Misfit City

From where I’m standing, it’s looking like a mostly noisy and left-field week. Here’s the first bit of it…

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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. Here’s notes on the first two, with the first one being something 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…

Baba Yaga’s Hut presents:
Mugstar + Henge + Cavalier Song
Electrowerkz @ Islington Metal Works, 5 Torrens Street, Islington, London, EC1V 1NQ, England
Friday 26th February 2016, 8.00pm – more information

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.

More on the third Baba Yaga night, and a little more, shortly…

Tags: Andi Nixon, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Cavalier Song, Deathcount In Silicon Valley, Electrowerkz (event), Henge, Jim Sclavunos, Joe Gideon, John J. Presley, Leo Chadburn, London (England), More News From Nowhere (event), Mugstar, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sharon Gal, Simon Bookish, Steve Gullick, Tenebrous Liar