered a spooky background of looped vocals.
Two acclaimed albums later – 2009’s ‘Harum Scarum’ and 2013’s ‘Freakish’ – Joe and Viva have parted ways. While Viva busies herself with different musical work (including an appearance with Loose Meat for ‘Inside The Sun‘) and acting in video games (having won an award for her work in reconstructive crime tale ‘Her Story‘ last year), Joe’s continued his own work with a solo album – ‘Vice Versa’, recorded and released in 2015 with an all-star squad of Jim Sclavunos (Bad Seeds) on drums, Ed Harcourt on keyboards and Duke Garwood on horns. Jim’s stayed in the live band: following a London debut back in November and a guest spot at a Lee Hazelwood tribute, they’re back for a second full live show at Corsica Studios.
Support comes from John J. Presley, the Walsall-born songwriter and guitar who feeds his own take on freeform storytelling blues through a mess of noisy downtuned guitar, alternate tunings and drones (backed up with drums, Rhodes piano and harmonium.)
The second show features more outright noisiness; it’s a more typically Baba Yaga-esque soup of psychedelic noise, sludge and hints of prog…
With a new record poised for launch at the start of March, long-established Liverpudlian psykraut space-rockers Mugstar are headlining the show. Their dour-dark mantra instrumentals wed lugubrious organ drones and Morricone/Labradford-ian guitar parts with guttering smears of noise, while occasional distant snatches of speech or song flicker into hearing like tiny, frayed, long-ago rags impaled on endless wire fences.
Originally, Steve Gullick’s flinty moodists Tenebrous Liar were scheduled as the first support band. Their decision to split up last November has cleared the way for some gig-sullying from Henge. These London psych-sludgers belch out hanging, polluted, noise clouds through which singer Loz Chalk delivers his scratched, timorous, and fearful yells, his ankles enmired in dragging pace and guitar fry.
For my money, the most interesting band of the night is the one that’s opening the show. Elusive Liverpudlians Cavalier Song are Henge friends and tourmates (having played with them in Nottingham and London earlier in this month), have occasionally rolled out tracks on Soundcloud over the past five years, and released their debut album ‘Blezards’ only last month, delivering “soundtracks to earth, man and machine, the outdoors, the indoors and constant shift.” Sitting on a cusp between Swans and King Crimson (both of whom they claim are influences), they sound like a prog band in which the brain hemispheres are falling away from each other. Some pieces clench and raise the tension in their dissonances, their rapid rhythmic and dynamic transformations, while others engage in tearing, shifting Frippish drones. 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. Sod it. Make sure you turn up early. This is how it’s meant to be done.
The third and last of the Baba Yaga gigs dips us into dub, dub poetry and eerie electronica stews…
Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Roger Robinson & disrupt + School House Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Saturday 27th February 2016, 8.00pm – more information
In recent years, Hackney-born/Trinidad-raised poet and vocalist Roger Robinson has probably been best known for his work as one-third of King Midas Sound (in which he works with eclectic dub/jazzcore/dancehall/grime producer Kevin Martin and Japanese artist/singer Kiki Hitomi). However, he’s led a peripatetic solo career since the early ‘90s: starting out as a spoken-word performer, he’s written and performed a number of acclaimed one-man shows, toured the world on behalf of the British Council and released books of poetry. Since 2004 there have been solo musical releases and mixtapes including the spoken-folk album ‘Illclectica’ and collaborations with or reworkings of music by Oneohtrix Point Never, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski and Alva Noto.
Roger’s most recent work (set in 2011 at the time of the London riots, and partially achieved by lone walks around his sometime base of Brixton, improvising dub poetry into a dictaphone) is last year’s ‘Dis Side Ah Town’ album – a detailed work of study and reportage on the impact, distortions and erasures of change and gentrification, with Brixton observed both in its own right and as a signifier for similar distortions in London and the rest of the world (read Neil Kulkarni’s recent ‘Quietus’ interview with Roger for more background on this). Production work on the album was handled by disrupt – a.k.a. Jan Gleichmar, an East German computer-music whizz who grew up on the Soviet side of the Berlin Wall and progressed through assorted home-made dance stylings (variously Detroit techno, digital hardcore, gabba and electronica) before settling on digital dub as his expression of choice. Co-boss of the Leipzig-based dub/reggae netlabel Jahtari for over a decade, Jan started off on a cheap laptop but currently achieves his sound with homemade electronic gear, being interested in the textural and process effects of antique microchips and manual voltage control. Tonight, he and Roger will be performing together in London for the first time, delivering live material from or informed by ‘Dis Side Ah Town’ and bringing Roger’s observations and warnings back home.
The support act is School House, a solo project by Manchester composer Peter James Taylor (once the baritone guitar player for Bletchley noise-rock…Action Beat, now known for his distortion-rich, Branca-esque massed-guitar works exploring custom tunings, extended techniques and graphic notation). School House provides Peter with opportunities to explore other areas. Although the project’s first release, ‘Soft Focus’, explored a spooky, textured minimalism using customised Yuri Landman guitars, last year’s ‘Herd’ album moved into electronic instrumentation, concentrating on glitch-rhythms and software drones while keeping some of the layers of guitar texture for what Peter describes as “roiling, gaseous and slow-moving nocturnal dread.” It’s this latter side of School House which will be on display tonight, accompanied by suitable visuals.
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To wind up this post, here’s news from east London on “an eclectic night of math rock, experimental rock and progressive rock”…
Most of the text below is by the promoter or other people, so links are provided where they’re due:
Theo is Sam Knight, a one-man-band from London who puts on an astonishing performance. His Soundcloud bio says “taut, chugging guitar loops layer up with frenetic tapping patterns that interweave in spiralling complexity before near sub-atomically precise, powerhouse drumming clatters and builds each song into juggernaut of riffs and rhythms. To achieve something like this recorded is one thing, but to see Theo perform live is quite another as each song blurs into the next and the dazzling guitar and drum acrobatics leave jaws sagging on the faces of all who bear witness to the talent on offer.”
Battleship Grey are an experimental rock four-piece from London who combine highly melodic, powerful vocal melodies with innovative, forward-thinking rhythms and sounds. Drama-rock threesome Ex Libras(who’ve shared a bill with them) have commented “they toy with experimental ideas in a way that is the opposite of pretentious because they always seem to be about the groove or the way the music pulsates. It is music after all right? It isn’t an equation, it isn’t a painting, yet they are math and art-rock and dance-y all at the same time. Head. Explode.”
Olympians describe themselves as “a band that lives half in Norwich and half in London. We have two guitars, a bass, some drums, a glockenspiel, two keyboards and a trumpet. The next instrument we plan to buy is a vibraphone. We hope you like our songs.” A few years ago, multimedia obscure-music platform ‘Rightchordmusic‘ said “their sound is hard to pin down, with math rock roots, fused with barber-shop ‘Spring Offensive’ esque harmonies and plenty of instrumentation and experimentation. It’s a soaring piece of harmonious yet downbeat melancholic pop that gets better with ever listen. We’re smitten.”
Sounds and visions provided above. Draw your own conclusions.
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More shortly – Eddie Parker, Project Instrumental and an even more typically loose than usual Daylight Music show…
A busy week: I should just remind you that tickets might still be available for the second of this month’s two London Annette Peacock gigs at Cafe Oto (the one on Monday) and that the combined Vennart/Knifeworld/Cleft tour is sweeping across Britain during the week (leaving a lot of fans of math/psych/twitch-rock bobbing happily in its wake), but there’s more coming too.
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At the start of the week, Ismena Collective present a multi-media piece. More information below, at length (cobbled together from assorted press releases, bits of essays, etc…)
Ismena Collective presents ‘Anaïs Nin: The Lie Box’ (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Monday 23rd November 2015, 7:30 pm) – £12.00 – information & tickets
Formed in 2008 by Mayda Narvey and Sara Cluderay, Ismena Collective is an eclectic group of musicians, singers, composers, writers and actors inspired by multi-disciplinary collaborations and the synthesis of music and words. Their unusual and innovative projects have explored subjects as diverse as the 19th century German Romantics and the 1942 New York arts commune to which Benjamin Britten and WH Auden belonged. Performing in venues across London and beyond, they have delighted audiences with their genre-defying presentations and their insightful approach to the manner in which literature can elucidate music and music can illuminate literature.
Collaborating with dramaturg and director Danielle Allen, Ismena has created a new and unusual theatrical collage of music and words exploring the world of diarist and novelist Anaïs Nin, whose complex, chaotic but compelling inner and outer lives involved many transgressions and secret affairs. Her father (a Cuban-Spanish composer and pianist) was her first love and it was his abandonment of the family and her subsequent complicated relationship with him that engendered both her passion for music and her passion for lies. In her journals, she documented her own fragmentation into Self and Other, and thinly disguised herself in her fiction as a spectrum of different characters. Married to two husbands at the same time, she negotiated her “bicoastal trapeze” between her West coast and East coast relationships by keeping track of her lies in a “Lie Box”.
Nin wrote constantly about lies, confessing “when I talk, I feel that I lie imperceptibly in order to cover myself. I put on costumes. I hate to expose myself truly… The truth is I only face human beings in fragments… I always find the mensonge vital necessary — the one lie which separates me from each person… I have a sense of all that I leave out – the lacunae, especially the dreams, the hallucinations. Also the lies are left out, a desperate necessity to embellish. So I do not write them down. The journal is therefore a lie.” In fact, she reworked and rewrote her diaries constantly until they became well-honed works of fiction.
In the words of her composer brother, Joaquin Nin-Culmell (from his introduction to her childhood diaries, ‘Linotte’): “Later she reinterpreted many events, many situations, many impressions. Linotte may seem to contradict these later interpretations, but I do not feel that this is so. After all, reality is many layered. We peel off one layer only to discover that the process must be repeated. It is evident from the very beginning that Anais’s heart went out to the intuitive, to the poetic, to the magic of subjectivity.”
It is fascinating to reflect upon this uneasy relationship between truth and fiction, between reality and lies. It is equally fascinating to ponder Nin’s relationship to music which seemed to embody for her both her sensuality and her creativity. In her own words, “jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body’s breath and the strings’ wails and moans are echoes of the body’s music. It is the body’s vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations. When he was five years old, my brother Joaquin, a spirited and restless child no one could tame, would spend hours absolutely still on the staircase of our home in Brussels, listening to the musicians rehearsing. That was the sign of his vocation. We both listened. I can still hear the lines of Bach which were most often repeated. Joaquin became a musician and in me music was channeled into writing.”
With score and presentation inspired by the soundworld of the surreal art films Nin performed in during the 1940s (and reprising some of the fascinating selections of Nin’s writing and her father and brother’s compositions that Ismena performed in May of this year) ‘The Lie Box’ explores Nin’s life, the musical influences that threaded through it, and the uneasy ground between truth and fiction. As Joaquin Nin-Culmell put it: “After all, reality is many layered. We peel off one layer only to discover that the process must be repeated. It is evident from the very beginning that Anaïs’ heart went out to the intuitive, to the poetic, to the magic of subjectivity.”
For ‘The Lie Box’, Ismena-founding cellist, composer and writer Mayda Narvey performs with actress Sally Mortemore, Danish soprano Lene Sahlholdt and pianist Horacio López Redondo. All four are also working in conjunction with music by electronic composer Daniel Thomas Freeman (whose evocative score to the British indie film ‘Catch Me Daddy’ was heard in cinemas across the country earlier this year).
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Over the next two days, there are two Baba Yaga’s Hut gigs in rapid succession. At time of posting, both of these look set to sell out soon, so move fast if you’re interested. The first of them, on the Tuesday, sees the London debut of two interesting American bands.
From Athens in Georgia, four-piece Maserati style themselves as being “sleek, sexy and sophisticated as the legendary Italian sports car” and meticulously tailor various musical loves together – English psychedelic artiness (Pink Floyd, Eno), its parallel German precision (Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel) and post-psych, post-punk arena-rock swagger (U2, ZZ Top). The cocky, stiffly-shaking result is not a million miles away from what post-rock pomp-boys Trans-Am might have produced if they’d been a little less clenched. Maserati’s Moroder-ified robo-psych seems to be aimed at inducing rock club crowds into unselfconscious flappy dancing: hitting an unexpected triggerpoint at which art-rock meets headbanging meets drone grooves, and where maths twitches the pelvis. You’d expect them to play to an audience of silent, ecstatic mannequins.
Support comes from bicoastal U.S duo Insect Ark. Finding their own space between doom metal crush, ritual experimental loops, wall-of-noise grandeur and the kind of spacious, springy and hypnotic percussion that brings to mind both Can and Steve Jansen, Dana Schechter (bass and lap steel guitar, synths) and Ashley Spungin (drums and electronics) create engrossing and ancient-sounding all-instrumental soundscapes filled with the baleful, the mournful, the grinding and the flat-out apocalyptically lovely.
On the Wednesday, it’s the turn of some London-based crews. Well, not entirely London-based…
The Comet Is Coming + Snapped Ankles + Flamingods (Baba Yaga’s Hut @ The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Shacklewell, London, E8 2EB, UK, Wednesday 25th November 2015, 8.00pm) – £7.00 – information – tickets
Formed in mid-2014, The Comet Is Coming are what happened when Betamax Killer and Danalogue The Conqueror (the duo behind synthpunktronica band Soccer96 joined forces with London reeds polymath Shabaka Hutchings. Like a punkier, power-trio take on Jaga Jazzist, Betamax and Danalogue generate a wall of stiff, arresting dayglo nu jazz grooves on drumkit and analogue synths, on which Shabaka – like a grand graffiti professor – bursts and tags figures from his battery of saxophones.
The results blur Soccer96’s omnivorous dance music tastes and conversational punky immediacy with Shabaka’s deep and broad engagement with jazz, African, free and classical forms; all tempered with a shared shamanic, psychedelic approach to jam and composition and with a dash of pulpy science fiction mysticism. These ideas spill all over their debut EP, released late last week; from the lead track Neon Baby (in which a Moroder/motorik pulse is set against freewheeling chiptune, phased tom passes and ballsy Afrobeat sax riffs) to the pop-up computerised jump jive of Do The Milky Way or the larger-form compositional tapestry of Star Exploding In Slow Motion.
More punktronica comes from “pagan funk, art wave dropouts” support band Snapped Ankles. Performing in huge and shaggy walking-hedge costumes (based on the legends of the Woodwose, or ancient European wild-man-of-the-woods), the trio thump out gnarly drum-filled collaboration grooves on customised instruments and describe themselves as an “agricultural Kraftwerk”.
Also on the bill are Flamingods, Britain-and-Bahrain-based worldbeat globalists who form their music from instinctive, unschooled plucking and hammering on assorted regional instruments collected from around the world. Both their intuitive adapt-and-make-do approach and their displaced, separated way of life (the seed of the project came from when group member Kamal Rasool was pushed out of Britain by visa restrictions, and group members variously live in, work in or trace roots to London, Dubai and Jamaica) echo the varied plights, both good and bad, of latterday migrants and world-trotters. For those interested in more of what this might cast up, Flamingods are also heading an evening of global exotica and cross-cultural DJing at their own event, Eastern Mystics, on the Friday, at Café 1001 in Brick Lane – details here.
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For the second week in a row, I get to welcome a new London music night. More News From Nowhere are launching a series of “experimental/noise/generally interesting left-field music” up in Walthamstow/ At their debut night, they’re promising “a double-headline masterclass in brass-and-electronics brilliance.”
Gyratory System + Hirvikolari + Fragments Of Space Hex + Luke Turner of The Quietus DJ set (More News From Nowhere@ The Victoria, 188 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 4QH, UK, Wednesday 25th November 2015, 8.00pm) £4.40-£6.00 – information – tickets
Back in the earlier days of ‘Misfit City’ (late ‘90s, pre-blog) I covered a jazztronica band called Blowpipe, of which the core members were father-and-son horn team Robin and Andrew Blick and which mutated through various lineups, bouncing off various passing and evolving dance forms while threading their own impressive knowledge and multi-instrumental adaptability through them. Blowpipe may have petered out, but only in order to make a further mutation into Gyratory System(the Blicks plus James Weaver), who make a slightly different noise, steering away from subverting club beats in favour of making a “brass-inflected kosmiche racket” heavy on Andrew Blick’s multi-levelled synth programming but maintaining Blowpipe’s cunning way with a breezy hook.
Hirvikolari, a splinter group from psychedelic rock band Teeth Of The Sea, are effects-ridden trumpeter Sam Barton and
modular synth interferer Mike Bourne. While Teeth Of The Sea tend to play great stomping horror-slabs of musical architecture (a flying saucer spitting out rows and rows of heavily-armed tower blocks) Hirvikolari prefer to take the slow path and evolve themselves a great bolus of stewed electronic burble and resonating brass tracks. Ennio Morricone’s been cited as a comparison, as has the long tradition of counter-culture festival techno: both comparisons have some grounding.
Also playing are Fragments Of Space Hex, synth experimentalists given to hypnotic jams: behind the mocking and probably bogus Crosby Stills Nash & Young obsessions they’re Andrew Nixon (who usually plays as drone-kosmiche scenarist Deathcount In Silicone Valley) and Ciaran Mackle (of dub-techno project Ashplant). To keep things ticking along, half of the Hamburger Ladies (i.e, Luke Turner of ‘The Quietus’) will be playing a DJ set.
There’ll be another More News From Nowhere night in late December – hopefully the second of many. I’ll preview that in due course.
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Two gigs follow featuring ‘Misfit City’ favourites The Fierce & The Dead who should need no introduction to regular readers – for those of you fresh into these pages, you can familiarise yourself with their friendly, gnarled prog-punk-highlife-whatever hybrid via the clip above.
Crippled Black Phoenix + The Fierce & The Dead (Fire & Air @ The Dome, 2A Dartmouth Park Hill, Tufnell Park, London, N19 5QQ, UK, Thursday 26th November 2015, 7.00pm) – £15.00 – information – tickets
Following a tumultous couple of years in which they were hobbled by a bitter internal feud, Crippled Black Phoenix have regrouped, reshuffled and reasserted. Now they’re on tour again, in all of their usual looming, black-clouded, apprehensive glory. As ever, their mixture of sombre folk balladry, political resistance and seething post-rock volume is realised by an expanded octet of massed guitars and keyboards, with strings, saws and anything else which fits plugged in where necessary.
With The Fierce And The Dead in the middle of the gig sandwich, the third band on the bill is Masakichi, another of the musical brainchildren of guitarist/producer Reuben Gotto (of prog band Twin Zero and various business with Foals, Sack Trick, The Maccabees and others). Masakichi dwell on the careful cusp between the springy rhythms shared by bass player Hattie Williams (formerly of post-progressive rockers Telegraphs) and drummer Ben Calvert and the more Gothic, textural tendencies of Reuben and singer Hannah Cartwright (the latter of whom also holds down a gig with folktronicists Snow Ghosts). The result is a winning mixture of sinewy motions, carefully blurred riffs and atmospheres, and (for once) icicle-clear vocals that don’t hide in a lazy haze of recycled shoegazery. See for yourselves:
The Fierce & The Dead get to headline on Friday at another gig, way up the road in Nottingham. I’d not heard of former warehouse venue J.T. Soars, but it sounds as if we have another art-rock outpost in the Midlands, which is cause for celebration.
The Fierce & The Dead + Mannheim + Memory Of Elephants (bUTTONpUSHER & Mountains Of Records @ J.T. Soars, Aberdeen Street, Nottingham, NG3 2DG, UK, Friday 27th November 2015, 8.00pm) – £3.00-£4.00 – information – tickets on the door
Of the other two bands on the bill, Memory Of Elephants are an “eclectic noise” trio from Bristol whose grinding metallic base-sound is belied, stretched and exploded by the quickfire changes of time, pattern, mood and arrangement which they put it through: they’re a restless, conspiratorial mask-dance of a band. Mannheim are a heavy quartet from the Netherlands: saxophone, guitar, bass guitar and drums applied to a stern headcrushing math-and-post-rock structure. Up in the metal end of post-rock, they’re overpowering but somehow vulnerable – like a dogged, accelerating stilt-charge with a snarling dark-jazz edge.
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Three more varied London gigs on Friday:
Jimmy Cannon: The Best Of British Song (Songs From The Cellar @ Zelas Cafe, 216 Archway Road, London, N6 5AX, UK, Friday 27th November 2015, time) – no ticket price available yet – information – tickets on the door
In the first performance of a new show, Jimmy Cannon explores the repertoire of the ‘Great British Songbook’: the songs associated with British composers and singers from the golden age of songwriting. As he comments, “the much-loved American Songbook reflects Hollywood’s heyday, from the first ‘talkies’ in the 1920s right up to the demise of the legendary Hollywood orchestras in the late 1960s – but many of these great songs aren’t quite as American as you might think!” For this show, Jimmy will be accompanied by pianist Matthew Regan (from The John Wilson Orchestra).
Jimmy is a current British easy-listening star – a versatile singer and saxophonist who has performed with Tom Jones and in West End shows (The Commitments, The Rat Pack, Elvis The Ultimate Performance) and in the classic-swing/soul/pop band Jazz Cannons. However, he’s also a song historian, an arranger and an adapter, bringing his curiosity, knowledge and skills to bear on a wide variety of songs. Drawing on his Cornish roots, Jimmy also sings in the English Heritage band Burton Bradstock – a collaboration with pianist and arranger Dorian Ford which nurtures and revives a repertoire of English folk songs (predominantly mid-to-late 19th century work songs) in brand new settings performed by a band of British jazz luminaries including Iain Ballamy, Julian Ferraretto, Riaan Vosloo, Tim Giles and Pete Berryman.
Damn Vandals + Kloq + The Bay + The Many Few + Santonica (Bugbear @ The Dublin Castle, 94 Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7AN, UK, Friday 27th November, 8.00pm) – £5.00-£7.00 – information – tickets
The endearing Many Few (reviewed at an early stage back here) are playing at a “nights-are-drawing-in, gearing-up-for-Christmas, never-mind-the-November-dismals-come-and-do-the-Exquisite-Shark gig”. I’ve got to admit that the charm of their own gently skewed, probably-less-shambling-than-it-was Anglo-pop would be the main draw for me as regards this particular show, but here’s the breakdown of the bill from Bugbear:
Damn Vandals – four ex-graffiti artists who fell foul of the law and had to re-decorate a youth club apart of their community service: whilst there, they discovered a drum-kit and some guitars. Musically it’s twangsome garage swamp blues rock n roll, Alabama 3 via The Bad Seeds with a Mark Lanegan aspect to the vocals: not what you would expect from a bunch of graffiti artists, but fab all the same. Kloq– rock meets hiphop but way better than most in this genre: a very American rappy vocal that echoes Run DMC and other old school exponents whilst the music is a soulful funky shunky soul rock groove metal with a genuine drrrty vibe..N*E*R*D at their heaviest meets AC/DC via Metallica and some timely squelchy ‘dub step’ bits. Neat. The Bay – a high-octane mix of White Stripes, Band of Skulls and the punkier side of Nirvana. The Many Few – ‘The Many Few are armchair surrealisms, bizarre and wonderful journeys that touch on the absurdities and question marks of small town life, from which you never quite return’…yes indeedy, add a little classic ’80s era Peelite je ne sais qoui referencing awkward squad art pop happenings like Yeah Yeah Noh and Young Marble Giants and plenty of biting wit. Santonica – rousing indie rock with an electro interface, great delivery and actual tunes! Sounds like Editors via The Killers, by way of Bastille.
Magic Brother call up the spirits of the ancient masters of music and brew them into something just a little bit different. Think of a modern day Traffic or prime Jefferson Airplane with a twist. A band influenced by the sixties playing music very much for the future. Manja & The Maytrons are a three-piece beat combo originating from London, Hastings and Dresden, and their latest EP “Unexpected Side Effects” has been spun by Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music.
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As usual, I’m ending up with another Daylight Music gig:
Daylight Music 208 – Soviet Sounds & Cold War Cabaret: The Real Tuesday Weld + Polina Proutskova & IZBA Voices + Spaceship Mark (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, UK, Saturday 81st November 2015, 12.00pm–2.00pm) – free (£3.50 donation suggested) – information
Say a hearty “Здравствуйте” (“Hello!”) to The Real Tuesday Weld this week whose pioneered style combines old jazz sounds and electronics in something they’ve called “Antique Beat” which has influenced the current movement of electro-swing producers. This Russian-themed Daylight Music event will feature a selection of songs by film composer Mikael Tariverdiev (who’s been described as “the Russian Nina Rota”) in addition to a set of their own cinematic swing sounds. (There’s a little more on the project here.) They will be joined by a supporting selection of Russian and Russian-inspired musicians.
Polina Proutskova has been performing and researching Russian village singing traditions for over 15 years. This year IZBA Voices – a vocal ensemble led by Polina – has been formed of participants and folklore enthusiasts from the IZBA Club (a Russian cultural organization in London) and will be bringing their sounds, spirit and repertoire to Daylight Music.
For a final and inverted Soviet-era touch, the concert’s “in between” sounds will feature work-in-progress by Spaceship Mark (former Minions member Mark S. Williamson, who also works as Microscope Wilson and Crock Oss).
This particular multimedia project, ‘A Hole In The Ground’ features field recordings of sounds taken from the derelict sites of a number of the 1563 Royal Observer Corps bunkers, built as part of the UK’s Cold War nuclear response plans. There’s more information on the project here, and a preview below.
Moscow-based pianist/composer/multi-instrumentalist Dmitry Evgrafov (whose music blends intimate piano parts with delicately evocative string arrangements) was also scheduled to play at the concert, but for reasons outside of his control is no longer able to make it to the UK. Hopefully we will be able to reschedule an appearance for him at Daylight during 2016. Meanwhile, here’s a taster.