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December 2019 – Arch Garrison and Emily Jones on tour together around England – folk, psychedelia and other familial connections featuring The Steven Morricone Tyranny, We Are Muffy, Libbertine Vale, Little Robots, Berlin Horse, Chlöe Herington, Ian A. Anderson and Pete Aves (11th to 17th December); plus a Jones and Garrison contribution to Spratleys Japs’ Winter Wonderland show in Brighton with Panixphere, Matthew Cutts and Hot Sauce Pony (21st December)

Craig Fortnam’s most recent surfacing (as North Sea Radio Orchestra) was a Robert Wyatt tribute event back in June, accompanied by assorted European Canterbury-scene aficionados and former Henry Cow-ers. Increasingly, that Wyatt connection’s cleaving more and more closely to his own work. It’s not that he absolutely takes on board that Wyatt whimsicality, the covers work or the delightful melting song-rambles: it’s more something about the lack of pomp, in particular in the tone of voice. Like Wyatt, Craig sings in an unaffected, unperformed manner – a delicate cupboard-voice, a step up from speech or chat, allowing itself to be frail but unsilenced: a singing style that’s like a confidence quietly shared in the back booth of a pub.

While this has been evident in Craig’s vocal moments with NSRO, it’s always been more present in his smaller-scale singer-songwriter work as Arch Garrison, in which he’s less sheltered behind chamber woodwinds and strings. Originally a trio including bass, subsequently trimmed to the two-man interplay between Craig and the delightfully welling, psychedelic-chapel keyboard work of James Larcombe, the upcoming English tour sees AG as Craig on his own – just his voice and artful nylon-string guitar, fingerpicked in a way which suggests a British answer to John Fahey’s American Primitive style while drawing from classical, flamenco, African stylings and intents. New songs are promised, adding to Craig’s existing repertoire of soft pushings and reflections on family, geological time, bereavement, and contact with one’s surroundings.

Craig’s tourmate is Emily Jones – a singer-songwriter who’s a little further underground, with only a single 2014 debut album to her name compared to Craig’s batch of projects (although she’s also made marks via a split woodland-folkadelic album with The Rowan Amber Mill). That said, she’s been making progressively bigger splashes this year; emerging from cottages in Cornwall and Salisbury for a growing number of concert appearances. This tour will be her biggest effort to date – six shows up and down the country bringing her feathery songs of hauntings and lovings which blur in and out of folk mythology and present day magic, accessible and human with a gentle wash of acid dreaming and folk baroque.

Along the way, there’ll be various other meetings. In Hexham, it’s just the two of them playing; but in Weston-super-Mare, they’re part of the Winter Warmer event at the Sunfold Hotel, the Weston-super-Mare guest house which is emerging as an occasional local stronghold for music (thanks to the affable-evil presence of Steven Morricone, the more gonzoid of the two Scaramanga Six frontmen, as co-owner). Not only is Steven playing host, he’ll also be spending time onstage maltreating the piano with his Steven Morricone Tyranny solo project, indulging self-confessed “straw man with a fist of ham” tendencies with a clutch of assorted Scaramanga songs (presumably his own more psychobilly offerings, though he’s recently been straying into more obscure and theatrical art-rock set pieces with assorted flavours of Faust, theatre and radio art), plus some new solo stuff and the odd cover.

Also playing are Brum-born but Cornwall-settled duo We Are Muffy, in which The Lilac Time’s Nick Duffy and Ambassadors Of Sorrow leader/frontwoman Angeline Morrison conjure up “poetic narratives of remembered and imagined pasts, combining vocal harmonies with unexpected instrumentation” – somewhere at the country-folk end of the Witchseason sound, with American banjos and fingerpicked guitar dissolving into more British concerns and storytelling styles.

In Hereford, Craig and Emily are playing with spooky sometime Omnia Opera/7shades singer Libbertine Vale, who sets aside the psych/prog electric trappings of her bandwork in favour of macabre a capella renditions of melancholic folk songs about oppression, cruelty and general perishing, albeit with “seeds of renewal”. You don’t get to see much of Libbertine outside of Birmingham and Herefordshire (where she contributes to the county’s growing reputation for psychedelic folk and sundry hauntological business by co-running Unorthodox Paradox), and she spends much of her time on subversive textile art rather than on music, so it’s best to catch her when you can. Especially since her solo act has, so far, resisted the pull of the internet – so no videos or soundclips here.

The Garrison/Jones booking at a Buds and Spawn night in Sheffield is supported by guitar-and-banjo-toting female harmony trio Little Robots. Though the latter have been going for about a decade, they’re busy women with a host of other activities and a commitment to the moment, so actual recordings are intermittent. You can scoop up what there is from their Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages: doses of impeccable Appalachian/Yorkshire fusion.

In Oxford, the support act is “singer-songwriter-psychedelicatessen” Adam S. Leslie, as his Berlin Horse project, wrapping spiky, silly absurdities, Ray Davies echoes and moments of quirky beauty in unalloyed Pepper-flavoured lushness (like an old Puffin Books joke anthology with extra swirl, wit and Lowrey organ colour)

London is the only date for which Arch Garrison will be a twosome, with James Larcombe returning to the fold. They’ll also be meeting up with Chlöe Herington. Temporarily disengaged from pumping regal bassoons and saxophones into the psychedelia of Knifeworld and Hirvikolari, from celebrating Lindsay Cooper in the Songbook project and from the three-headed avant-femme art-music project that her onetime solo outlet VALVE has become, she’s promised to occupy herself in “rebirthing some very old stuff (the vaults have been unsealed!) and reworking some more recent.”

There are no questions about the folky character of the Salisbury gig – it’s being played with Emily and Craig sandwiched between Ian A. Anderson and Pete Aves. Ian’s credentials are impeccable – a veteran British folkster of five decades standing, continuously active since the mid-60s, he’s led the field in acoustic country blues, had a long spell as head of The Village Thing acid folk label, has been a concert promoter and a critic (in particular, as the leading light of ‘Folk Roots’ magazine. Now in his seventies, for the last couple of years he’s been writing and playing solo again. This year’s ‘Onwards’ album compiles, in his own words “fifty years of deathfolk, blues, psych-fi, trad and world twang.”

As for guitarist/banjoist Pete, he too has been returning to solo work after the drying-up of work as regards his role in the currently slumbering High Llamas (and, more seriously, the uprootings and traumas of a divorce and spell of homelessness). Inspired by his recent travails, he’s now turning out simple songs of reproach, road life, and thumbnail character sketches, mostly in an Anglo-American country-folk vein.

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Both Craig and Emily will also be heading down to Brighton on 21st December to play “little guest sets” at the Winter Wonderland concert headed up by Spratleys Japs, featuring yet another joyfully incestuous array of the British psychedelic stew that bubbles around Cardiacs (see passim…).

The event’s already entirely sold out; but assuming that you can manage to prise a ticket from the cold, dead hand of a Cardiacs fan or an eager Brighton psychonaut, what you’ll be seeing apart from Emily and Craig includes the “lo-fi arty ska” of Hot Sauce Pony, a raucous Brixton four-piece with a lineup including the Gilchrist husband-and-wife couple (singer Caroline and bass player Steve, the latter better known as Stephen Evens, as the “Stuffy” in stuffy/the fuses, as a one-tour Cardiac or as the kit-thrasher behind Graham Coxon) and onetime Rat The Magnificent guitarist Ross Davies. They’ve been touting around a Steve Albini-recorded debut album this year. North-western art pop duo Army Of Moths may have had to cancel, but another longterm Cardiacs affiliate, Matthew Cutts, will be spouting some kind of poetry.

Probably the big draw this year, though, is the resurrected Panixphere – the elusive Cardiacs-family thrash-rock band who’ve surfaced occasionally over the past four decades to play a frustrating brief handful of blasting sets and then immediately dipped back underground. Inasmuch as they’ve had much consistent about them, it’s been Bic Hayes – the intermittently active, sputtering jewel of a guitarist/singer whose juddery, effects-laden playing (like Keith Levene invading a fiery Hawkwind lineup) has graced recordings and concerts by Cardiacs, ZOFFF, Levitation and Dark Star, Pet Shop Boys, Heidi Berry and Julianne Regan’s short-lived Mice. In Panixphere, though, he’s off the leash and free from the big concept or the psychedelic ritual. Historically, it’s been a band in which to drink too much beer and play music much too fast, in snotty punk-metal tradition (albeit while test-bedding or providing an alternative vehicle for assorted Cardiacs and Levitation material, as well as crunchy cover versions of songs by XTC, Nomeansno and, if suitably distracted, early Genesis).

Now, however, Panixphere seem to be taking things a bit more seriously, announcing their return with a swishy verbal fanfare and too many capital letters. “A Three Piece. Three timelines. Formed in 1984. Re-imagined in 1992. Returning in 2020. Experience The Past, Present and Future, simultaneously, in PANIXPHERE – appearing LIVE for the first time in 25 years – preview titles from the FORTHCOMING album ‘Cryptic’, currently under construction and to be unveiled in 2020. This Show Is A Beginning.”

While the lineup has previously included (at various points), Craig Fortnam, Cardiacs capo Tim Smith, Bic’s Levitation/Dark Star bandmate David Francolini and mysterious south London 1980s festi-freaks “Little Hicky” and “Flat Hat’, the revived version is a power trio including singing/shouting bassist Jon Poole (back for a second stint) and Cardiacs drummer Bob Leith. Here’s a clip of an earlier Panixphere, complete with Tim Smith, banging about onstage in 1993. Whether they’ll be any less unruly a quarter-century further on – well, it’s possible but not guaranteed. All this talk of an album, though, suggests that for the first time ever they’re thinking beyond the present, or following through on plans which have previously stalled in a shower of rude fat sparks.

As for the headliners, read here for a more in-depth account of Spratleys Japs’ original life as a Tim Smith/Jo Spratley parallel-to-Cardiacs weird-pop studio project, half-hearted disguised as bizarre pond-scummed Anglo-American swamp rock; and of their recent Tim-less/Tim-blessed live revival, with Jo now fronting a selection of Brighton psychedelic luminaries. Still reanimating the original Smith material, they’re now broadening out with their own new work as well as a couple of unheard Smith treasures.

With Jo now handling all of the vocals – and with Tim’s fuming-friendly/baleful-brotherly presence restricted to an affectionate memory – the band have indubitably lost some of their original charismatic quirk and danger. In return, though, they’ve gained a greater access to the beauty behind the music’s peculiar angles and gurgles, which refracted elements of glam, imaginary folk, tastes of post-Bostonian punkaroo (think Pixies, Throwing Muses, Breeders) and celestial Mellotron-classical through a skewed Smithian prism… and which still does, dropping it all off into a murky forest pool surrounded by tea-lights, traces of spontaneous ritual and the odd piece of trash. They’re a warmer proposition than they were before – now unrestricted by that Cardiacs tradition of onstage aggro and awkwardness, Jo’s now playing things more as a dancing priestess than the punkette muse she might have been before, blossoming even as the music does.

If all of this still seems compelling despite your lack of a ticket, word’s coming through that the whole shebang’s going to be live-streamed worldwide, in order to raise further funds for Tim Smith’s palliative care. More details on the event page, with the streaming link here.

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Dates:
Arch Garrison/Emily Jones tour:

’Winter Warmer’ @ The Sunfold Hotel, 39 Beach Road, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, BS23 1BG, England – Wednesday 11th December 2019, 7.30pm (with We Are Muffy + The Steven Morricone Tyranny) – information here
’Weirdshire’ @ The Babar Café, 31 Union Street, Hereford, Herefordshire, HR1 2BT, England – Thursday 12th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Libbertine Vale) – information here
The Vault, 22-24 Hallgate, Hexham, Northumbria, NE46 1XD, England – Friday 13th December 2019, 8.00 pm – information here, here and here
’Buds & Spawn’ @ The Dorothy Pax, Arch 17, Wharf Street, Victoria Quays, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S2 5SY, England – Saturday 14th December 2019, 8.00pm (with Little Robots) – information here and here
The Library, 182 Cowley Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX4 1UE, England – Sunday 15th December 2019, 8.00pm (with Berlin Horse) – information here and here
The Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, London, WC1H 8JF, England – Monday 16th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Chlöe Herington) – information here
The Winchester Gate, 113-117 Rampart Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 1JA, England- Tuesday 17th December 2019, 7.30pm (with Ian A. Anderson + Pete Aves) – information here and here

Wonderful Winter Wonderland Special 2019 (featuring Spratleys Japs, Panixphere + Hot Sauce Pony + Army Of Moths + Arch Garrison + Emily Jones + Matthew Cutts)
The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton, BN1 4FQ, England
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 5.30pm – information here and here

Tags: Arch Garrison, Army Of Moths, Brighton (England), Chloe Herington, Emily Jones, Hereford (England), Hexham (England), Hot Sauce Pony, Ian A. Anderson, Jo Spratley, Libbertine Vale, Little Robots, London (England), Matthew Cutts, Oxford (England), Panixphere, Pete Aves, Rat the Magnificent, Salisbury (England), Sheffield (England), the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Lilac Time, The Scaramanga Six, The Steven Morricone Tyranny, Tim Smith's Spratleys Rats (Spratleys Japs), We Are Muffy, Weston-super-Mare (England).

October/November 2018 – upcoming English rock’n’rap gigs – Collapsed Lung, The Scaramanga Six and Sleepy People (variously 12th, 13th and 19th October; 2nd, 3rd, 16th, 17th and 30th November)

9 Oct

I wasn’t sure whether to title this post “’90s survivors” – partially since it’s such a cliché (bringing up images of my era’s university bands entertaining my greying classmates at nostalgia festivals around the country) but also because it suggests musicians who’ve grimly plugged away for ages trying to tongue up the last scraps of glitter from a twenty-five-year-old hit. A survivor doesn’t have to be someone who never left their band; nor does it have to mean a band which just never went away. In many respects, a survivor is someone – or some group – that simply didn’t let their experiences burn them beyond all recognition and all enthusiasm.

Essex rap-rockers Collapsed Lung fit the latter definition nicely. Formed in 1992, they had a busy four-year lifespan, but chose to wind down in 1996 barely six months after cracking the Top 20 with ‘Eat My Goal’ (record label skulduggery having painted them into a corner). In their case, the derailment seems to have been more of a choice to get back control over their own lives and satisfaction rather than allow themselves to have become a novelty act at the mercy of scamsters. Artistically, it’s done them a world of good. Having first tested the reunion waters in 2010, they made a fuller comeback in 2014 and have been resurfacing periodically ever since, playing alongside contemporaries and sympathetic spirits like Senser and Jesus Jones.

This year, however, they’ve finally put together a new Bandcamp-hosted album, ‘Zero Hours Band‘, full of “rhymes about what’s “real” to us. These days – middle aged ennui, social mores, feeling utterly out of touch.” They might be selling themselves as a grizzled old joke, but the record is anything but: it’s a clangorous and argumentative pub lock-in of a record, full of waspish English sarcasm, hilarious bellyaching and bang-on-the-nose caricature. By opting out, they stayed themselves: they’re a band devoid of posturing, and a far more honest representation of their wave of British hip hop than they would be had they either allowed themselves to be imprisoned by their hit or ricocheted back off it into faux-American rap swagger.

Their upcoming scatter of British dates from Huddersfield and London to Brighton and Minehead should see Collapsed Lung at their vinegary, middle-aged best: old dogs that can still raise a bark. They’ll probably play the hit, but why not – the brassy ring of newer songs like New Song Old Band and Golf People demonstrate that they’ve earned the right to do what they want. For what it;’s worth, the Minehead performance is part of the Shiiine Weekender, with dozens of other ‘90s or ‘90s-friendly acts: hopefully some of their attitude will rub off on their billmates.

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Crossing paths with Collapsed Lung for their Huddersfield date are The Scaramanga Six. It’s tempting to call them ‘90s survivors too; but it wouldn’t be accurate since (a) the Scaramangas only just scraped into the tail end of the ‘90s with their live-in-a-room debut ‘The Liar, The Bitch And Her Wardrobe’ and (b) they’ve never really gone away since, since they’re not so much survivor/revivers as cottage-industry thrivers. Plugging away across nine vibrant self-propelled, self-released studio albums, they’ve been a model of wilful yet canny independence over the course of two decades, with nary a sniff of major-label involvement.

The beefy panache of the Scaramangas’ records belies their cottage-industry model. There’s nothing lo-fi about their arresting, dramatic rock songs which take an American Gothic template and apply it to the simmering discontent of small town England, in the tones of West Country hoodlums with an armoury of loud guitar, snorting brass, Wasp synthesizers and orchestral percussion (and plenty of self-aggrandising, self-aware melodrama on the part of the band).

It’s easy to see the band’s current release – the double album ‘Chronica’ – as a Brexit metaphor. Billed as “an abstract story roughly hewn from a concept of a dystopian island society”, it takes their existing preoccupation with glowering, violent, self-destructive buffoonery and expands it out into a map of “a place where everything has fallen into ruin, yet people still seem to have the same preoccupation with the trivial crap they had before. The population trudge through a chaotic existence on top of each other with absolutely no hope of a better life. Society is reduced to its base behaviour yet people still crave superficial fixes. The human condition carries on regardless. There is no outcome, no lessons to be learned. Familiar?” Yet there’s also a hefty dose of the band’s manic theatre involved; digressions into sinister homebound nightmares (like David Lynch hitting the Yorkshire rentals circuit) suggesting that – no matter what the direct politics – the Scaramangas will always be most interested in the monstrosities which we bud by ourselves, within ourselves.

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The Scaramangas are playing three more dates during November, including a couple of one-band-only gigs in Bristol and London. Joining them for a second Huddersfield appearance in mid-November, however, are Northumbrian oddballs Sleepy People. They’re another band that you might judiciously paste into that ‘90s survivors category, were it not for the fact that they’re more like some kind of Wacky Races jalopy; one of the ones fuelled by wayward stubbornness and which keeps full-tilt crashing in flames, makes surprisingly effective repairs from unlikely bolt-ons, disappears from the race for ages and then comes roaring back onto the course from an unexpected angle while acting as if it had never left.

The full Sleepies history’s a frustratingly complicated revolving door of a story, with plenty of caught feet and snagged umbrellas. Suffice it to say that, after a lengthy time-out, they returned last year complete with original frontman Tiny Wood: he who also sings righteous freak-flaggery with Ultrasound. Here, he intones songwriter Paul Hope’s tales of sinister orphanages, malls and retirement homes, of wild bestial metamorphoses or hatching turtles, of tumbling sympathetic oddballs caught between their own peculiar daydreams and the unforgiving summary of newspaper pages. As a band Sleepy People are a conscious continuation of a particular kind of serious English whimsy – the kind that simmers and zigzags through Cardiacs, Syd Barrett, Gong, early Genesis.

In the Sleepies’ case, though, the flutes, arcane keyboard twinkles and glissando guitars are beefed up by proletarian disco drive, bullish Jam post-punk and a pumping sugar-rush art-punk ferocity more akin to Bis than any psych or prog act. Sometime frustratingly slow on promotion, there’s not enough of them on the internet, but here’s a slightly scrappy look at them rehearsing one of their off-the-wall epics last year (plus a mix-and-match rehearsal/performance shot at another one from their appearance at WWW2 in Preston earlier this year).

The latest tag they’re toting for themselves is “psychedelic elevator music made by hyperintelligent pre-schoolers”, which captures some of their wide-eyed enthusiasm but not so much of their oblique serious intent. There’s a diffuse swirl of rebellion running through their music – often touching on people’s freedom to think and express in their own way, and on the misunderstandings, deliberate dismissal and persecutions they’re met with. Another common theme is that of rippling the skin of reality to apprehend the mysterious processes running underneath. For those of us who’ve been following them since the ’90s, it would be good to see them recording a new album which somehow pulled all of their wandering strands together, magicalising their North-Eastern home in all of its history and its metaphysical implications. Til then, though, it’s certainly nice to have them back.

As well as the show with The Scaramanga Six, Sleepy People have their own show in their Newcastle hometown at the end of November. Next February, they’ll also be playing support in Sheffield with another of their hero bands and influences, The Monochrome Set, but more on that nearer to the time.

All dates for everyone:

Collapsed Lung + The Scaramanga Six + tbc – The Parish, 28 Kirkgate, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD1 1QQ, England, Friday 12th October 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Collapsed Lung – The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England, Saturday 13th Oct 2018, 7.30pm – information here
Collapsed Lung – The Prince Albert, 48 Trafalgar Street, Brighton, BN1 4ED, England, Friday 19th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
The Scaramanga Six – Rough Trade, Nelson Street, Bristol, BS1 2QD, England, Friday 2nd November 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
The Scaramanga Six – Wonderbar, 877 High Road, Leytonstone, London, E11 1HR, England, Saturday 3rd November 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Collapsed Lung – Shiiine On Weekender @ Butlin’s – Minehead, Warren Road, Minehead, Somerset, TA24 5SH, England, Friday 16th November 2018 (with too many others to list) – information here
The Scaramanga Six + Sleepy People – Small Seeds, 120 New Street, Castlegate, Huddersfield, HD1 2UD, West Yorkshire, England, Saturday 17th November 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Sleepy People – The Cumberland Arms, James Place Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear, NE6 1LD , England, Friday 30th November 2018, 7.00pm – information here

Tags: Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Collapsed Lung, Huddersfield (England), London (England), Minehead (England), Sleepy People (Blue Apple Boy), The Scaramanga Six

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Categories art punk, DIY music, garage rock, hip hop, pop, previews, progressive pop, psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock, rapping, rock

April/May 2018 – solo tours in Britain/Europe for Kavus Torabi and Cosmo Sheldrake (4th April to 24th May various, with guest appearances from I See Rivers, Paul Morricone, Bunty, V Ä L V E, Peaks, Arch Garrison, Madilan, Stephen Evens, Bovril, Redbus Noface and May The Night Bless You With Heavenly Dreams)

25 Mar

It’s not exactly surprising that Kavus Torabi has finally gone solo. There’s too much hopeful, demanding inventiveness in him ever to submit entirely to the dynamics of a group, despite the fact that he’s currently got at least three on the go, most of them with him at the helm – the brassy lysergically-illuminated avant-pop of Knifeworld; the ritual instrumentalism of Guapo, and the cantering countercultural circus of Gong (transferred onto his lanky shoulders, history and all, following the 2015 death of Daevid Allen).

What’s more surprising is the direction he’s chosen for the first records under his own name (the new ‘Solar Divination’ EP and a full upcoming album for later in the year). A darker, more agrarian take on his psychedelic homeground, this time it’s drumless, bassless, hornless – rinsed clear of the capering squirrel energy he’s shown for twenty-odd years, in order to reveal muted, angsty bones. Mostly based around slow, smoky-lunged harmonium stretches and sparse flotsam drags of guitar chording, this is a more foreboding turn of song, haunted by deaths, loss and disintegrations. It’s never mopey or lachrymose, thank goodness (even in Knifeworld or The Monsoon Bassoon, Kavus knew how to undercut joyous tootling with passing shadows without souring the milk) but these new songs are overcast with sombre vulnerability: the gravel-grain in Kavus’ voice welling up from deeper, ghostlier territories than before.

Despite being a couple of decades younger than Kavus, Cosmo Sheldrake has been out on his own for a bit longer. It’s been four-and-a-half years since Cosmo put out anything as part of super-eclectic mongrel troupe Gentle Mystics, but during that time he’s been gently dabbing the release schedules with occasional singles, videos and EPs of his own. Earlier work brought some of the Mystics weird and charming vibe along with it: a homemade-toy, party-in-the-fairy-forest feeling, Cosmo lilting skewed nursery-rhyme verses over softly bouncing weaves of melody. In the videos, he came across as a generous digital troubadour on a set of meandering visitations, playing his lashed-up keyboards-and-tech assemblages for performances in model villages, truck beds, pigsties and fishing boats.

Byronic-looking but Branestawm-minded, Cosmo’s a shed-pop tinkerer and a baffling multi-instrumentalist with a mixed mystical/academic background. Part kid’s entertainer and part hippy-boffin, he has a shamanical nose for the margin between nonsense and connection. More recent efforts (trailing the imminent release of his debut album ‘The Much Much How How and I’) have seen chewier, pacier and poppier songs. The videos, meanwhile, have become an ingenious riot of increasingly theatrical, fantastical and sometimes macabre fabling in which foil monsters swim in canvas seas and giant fluffy headlice run amok. There’s a communal, childlike warmth to what he does: not perhaps a guileless wonder, but a sense of celebration, where fables and singalongs and misadventures become part of the accepted, useful junk with which we build our nests.

Kavus’ upcoming tour is a brief series of simmering April dots around England and Wales; Cosmo’s is a more leisurely, lengthy two-month loop, garlanding the British Isles and western Europe. They’re not sharing any shows, or even any venues. The only time they overlap in any respect is on the 25th of April, when they’re playing different but simultaneous one-man shows a stone’s throw apart in Bristol. It would be nice to think of them looking up midset on that one evening, peering across that city-central loop of the Avon, and nodding to each other. Not necessarily natural comrades but, in their way, parallel leywalkers. Each with a bit of Barrett in the back pocket, each with a peculiar charm of innocence, each with fingertips in the otherworldly and the mythic. The uncontainables…

Kavus’ tour also happens to be a chance to catch an intriguing spread of fellow musicians, reflecting the wide body of musical ideas and affinities he touches upon. While in Margate (squeezed into a former Victorian coach house transformed into the Japanese/Alpine cheese dream of a minature theatre), he lines up with two left-field folk acts: the organ-draped, ridge-walking green-chapel psychedelia of Arch Garrison and the mysterious brand-new “wonk-folk” of Bovril (featuring Tuung’s Mike Lindsay). In Birmingham, the bill sharer is Scaramanga Six songwriter Paul Morricone, providing gutsy acoustic songs of fear and brutality with lashing of dark Yorkshire humour. Paul and Kavus also reunite in York for the Tim Smith fundraiser Evening of Fadeless Splendour, alongside the off-kilter art rock of Redbus Noface and the sarcastic-bastard English songcraft of Stephen Gilchrist (a.k.a. Stephen Evens).

On his Manchester date, Kavus will be supported by Peaks (Ben Forrester, formerly of shouty slacker-punk duo Bad Grammar and Manc math-rock supertrio Gug, now performing “loop-driven emo pop”). In London, it’ll be V Ä L V E – once an avant-garde solo project (full of belches and found sounds, situational scoring and sound-art jokes) for Kavus’ Knifeworld bandmate Chloe Herington, now an increasingly ubiquitous three-woman live trio (evolved and evolving into a warm-hearted feminist/Fluxus/Rock In Opposition massing of harps, bassoon, punk bass and singalong bunker-folk). In Leeds, Kavus plays the quiet support act in a free gig for tintinnabulating Sheffield post-metallers May The Night Bless You With Heavenly Dreams (whose echoing tremstrumental pinings add a little magical shimmy to the usual doleful post-rock astronomy) and Bristolian experimental rockers Madilan (whose songs recall both the angst-shredded psychedelic night-journeys of Oceansize and also, in their spindly electronics and Autotuned vocal musing, post-Oceansize rocktronicists British Theatre).

In contrast, most of Cosmo’s dates are solo – possibly because once he’s unshipped his assorted instruments and gizmos (from euphoniums and banjos to loop pedals and pennywhistles), there’s not much room for anyone else in the dressing room. Nonetheless, support for eight of the European April dates comes from Liverpool-based Norwegian girl trio I See Rivers, who wed their outstanding and eerily resonant Scandinavian vocal harmonies, sunny dispositions and scanty guitar to their own balloon-light, touching folk-pop songs and to heart-thawing covers of Daughter (Medicine), George Ezra (Budapest), and Whitney Houston (‘80s wedding fave I Wanna Dance With Somebody).

For the London album launch for ‘The Much Much How How and I’, Cosmo and I See Rivers are joined by Bunty – “multi-dimensional beat merchant and vocal juggler” Kassia Zermon. Also to be found fronting jazz/junk/folk trio Le Juki, co-fronting dub act Resonators, and co-running Brightonian experimental label Beatabet, Kassia’s run Bunty for years as a loopstation-based “one woman electro-orchestra” bolstered by her multi-instrumentalism and vivid imagination. Parallels with Cosmo are clear (the looping and beatboxing, a life blossoming with social art initiatives and therapeutic work beyond the entertainments) and she guests on one of the ‘Much Much’ tracks (very much an equal passing through, with a cheeky hug and a bit of upstaging), but her own vision is distinct. Giddier, jazzier, less directly English in its whimsy, with input from her Moroccan heritage and from her taste for Andy Kaufman; a slightly more cosmic playbox; imaginary languages; an undiluted Brightonian fabulosity.

Kassia’s last Bunty album, ‘Multimos’, was a pocket-sized multimedia event spanning apps, interactive AV, dream machines, audience choirs and gaming cues. Time and occasion will probably only allow a smidgin of that, this time around, but it’ll be a window onto her explosively colourful world.

* * * * * * * *

Kavus’ full tour dates:

Tom Thumb Theatre , 2a Eastern Esplanade, Cliftonville, Margate, Kent, CT9 2LB, England, Sunday 8th April 2018, 7.30pm (with Arch Garrison + Bovril) – information here and here
The Dark Horse, Alcester Road, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 8JP, England, Saturday 14th April 2018, 8.00pm (with Paul Morricone) – information
Record Store Day Mold @ Daniel Owen Community Centre, Earl Road, Mold, Flintshire/Clwyd, Wales, CH7 1DQ, Saturday 21st April 2018, 11.45am – information
The King Arthur, 31-33 Benedict Street, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 9NB, England, Sunday 22nd April 2018, 7.30pm
57 Thomas Street (Manchester Marble Brewery), 57 Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1NA, England, 24th April 2018, 7.30pm (with Peaks) – information
The Mother’s Ruin, 7-9 St. Nicholas Street, Bristol, BS1 1UE, England, Wednesday 25th April 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
West Street Live, 128 West Street, Sheffield, S1 4ES, England, Thursday 26th April 2018, 7.00pm (supporting Madilan + May The Night Bless You With Heavenly Dreams) – information
An Evening Of Fadeless Splendour @ The Fulford Arms, 121 Fulford Road, York, Yorkshire, YO10 4EX, England, Friday 27th April 2018, 7.00pm (with Redbus Noface + Paul Morricone + Stephen Gilchrist) – information here and here
Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, England, Sunday 29th April 2018, 7.00pm (with V Ä L V E) – information here and here

Cosmo’s full tour dates:

More Human Than Human @ The Haunt, 10 Pool Valley, Brighton, BN1 1NJ, England, 4th April 2018, 7.00pm (+ I See Rivers) – information here and here
Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ, England, Thursday 5th April 2018, 7.30pm (album launch, with Bunty + I See Rivers) – information here and here
Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1DF, England, Friday 6th April 2018, 7.00pm (+ tbc) – information here and here
Headrow House, 19 The Headrow, LS1 6PU Leeds, Saturday 7th April 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here
Fluc + Fluc Wanne, Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna, Austria, Austria, Monday 9th April 2018, 8.00pm (with I See Rivers) – information here and here
Feierwerk, Hansastr. 39-41, 81373 Munich, Germany, Tuesday 10th April 2018, 7.30pm (with I See Rivers) – information here and here
Artheater, Ehrenfeldgürtel 127, 50823 Cologne, Germany, Wednesday 11th April 2018, 8.00pm (with I See Rivers) – information
Molotow, Nobistor 14, 22767 Hamburg, Germany, Thursday 12th April 2018, 7.00pm (with I See Rivers) – information here and here
Lido, Cuvrystrasse 7, 10997 Berlin, Germany, Friday 13th April 2018, 8.00pm (with I See Rivers) – information here and here
Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8, 1017SG Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday 17th April 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Wednesday 25th April 2018, 7.30pm (+ tbc) – information here and here
Ancienne Belgique, Anspachlaan 110, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, Friday 27th April 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Ninkasi Gerland Kafé, 267 Rue Marcel Mérieux, 69007 Lyon, France, Wednesday 2nd May 2018, 8.30pm – information here
Point Éphémère, 200 Quai de Valmy, 75010 Paris, France, Thursday 3rd May 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Unplugged in Monti @ Black Market Art Gallery, Via Panisperna 101, Rione Monti, 00184 Rome, Italy, Wednesday 9th May 2018, 7.00pm – information here
Serraglio, Via Gualdo Priorato 5, 20134 Milan, Italy, Thursday 10th May 2018, 9.00pm – information here and here
Freakout Club, Via Emilio Zago, 7c, 40128 Bologna, Italy, Friday 11th May 2018, 9.00pm – information here
The Hug and Pint, 171 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G4 9AW, Scotland, Tuesday 22nd May 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
The Globe, 125 Albany Road, Cardiff, CF24 3PE, Wales, Wednesday 23rd May 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
Plug, Sheffield, Thursday 24th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Amsterdam (Netherlands), Arch Garrison, Bad Grammar, Berlin (Germany), Bologna (Italy), Bovril (Mike Lindsay), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Bunty (Kassia Zermon), Cardiff (Wales), Chloe Herington, Cosmo Sheldrake, Craig Fortnam, Gentle Mystics, Glasgow (Scotland), Glastonbury (England), Gong, Guapo, Gug, Hamburg (Germany), I See Rivers, James Larcombe, Kavus Torabi, Knifeworld, Koln (Germany), Leeds (England), listening to women, London (England), Lyon (France), Madilan, Manchester (England), Mark Cawthra, May The Night Bless You With Heavenly Dreams, München (Germany), More Human Than Human (event), Paris (France), Paul Morricone, Peaks, Redbus Noface, Rome (Italy), Sheffield (England), Steven Evens, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Scaramanga Six, Tunng, Unplugged in Monti (event), V A L V E, Wien (Austria), women of heart and mind

November/December 2017 – more assorted Smithery – BarmyFiveseveN play Tim Smith at Connector V, Amsterdam (2nd November); Spratleys Japs’ Wonderful Winter Wonderland tour of England (14th-17th December)

15 Oct

Coverage of the complex, perverse and joyful musical work of the sadly incapacitated Tim Smith – whether inside or outside his mothership Cardiacs band – frequently figures in here. It’s good to bring you all more about his continued crossover from cult status to something wider: this time, with news of a conservatory jazz gig in Amsterdam and of the continued afterlife of Spratleys Japs.

Broedplaats Lely & Steim present:
Connector V
Steim, Schipluidenlaan 12-3E, 1062HE Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thursday 2nd November 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Composers are not necessarily dead. They also do not necessarily write symphonies in D flat minor in a 4/4 time signature.

“Tim Smith, frontman of the British band called Cardiacs, is a great composer who wrote lots of music permeated with energy, humour, beauty, Britishness. By people who only partly open their ears (or their minds for that matter), his music has been defined as being “chaotic”. The opposite is true, however: it is strongly organised music and all one needs to be able to do is count past four (and not forget about prime numbers). This challenging mix of punk, prog rock, orchestral and live electronic music (also known as “pronk”) will be performed by BarmyFiveseveN, a “small big band” ensemble of around fifteen players from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, armed with live electronic extensions.”

Connector V is part of a monthly series at Steim: regular readers should recognise this particular one as a follow-up to the Smith-covering set by Alex Brajkovic Ensemble at Amsterdam’s Jazz Ensemble Festival back in April, and it does in fact feature most or all of the same players, put together by rebel prog professor Jos Zwaanenburg. No-one seems to have recorded/posted evidence from the last time, so I can’t show you how it went – but as before, I can give you some very loose indications as to how this concert might might turn out by referring you to English Rose Orchestrations’ string quartet version of one of the featured pieces, The Duck And Roger The Horse.

* * * * * * * *

The following month, Spratleys Japs consolidate the success of their Brighton and London reunion shows over the last couple of years by setting out on a bigger, broader English tour taking in Yorkshire and the West as well as the south east, with a mass of current/former Cardiacs and friends coalescing as support around the tour dates.

Read more about SJ here: in brief, though, they’re a short-lived and swampy alternate-universe pop project (part alien folk maunderings, part glam-punk punch and part spindly antiprog) which Tim put together in the mid-’90s with then-girlfriend/muse Jo Spratley. Now revived by Jo and a collection of Brighton art rockers, they’ve got a second wind and have been rattling through fresh gigs partially in tribute to Tim and partially because the enthralling, infuriating puzzle-box songs have a peculiar life of their own.

As regards the backup, looming raconteur Stephen Evens brings his scowling, sardonic British pop along to the London, Brighton and Bristol shows (possibly with full band in tow for all of them). In a similar vein, Yorkshire dark-melodrama rockers The Scaramanga Six pile in at the Huddersfield date, while the Brighton show also sports vigorous dream poppers Hurtling and noisy art-rock goons Ham Legion (the latter performing their Syd Barrett tribute as “Vegetable Men” (plus another acoustic set from Kavus Torabi, squeezing in time in between fronting Gong, Knifeworld and his radio broadcasts). At Bristol there’s another onetime Cardiacs guitarist, Jon Poole, possibly bringing both solo stuff and one-man versions of his clever-pop work with The Dowling Poole; plus ZOFFF (the reverberant south coast kosmische/deep-psych band featuring Crayola Lectern‘s Chris Anderson and yet another ex-Cardiac six-stringer, Bic Hayes).

As with most Cardiacs-related events, these give you a cross-section of a under-celebrated ongoing British sub-scene; stretching from surprisingly accessible, sharply written latter-day take on Britpop right through to mantric pedal noise and squirts of lysergic space-cadet juice. Here’s a selection of sundries from all concerned:

Full dates:

The Parish, 28 Kirksgate, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, HD1 1QQ, England, Thursday 14th December 2017, 7.30pm (with The Scaramanga Six) – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market, Bristol, Avon, BS2 0EJ, England, Friday 15th December 2017, 7.30pm (with Jon Poole + ZOFFF + Stephen Evens) – information here and here
The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton BN1 4FQ, England, Saturday 16th December 2017, 6.00pm (with Kavus Torabi + Stephen Evens (full band) + Hurtling + Ham Legion As Vegetable Men) – information here and here
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, England, Sunday 17th December 2017 (with Stephen Evens + others tbc) – information t.b.c.

UPDATE, 18th October – apparently we can also expect a couple of imminent fundraising Cardiacs cover versions from Spratleys Japs and Stephen Evens (Odd Even and Two Bites of Cherry), plus other surprises they’re keeping a little tightlipped about for the moment.

Meanwhile, Cornish psychedelic folkie Emily Jones (another Spratleys friend from previous gigs) has been added to the Brighton concert, which now also features a Torabi/Steve Davis DJ set. Support for the Brixton Windmill show in London is going to be thrashy prog-pop stuntmeisters The Display Team and rapidly rising Windmill favourites Black Midi. Below are a couple of moments from Emily and the ‘Team. (There’s not much more I can give you about Black MIDI. They’re so new that the paint’s hardly dry on them, and their Soundcloud page is still empty; but I did manage to establish that they’re an experimental/instrumental rock five-piece of teenage Croydonians and that they’re “purveyors of the darkest dreamscapes”…)

Tags: Amsterdam (Netherlands), BarmyFiveseveN, Black MIDI (British band), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Cardiacs, Emily Jones, English Rose Orchestrations, ensemble music, Gong, Ham Legion, Huddersfield (England), Hurtling, Jo Spratley, Jon Poole, Jos Zwaanenburg, Kavus Torabi, Knifeworld, London (England), Stephen Evens, Syd Barrett, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Display Team, The Scaramanga Six, Tim Smith, Tim Smith's Spratleys Rats (Spratleys Japs), ZOFFF

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

7 Oct

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

Dates:

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

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

* * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November/December 2016 – upcoming British gigs – William D. Drake plays Preston (with Paul Morricone and All Hail Hyena!), and London (18th November, 1st December); Bob Drake unveiled in London, helped by Kavus Torabi and The Beetles (9th December)

17 Nov

For Cardiacs fans (plus any interested fans of psychedelic folk, multi-mood cut-up pop and perhaps a touch of Rock In Opposition) even if the Spratleys Japs show I posted about earlier is sold out, there’s still room in the audience for when William D. Drake fits in a final couple of shows for 2016, and for when various Knifeworlders help American avant-rocker Bob Drake to touch down in London.

(Yes, two Drakes. A coincidence. It’s not actually family, but it’s sort of familial anyway…)

* * * * * * * *

I’ve written plenty about William D. Drake over the months and years, to the extent that I sometimes wonder whether I’ve written myself out. So instead, I’ll rummage through the immediate press kit clippings written by other people, which hail him as “one of the most gifted and diverse composers of the modern age”, “a master of both modern classical piano composition and of experimental popular music” and the possessor of “a unique and prodigious skill as a composer and arranger of complex, intelligent and eccentric musical psychedelia; creating a cornucopia of diverse melodic styles whilst playing a plethora of keyboards and synthesizers.”

The same one-sheets heap praise on his music – “an homage to lost music of the past, whilst taking a very English approach to composition which touches on the work of Robert Wyatt and Peter Hammill”, “weaving layers of textured melody with rock undertones… journey(ing) through the surreal and psychedelic, telling curious tales with sideways humour” and “jerk(ing) wildly from the gloriously epic to the intimately prophetic.”

PR to die for, really: and yet none of it mentions the other main draw, which is the warmth. Many attempts to bridge rock, folk and classical builds on pomp and posturing which verges on the desperately anxious, as if in dread of some grand and booted critic rising up, kicking down a cardboard set, pointing at the cowering artist and bellowing “naked! Fraud!” Others (especially from the classical side) skate around the business of integration by ironing half of the ingredients flat before inserting them – an ostentatious patina of orchestral papier-mache; or stiff, ungenerous impressions of rock beat and noise (or communal folk storytelling) fed into an ensemble piece with looseness of rhythms and fervency of engagement extracted.

Bill, in contrast, approaches it all with a laugh: the music’s all manuscript on the same rough paper, to be shuffled and interpreted for pleasure, or a rough tasty stew cooked up from memory, free to be meddled with and added to. For all of the impressive content and heart, it keeps its amateur edge in the best possible way -the enthusiasm of putting a family puzzle together; of teaching your nephew a song you’ve found in a street market; of suddenly remembering something intricate, odd, charming and half-forgotten from your childhood, then tracking it down to the back of a cupboard and finding that not only does it still work, it fits in beautifully with something else you’re working on.

This also translates to the shows. At a Bill gig, it sometimes feels if everyone’s crammed cheerfully into a slightly messy Edwardian parlour, eating jam with a spoon. Or, according to those press sheets, you get “a feast of gorgeous instrumentation, masterful piano, ancient grinding hurdy-gurdy, harmonium, clarinet, guitar, drums… topped with growly vocals and angelic choral singing.” I can vouch for that too.

Meanwhile, here’s a range of Bill pieces (probably over-familiar to ‘Misfit City’ readers, but what the hell) – a waltzing live-in-the-studio session full-band jaunt, a larky official video full of theatrical gestures and in jokes, and last month’s seizing of the Union Chapel’s grand Willis organ for a song of shipwreck.

It looks as if the London gig will be just Bill plus band, but the Preston show features a couple of guest slots. Paul Morricone is best known for his work as the more prolific and dramatically brooding of the two songwriting brothers in Huddersfield rock dramatists The Scaramanga Six, who “lurch wildly from dark and lurid ballads to visceral punk tinged psychedelia.” In recent years, Paul has taken to occasional acoustic solo gigs in which he sings songs from the twenty-year-old Scaramanga back catalogue (with its tales of fools, brutes and people stuck in between the two) and sometimes tries out unreleased, unrecorded and work-in-progress songs for size. See below for a full forty-minute set from such a gig, as well as a growling stop-start hard-math-pop burst from the third act on the bill – Burnley band All Hail Hyena!, who promise “a selection of frenetic psych-pop frenzies, intersected with melodic brilliance, punctuated by attitude and melting into rapture. A seething mass of unpredictability which will leave your brain reeling like a fish on a hook.”

They Eat Culture @ The New Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston, PR1 8JP, England, Friday 18th November 2016, 8.00pm (with Paul Morricone + All Hail Hyena!) – information here and here
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England, Wednesday 1st December 2016, 7.30pm (no support)- information

* * * * * * * *

Bob Drake’s last appearance in London (as far as I know) was a startling, affectionate and consensual stage invasion at the very start of a Knifeworld gig at Bush Hall. Clad in the surprisingly convincing snow-white bear suit he’s made famous from capering behind the drumkit at Thinking Plague gigs, he seized the mike and propelled what was already set to be a triumphant show up to a different level of vim and laughter.

It’s in keeping with what the man does. A veteran of the more rattling, curious end of American prog (not only with the Plague but with 5uus, his own Cabinet of Curiosities and plenty more), Bob’s equipped with all of the production nous and polyinstrumental expertise to act as his own ensemble on record; but he balances his impressive technical skill with just the right dose of lo-fi get-it-done-now irreverence to hit that elusive sweet spot between prog precision and friendly spontaneity. In doing so, he not only gives himself space to indulge an affably friendly musicality but knocks down any of the strict confining fences which might restrict both his freedom and the warm buzz of his audience’s involvement. If something off-beat and of-the-moment isn’t happening at one of Bob’s gigs, then it’s something that’s missing: or to put it another way, if something isn’t going slightly wrong, then the gig’s not going right.

This has nothing to do with prog spoofery, or comedy rock. It’s got more to do with Bob’s records and shows being intricate shaggy-dog (or perhaps shaggy-bear) stories in which the digressions on the journey, the ragged human edges and distractions, are more important than awe-inspiring structures or a revelatory destination. There’s plenty of nifty fingerwork – and plenty of irregular musical gems and twists that probably took more work and planning than he’s letting on – but what seems to matter the festooning of structure with invention… and with humour, the key to knowing that the moment is here and now, and knocks against expectation and time, and that a laugh isn’t necessarily a punchline, but the acknowledgement of an enthusiasm shared.

There are plenty of little musical signposts to point the way to Bob – there’s Yes (he got into all of this through a fascination with Chris Squire’s high-stepping buzz-bomb basslines), Henry Cow (for deliberately imperfect noise, and for toppling eagerly over the edge of the comfort zone in search of adventure), Stateside folk and bluegrass (plus the baroque Americana of The Beach Boys), the swivelling dial of midwestern classic rock radio and the mix-and-match repertoire of the zillion bar bands he played in on the way up; and probably the shadow of Zappa. There are other islands in the soup which may be coincidental – the convoluted indie rock of Guided By Voices, the fact that some of his songs sound like a ragged Jellyfish, or as if he’s roughed up an English cabaret star in a trucker’s joint; the possibility that his time in Los Angeles engineering hip hop tracks may have reinforced his interest in cut’n’paste textures. Yet ultimately Bob is Bob; moment by moment; grabbing hold of what’s there, spinning out what comes. Here are a few examples, including a snippet of a Cabinet of Curiosities gig where the theatre of the furry absurd is in full effect.

For this particular show (presented with fondness by Knifeworld’s resident reed avant-gardist Chlöe Herington), you just get Bob and his acoustic guitar – skill, repertoire and atmosphere probably more than compensating for the lack of a full band. In support is Kavus Torabi, fresh off a Gong tour, also feeding his songs through an acoustic – plus the unknown but immediately intriguing quality of Beetles, featuring ever-restless London avant-garde popsters Laila Woozeer and Tom O.C. Wilson, and who play “intricate, skeletal pop songs influenced by Regina Spektor, Lennon and McCartney and Kurt Cobain.” All of this is happening in a little basement room in a Kings Cross bar, so if you want to get a place there before a hundred London freaks swoop, get a move on.

Chlöe Herington presents:
Bob Drake + Kavus Torabi + Beetles
The Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, London, WC1H 8JF, England
Friday 9th December 2016, 7.00pm – information

Tags: All Hail Hyena, Beetles, Bob Drake, Chloe Herington, Kavus Torabi, Laila Woozeer, London (England), Paul Morricone, Preston (England), The 5uu's, The Forge (promoter/venue), The Scaramanga Six, Thinking Plague, Tom O.C. Wilson, William D. Drake

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – The Scaramanga Six in Winchester and London (5th, 12th) with A Formal Horse, The Bitch, The Fiascos and Zen Motel

2 Nov

Following a period spent spawning, recording, dispersing around the country, essaying the odd solo gig or micro-festival appearance, and carrying out whatever grim and murky business keeps them afloat in between shows and records, the various members of The Scaramanga Six have reconvened for a couple of autumn dates in southern England.

Still stubbornly insisting on being a quartet (one which won’t refund a third of your ticket price, so don’t ask) and still possessed of the most ferocious fraternal-twin-brother glower since the heyday of the Kray brothers, the Six continue to mine a rich and rewarding seam of murky kitchen-sink rock drama: like a small belligerent family of pub singers who’ve rushed the stage, mugged the house band and grabbed the mike in order to settle a few scores and tell a few hard tales in public. With Tony Bennett, The Cramps, The Stranglers, Cardiacs and Pixies amongst their crowd of musical influences (the sartorial ones include Moss Bros funeral directors, glam rock queens, small town wide boys and absinthe dandies), they’re still toting around last year’s album ‘The Terrifying Dream’, a collection of songs based on skull-rattling nightmares (some of which may not have anything to do with being asleep).

I’ve always liked the Six, right for the time I first encountered them and got the opportunity to dub them one of the country’s “most timely” rock bands – expressing inflated smalltown-British bile and huff with better tunes than anyone else. Fourteen years later, you’d have thought that they’d have lost that particular title; and it’s true that their ebullient theatricality has allowed them to sidestep strict reality any time they like. (As far as being state-of-the-nation signifiers goes, they were always more ‘League of Gentlemen’ than ‘This is England’.) But as long as there’s a supply of twisted romantics with alarming habits, touchy self-deluders going off the rails, and sinister broody men as likely to harm themselves as much as others, the Scaramanga Six will have material to juggle with and ram home; and whenever it runs short, they’ll fill the gaps with bullish tales of self-reliance in adversity (who says their Yorkshire base hasn’t rubbed off on them?) or one of bass-player Steve’s gonzo rockabilly bawl-alongs. God knows what they’re making of the poisonous post-Brexit seethe. It’ll probably provide them with enough inspiration for a double album.

The Barn @ The Railway Inn, 3 St. Pauls Hill, Winchester
SO22 5AE, England, Saturday 5th November 2016, 8.00pm (with A Formal Horse + The Bitch) – information here and here
Pure Rawk @ The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden Town, London, NW1 0AP, England, Saturday 12th November 2016, 7.00pm (with The Fiascos + Zen Motel) – information here and here

The two shows this month bounce off different aspects and intimations of the Six. At Winchester the emphasis seems to be on art rock. The main support coming from sparkly Southampton band A Formal Horse, whose continually flexing music tosses math and prog ideas around under Hayley McDonnell’s crystal clear folk voice, a bounding conceptual glitterball. I couldn’t find out anything about the other support band, The Bitch, but with a name like that it’s unlikely that they’ll be playing detailed chamber-folk or be led by a woman with a concert harp (although, on second thoughts, it would be wonderful if they were…)

In contrast, the London show and supports – courtesy of promoter Pure Rawwk – are absolute Sunset Strippery. The Fiascos describe themselves, variously as “filthy punk rock’n’roll from The Cronx, south London”, “Motörhead in a sweet shop” and “Social Distortion playing to get out of jail. They feature former members of Spizzenergi and the Brijitte West band, plus ubiquitous go-to-drummer Robin Guy (the onetime Rachel Stamp/Sack Tricker who’s filled in for everyone from Sham 69 to Rancid, Faith No More and The Bay City Rollers). Gleefully trashy and explosive Essex hard-rockers Zen Motel (pals with the Wildhearts) open the show with a rare acoustic set.

In both cases, the Six are likely to be glowering at the top of the bill and bringing the weight; like elder brothers, or dangerous uncles.

Tags: A Formal Horse, battered hats, London (England), The Bitch, The Scaramanga Six, wasted glamour, whisper to scream, Winchester (England), Zen Motel

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Categories 2016, alternative pop, art pop, art rock, folk rock, garage punk, garage rock, glam rock, grunge rock, hard rock, heavy metal, pop, previews, progressive rock, punk rock, rock

July 2016 – a pair of one-day English festivals on the 16th (EppyFest 5 in Stroud, The Whole World Window in Preston)

13 Jul

This Saturday sees a couple of interesting pocket festivals taking place in the west and north-west of England – there’s still a chance for last-minute tickets or walk-ups for each of them.

The fifth in the series of EppyFests is happening this Saturday in Stroud, Gloucestershire. As with the previous four, it’s the brainchild of Stroud-based psychologist and music enthusiast Ian Fairholm and is a spinoff of his well-respected Epileptic Gibbon music podcast, whose remit rambles enthusiastically across “prog rock, art rock, post rock, prog metal, jazz rock, folk rock, math rock, downtempo, chill-out, ambient electronica, IDM, chamber pop, folktronica, psychedelia , neo-classical , film and TV soundtracks and experimental/avant garde music”.

EppyFest is an attempt at translating the podcast’s flavour into live music and live socializing. A well-run, self-starting pocket occasion (complete with its own T-shirts and integral dinner options) its previous events have featured ferocious British post-prog (Thumpermonkey, The Fierce & The Dead, Trojan Horse), latter prog/jazz-rock/jam acts (Sanguine Hum, Schnauzer, Henry Fool, Unto Us, Flutatious and Andy Pickford) and (in the case of Stackridge and The Korgis), a 70s prog outfit and a band of Britpop precursors sharing a last hurrah in the same body. Also in the mix has been loop guitar (Matt Stevens), classical/world chamber-fusion (Firefly Burning) and folk performers with extra ingredients stretching from neo-Celticana to chalkhill psychedelia, European electronica or Balkan jazz (Sheelanagig, I Am Your Autopilot, Tinker’s Cuss, Arch Garrison). As you might expect from a thoughtful curator married to an accomplished female musician, Eppyfest has also featured a healthy proportion of women players including bandleaders and solo artists (such as Becky Rose, Candythief and She Makes War).

Assuming that you’re not already committed to attending the Felix M-B gig down the road on the same day, EppyFest 5 looks set to carry on the tradition in fine form. (I’m jealous. I wouldn’t mind running something like that myself. It’s time to start thinking about empire, or benevolent despotry…)

The Epileptic Gibbon Podcast presents:
‘EppyFest 5’: William D. Drake + Judy Dyble & Her Band of Perfect Strangers + Marvyn B. Naylor + Darkroom (with Elif Yalvac) + Tom Slatter + Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet
Lansdown Hall, Lansdown, Stroud, GL5 1BB, England
Saturday 16th July 2016 , 4.00pm to 11.00pm – information & tickets

Over the years, I’ve said plenty about this year’s EppyFest headliner William D. Drake over the years, and will probably say more. Woody-throated singer and former Cardiac; the organic keyboard wizard who turns television sets into organs; the man you might find if you went looking for the place where baroque pop meets Punch-and-Judy professor. Bill’s songs suggest a parallel English music: one in which antique pop songs on crackling wax cylinders mingle seamless with both Henry Purcell and Frank Zappa.

In his mid-fifties, and with the release of his fifth album ‘Revere Reach’, Bill’s reached a crucial point in his career, in which the jolly avuncular eccentricities of his earlier work have finally given way to the blossoming kernel of beauty within his compositions. He’s probably far too rounded a person and songwriter to entirely give into it, though. Expect the full range of glorious pastoralism and bouncy humour from a full chamber pop band including members of Stars In Battledress and North Sea Radio Orchestra.

I’ve also said plenty about Darkroom , the textural electro-morphic partnership of sometime No-Man/Samuel Smiles/Henry Fool guitarist Michael Bearpark and loop/synth/woodwind/patch-man Andrew Ostler. Over two decades Darkroom have delivered a massively underrated body of work straddling gigantic cosmic soundscapes like deliquescing Hubble images, intricate cerebral dance rhythms, broodingly beautiful guitar tones and (recently) cryptic bass clarinet and flute strands, touching upon influences as diverse as OMD, Autechre, Robert Fripp, Neil Young, Delia Derbyshire, Can and Bennie Maupin.

For this concert their polyglot electronica is augmented by a special guest, Turkish electronic guitarist Hazal Elif Yalvaç an Istanbul-based composer, musician and linguist. We’ll have to see whether Elif’s work (much of it glitching, grumbling guitartronic abstractions) brings out Darkroom’s more abstract instincts; or whether Os and Michael’s knack for direct expressiveness brings out that proggier aspect which Elif’s threatening to reveal in her forthcoming Light Curve project.

Show opener Tom Slatter also shows up in ‘Misfit City’ quite often. He’s a Victorian town-crier with a guitar and a slew of fantastical tales about monsters of air, land and sea, strange goings on in laboratories, haunted gentlemen and master criminals loose on the railways. On record he’s a multi-instrumental steampunk proggie, building himself instrumental Rube Goldberg machines (and occasionally collaborating with one). Live, he’s mostly unplugged and solo, letting his charm make up for the shortfall in instrumentation. One day he will build himself a bicycle-powered, bat-winged portable orchestrion out of old tuba piping and traction engine spares, to allow him to merge both situations. It will probably go off course and fly him somewhere horrible.

One of the prime strengths of jazz players is that they can come from anywhere in the world, meet each other for the first time and immediately speak a common improvising language of immediate flexibility. The four musicians who make up the Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet – Asaf Sirkis (drums, Israeli, Londoner), Sylwia Bialas (voice, Polish, currently a Londoner but only recently a Würzburg resident), Kevin Glasgow (bass guitar, a Scottish Londoner via Ireland, but Invernessian rather than actual Glaswegian, replacing an Englishman who originally reached the band via Australia, Scotland and the United States) and Frank Harrison (keyboards, English, surprising lack of other complications) – make more of their scattered nature than most.

With all of that in mind, you’d expect a riotous mix of cultures, making hay out of clashes. What you actually get is aquamarine almost-acoustic jazz, cupped and propelled by Asaf’s winds-of-the-forest percussion subtleties, sung in Polish or vocalese, sheathed in softness and in smoothly-flowing instrumental gestures. The lightness of touch and the Northern hemisphere reserve hearken towards both Pacific Northwestern new age and ECM atmospherics; the light-as-a-feather scatting, twirling Rhodes piano and lissom six-string electric bass suggests a hushed Kurpie version of Flora Purim’s time with Return to Forever.

While the pure, piping soprano tones of co-headliner Judy Dyble might distract you from her full story, they do tie her firmly to the 1960s folk revival. It’s a true tie, as well – teenage friendships with Ashley Hutchings and Richard Thompson led her to spend a year as the singer for the original lineup of Fairport Convention. This auspicious start was followed by a brief, obscure stint in King Crimson prelude band Giles, Giles & Fripp, a more celebrated year as half of much-touted psychedelic folk duo Trader Horne; and finally a handful of gigs in the company of Canterbury characters Lol Coxhill, Steve Miller and Phil Miller.

A gentle, often reticent character, Judy’s musicality wasn’t enough to keep her comfortably engaged with the bruising demands of the music business; and in 1973, after six years of flitting nervously in and out of the spotlight, she retired from music into a quiet life of family and library work while still barely into her twenties. Perhaps it wasn’t as mysterious or dramatic a withdrawal as that of peers such as Anne Briggs or Vashti Bunyan, but it was enough to reduce her reputation to a shadow for all except those who dug up her handful of recordings in search of half-forgotten treasure and found something that didn’t deserve to be overshadowed.

Bar a couple of flitting, fitful Fairport reengagements at Cropredy in the early ‘80s, little was heard from Judy for three decades until – widowed and empty-nested – she was inveigled back into recording by Astralasia’s Mike Swordfish in 2002. Since then she’s pursued a quiet but exploratory revival of her musicality, working in fields fromfolk-rock to trancetronica and experimental art pop, and with collaborators including Dodson & Fogg, Tim Bowness, Sand Snowman, Joxfield Projex, Fuxa and Thee Faction. Her regular home, however, is with her Perfect Strangers ensemble (mostly drawn from co-writer Alistair Murphy’s Cromerzone project) with whom she’ll be performing at EppyFest. Throughout all of this, Judy’s signature tone has remained intact – the folk sweetness, the subliminal hint at hesitancy and tremble which betrays the nerviness and unsurety which has both interrupted her career and given her work its humanity and honesty. As she heads towards her seventies, both tone and temperament have become allied to a longer perspective of value, loss and change – something which, strengthened and deepened by time, she’s grown into and fleshed out with natural experience.

Completing the bill is another, even less well-known hidden treasure. Winchester singer-songwriter Marvyn B. Naylor has been delivering music for twelve underappreciated years now. His mixture of intricate, allusive psychedelic pop songs and pulsating 12-string guitar folk instrumentals tip nods to and shake hands with inspirations including the early David Bowie, Edward Elgar, the Beatles, Joyce Kilmer, Frank Sinatra, Francisco Tarrega and Guy de Maupassant: but he’s a whole meal in himself.

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There’s just one former Cardiac on the bill at EppyFest. Technically speaking – unless it’s true that Kavus Torabi is DJ-ing – there are no former Cardiacs at The Whole World Window, which takes place on the same day as EppyFest but five counties up (in Lancashire). In spite of this the bill, spread across two stages, is suffused with Cardiacs enthusiasm. Unsurprising, since it’s the latest in a series of benefits for the band’s stroke-felled leader Tim Smith.

Greg Braysford presents:
‘The Whole World Window – A Benefit for Tim Smith’: Britney + All Hail Hyena + 7Shades + The Scaramanga Six + Sweet Deals On Surgery + Sterbus + Trojan Horse + Adam Shaw + The Jackpot Golden Boys + Sean Keefe + Ahsa + others tbc (or fibbed about)
The New Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP, England
Saturday 16th July 2016, 2.00pm – information here – tickets here and here

Bellowing Scots Britney are as garish and hardcore as a fairground teddy-grabber covered in backstreet tattoos. They’re given to one-and-a-half-minute bursts of earsplitting rock numbers plastered with crumpled ice-cream-van melodies. The latter trait, something of a Cardiacs stock-in-trade, tinkles through several of the other bands on the bill – be they outright disciples 7Shades (who lovingly pillage the ornate Cardiacs style wholesale) or pyjama-clad Burley power-pop trio All Hail Hyena (who sound like Bo Diddley rocking an birthday-cake castle).

Something more grandiose is offered by Huddersfield rock bullies The Scaramanga Six. They’ve devoted twenty-one years and enormous musical flair to hammering out poperatic tunes and bursts of garage gonzo, providing tragicomic insight into the flawed and unsettled ethics of everyday men (all carried out with assured baroque brutality and gallows humour). Self-styled “noisy prog rock bastards” Trojan Horse might not be returning to EppyFest this year, but they are bringing their omnivorous Salfordian rock cocktail to Preston: a catalogue of work which plunges into swaggering ‘70’s funk, belting avant-garage moments, broad-spectrum Beatles-pop and audacious psychogeographic experiments. Power-poppers Sweet Deals On Surgery lean towards the punkier side, bucketing towards the end of a song as if it were a race, but distractedly bursting into different versions halfway. For God’s sake, keep them off the Haribos…

All the way from Italy, Sterbus (Smith/Fripp/Zappa obsessive and noblest-Roman-of-them-all) will be coming to either yomp through some of his triple-jointed proggy power pop or to play leafy psychedelic summer-lounge acoustica (which may or may not include some of his takes on Cardiacs, Spratleys Japs and other limbs of Smithiana). If he doesn’t hold up the acoustic end, rest assured that Ivan Campo frontman Adam Shaw will, as he brings along his light-touch, thoughtful folk pop for us to unravel.

The rest of the bill’s made up of bands which predominantly reflect the humour (if not necessarily the horse-laughs and art-punk prankery) of the Cardiacs world. Silly-goodtime pop culture obsessives The Jackpot Golden Boys throw assorted metal, pop and funk chops at things from TV theme tunes to geek topics and hope that a few of them stay embedded. Militant hat wearer, slide guitarist, Strumstick player, comedy yarner and genre-mash novelist Sean Keefe – brings along his own version of honky-tonk Americana.

The (known) lineup is completed by acapella singer Asha Hewitt (seen below performing with Gummo Cleyre and Alex Dickinson as Yorkshire Latin pop band Solana). Asha might be the last kind of musician you’d expect to see getting up at a Smith benefit gig; but her presence is proof positive that the happy skewed tastes of the Cardiacs audience let in all kinds of light. Once they’ve stopped cheerfully bawling for their mashed-up chord sequences, that is…

Tags: 7shades, Adam Shaw, Ahsa, Alex Dickinson, Alistair Murphy, All Hail Hyena, Andrew Ostler (Os), Asaf Sirkis, benefit gigs, Britney, Cromerzone, Darkroom, Elif Yalvac, Eppyfest (event), Frank Harrison, Gummo Cleyre, Judy Dyble, Letchworth (England), listening to women, London (England), Marvyn B. Naylor, Michael Bearpark, Patrick Bettison, Preston (England), Royston (England), Sean Keefe, Sirkis/Bialas International Quartet, Solana, Stroud (England), Sweet Deals On Surgery, Sylwia Bialas, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Jackpot Golden Boys, The Scaramanga Six, The Whole World Window (event), Tom Slatter, Trojan Horse, William D. Drake, Winchester (England)

January 2016 – upcoming gigs (mostly London) – jazz/Indo/groove/lyrical shapes at Cafe Oto with Emanative & Collocutor Duo, Earl Zinger, Sarathy Korwar and Sealionwoman; Medway garage, film snaps, Paris pop and hauntological folk in Putney with The Senior Service, French Boutik and Of Arrowe Hill. Plus Nerve Toy Trio in Warrington.

23 Jan

And another inevitable January gig update, as expected…

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(Baba Yaga’s Hut presents)
Emanative & Collocutor Duo featuring Earl Zinger + Sarathy Korwar + Sealionwoman (+ more tbc)
Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Friday 29th January 2016, 8.00pm – more information

Baba Yaga’s Hut bring us an evening of cosmic jazz explorations.

Emanative & Collocutor Duo is a teamup between saxophonist/flautist Tamar Osborn and drummer/mixologist Nick Woodmansey. Tamar’s history includes work with Africa Express, Dele Sosimi and The Fontanelles: she currently leads eclectic, hypnotic modal septet Collocutor (with Josephine Davies, Simon Finch, Marco Piccioni, Suman Joshi, Maurizio Ravalico and Afla Sackey) which mixes jazz and minimalism with Afrobeat and Ethiopian ideas, Indian classical and polyphonic choral music. In recent years, Nick’s work as leader of the Emanative project has seen him take the helm for British cosmic jazz. The Duo allows Nick and Tamar to take and blend aspects and ideas from both projects in a slimmer, tighter context. Guesting with the Duo on chants and vocals is Earl Zinger, the reggae-toaster-inspired alter ego of acid-jazz veteran and former Galliano frontman Rob Gallagher (whose post-Galliano work has included jazz band Two Banks Of Four and who’s also currently working as William Adamson).

Three tastes of the project are below – a duo version of Albert Ayler/Mary Maria Parks’ ‘Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe’;an Emanative remix of a Collocutor track; and an Emanative track from last year with strong Collocutor contributions.

This is (I think) the second gig for the Duo – there’s been at least one other well-received show in July 2015, at The Waiting Room in Stoke Newington). That gig also featured Sealionwoman, the playful, driving voice-and-double-bass duo whose shape-changing jazz and blues songs have enchanted ‘Misfit City’ for several years now. They’re making a return appearance at this gig too. (Here’s my my 2013 eyewitness account of them, again; plus a chunk of video from the very same show.)

In between Sealionwoman and the Duo comes Indian classical/fusion percussionist Sarathy Korwar. Dividing his time between London and Pune, Sarathy trained as both tabla and drum kit player and specialises in applying Indian classical rhythmic ideas to non-Indian percussion instruments, blending in aspects of improvisation and intuition.

More people may be added to the bill at the last moment…

* * * * * * * *

On the following evening, there are shades of garage, mod, Parisiana and spooky folk.

(Retro Man Blog & Damaged Goods Records present)
The Senior Service + French Boutik + Of Arrowe Hill
The Half Moon, 93 Lower Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15 1EU, London, England
Saturday January 30th 2016, 7.30pm) – more information

Playing ‘60s-styled instrumentals, The Senior Service feature four musicians who, between them, have moved through many of the garage bands from the Medway scene – including The Prisoners, The James Taylor Quartet, The Solarflares, The Masonics, and assorted Billy Childish bands. Jon Barker (Hammond organ), Graham Day (guitar), Darryl Hartley (bass guitar) and Wolf Howard (drums) are inspired by John Barry/Ennio Morricone/Barry Gray soundtracks, Stax rhythm’n’blues (Booker T & The MGs) and early Mod (Small Faces). Damaged Goods Records release their debut single, Depth Charge, this month (with a full album to follow).

In support are French Boutik, who (inspired by their Paris home) blend ideas from 1960s French pop such as Serge Gainsbourg and Yé-yé with classic Motown and Burt Bacharach, all with a modernist pop twist.

Opening the evening are Of Arrowe Hill – Adam Easterbrook’s “hauntological” rock group who are now midway through their second decade of work. Expect their usual mix of country blues and acid folk with lo-fi psychedelia, with Adam backed by ex-Aardvarks rhythm section Ian O’Sullivan and Jason Hobart.

* * * * * * * *

Finally, further north (much further north) there’s this:

(Marpexke Productions presents)
Nerve Toy Trio
The Saracen’s Head, 381 Wilderspool Causeway, Warrington, WA4 6RS, England
Saturday 30th January 2016, 9.00pm

Nerve Toy Trio (guitarist Tony Harn, bass player/pedalist David Jones and drummer Howard Jones) are playing their first gig of the year, back in their hometown.

Although I’ve posted about Tony before (covering his first three albums as a solo player – start here and work backwards) I don’t think I’ve posted about the Trio before. All are veterans of an underrated and overlooked Warrington art-rock scene of the 1980s which (although notable for launching Tim Bowness) was squeezed between and overshadowed by neighbouring ferments in Manchester and Liverpool. They spin out an echoed, textured fusion-rock which spans from delightfully airy to tight-and-bumptious, and which thrives on understated juxtapositions which are always earnest, cheeky or interesting, – setting a pinch of Hendrix squall against Cheshire pastoralism; Pat Metheny harmonic glitter alongside romantic Steve Hackett peals; Rush power riffage in alternation with Robin Guthrie spangle.

With their melodic, rococo flourishes and outright proggy roots, sometimes the Trio come across as uncertain time travellers – hopping and picking across four decades of art rock and fusion while still ultimately homesick for the treasures of their teenage listening – but for me that just adds to their charm. The clip below shows their mellower side and a flash of their muscle: the gig’s in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support if that’s any more of a draw. Nerve Toy Trio still seem like a band who’ve not quite found their audience yet. If you’ve read this far and are still interested, perhaps it’s you they’re looking for.

Tags: Albert Ayler, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), David Jones (bass guitarist), Earl Zinger, Emanative & Collocutor Duo, French Boutik, Howard Jones (drummer), listening to women, London (England), Mary Maria Park, Nerve Toy (Nerve Toy Trio), Of Arrowe Hill, Sarathy Korwar, Sealionwoman, The Scaramanga Six, The Senior Service, Tony Harn, Warrington

January 2016 – upcoming gigs (mostly London) – Daylight Music brings classical on the 23rd (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Experience Ensemble, Roger Doyle, Ok Bertie! and Jim Bishop) and pop on the 30th (The Wave Pictures, The Leaf Library and Citizen Helene); plus Martin Creed, William D. Drake and Stephen Evens in Brixton.

22 Jan

This should be the last of the January gig updates, though I always speak too soon… Don’t forget that The Bleeding Hearts Club Winter Escape is still on in Brighton on the 23rd.

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(Daylight Music presents)
Daylight Music 212 – Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Experience Ensemble + Roger Doyle + Ok Bertie! + Jim Bishop
Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 23rd January 2016, 12.00pm – free entry – more information

“Three decades ago, a group of London musicians took a good look at that curious institution we call the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and decided to start again from scratch. The Ann & Peter Law Experience Scheme gives talented young musicians a chance to perform with the Orchestra. In this concert the musicians on the scheme perform together, by themselves, for the first time, just a few weeks after finishing at the OAE Academy. It looks as if we’re going to be treated to some Haydn (Symphony No. 85 ‘La Reine’, the nickname originating because the work was a favorite of Marie Antoinette) plus the Romance written by his original London sponsor, Johann Peter Salomon.

Roger Doyle is known for his pioneering work as composer of electronic music. He has worked extensively in theatre, film and dance, in particular with the music-theatre company Operating Theatre, which he co-founded.

Ok Bertie is the moniker of Robert Szymanek, a singer-songwriter, composer, and visual artist living in London. Bertie’s debut album of songs is called ‘Music From A Crowded Planet’, and is due for release in 2016. It’s accompanied by the ground breaking Crowded Planet iOS app, created in collaboration with developer Matthew Hasler.

Sonic Brute mainstay Jim Bishop will also join us to take the Henry Willis organ out for a spin and bring us some time travel themed melodies: it’s time to go Bach to the Future!”

…or in my case, back to the past. Jim Bishop was at University with me long ago, and set some of my words to music for a body-issues revue at the Edinburgh Fringe. Jaunty.

More Daylight news further down…

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(Brixton Hill Studios presents)
Martin Creed & His Band + William D. Drake + Stephen Evens
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, England
Tuesday 26th January 2016, 8.00pm – more information

“As part of Independent Venue Week, tonight our lovely neighbours Brixton Hill Studios take over the venue with some special guests!

Perhaps best known for winning the Turner Prize back in 2001, Martin Creed has been actively making music since the early ’90s. Creed writes direct, compelling songs with the ability to both perturb and amuse. Think the rhythmic punk of Ian Dury and the wit and pop nous of Glasgow’s Postcard Records. He has released records on both Moshi Moshi and his own Telephone Records label.

William D. Drake is a keyboardist, pianist, composer and singer-songwriter. He is best known as a former member of the cult English rock band Cardiacs, whom he played with for nine years between 1983 and 1992. He has also been a member of The Sea Nymphs, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Nervous, Wood, Lake of Puppies and The Grown-Ups, as well as pursuing a career as a solo artist. His fifth album ‘Revere Reach’ came out in summer 2015.

Armed with a battered guitar, a Casiotone and a few pedals, Stephen Evens (better known as Steve “Stuffy” Gilchrist, erstwhile leader of Stuffy/The Fuses and drummer with Graham Coxon, Cardiacs, Charlotte Hatherley and The Scaramanga Six) presents songs that mix the likes of Yo La Tengo & Ivor Cutler with broken friendships and human error.”

* * * * * * * *

(Daylight Music & The Hangover Lounge present)
Daylight Music 213: The Wave Pictures, The Leaf Library + Citizen Helene
Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 30th January 2016, 12.00pm – free entry – more information

“The Wave Pictures will be launching their brand new, vinyl-only album ‘A Season In Hull’ at the Union Chapel on 30th January. The album was recorded on acoustic guitars in one room, with a bunch of their friends, live in to one microphone on singer Dave Tattersall’s birthday, January 28th, 2015. The songs were written as quickly as possible and the recording captures that specific moment in all its spontaneous, thrilling and immediate glory. As Tattersall elaborates: ‘That’s what this is – a one-microphone happy birthday recording.’

London quintet The Leaf Library (who create “droney, two-chord pop that’s stuck halfway between the garage and the bedroom, all topped with lyrical love songs to buildings, stationery and the weather”) have just released their debut full-length album ‘Daylight Versions’. The record is full of wonderfully woozy, drone-pop tunes about meteorology, the seasons and the incoming sea; from songs about the ghostly Suffolk coastline to the slowly rising waters of London marshes.

Citizen Helene is a singer, songwriter and guitarist from London whose blend of sunshine pop, psychedelic folk and jazz has been described as ‘baroque and beautiful’ by Darian Sahanaja (of the Brian Wilson band) and ‘like the love child of Karen Carpenter and Brian Wilson’ by ‘Word’ magazine.”

Tags: Arctic Circle (promoter), Brixton Hill Studios (event/promoter), chamber ensemble, Charlotte Hatherley, Citizen Helene, Daylight Music (event), French Boutik, Graham Coxon, Jim Bishop, listening to women, London (England), Martin Creed, Ok Bertie!, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Experience Ensemble, orchestral music, Roger Doyle, Stephen Evens, Stuffy/The Fuses, The Hangover Lounge (event), The Leaf Library, The Scaramanga Six, The Wave Pictures, William D. Drake

December 2010 – album reviews – Various Artists ‘Leader of the Starry Skies – A Tribute to Tim Smith – Songbook 1’ (“an unmapped musical crossroads… one of the most diverse tribute albums imaginable”)

20 Dec

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

Buy it from:
Genepool (CD) or iTunes (download)

Tim Smith online:

‘Leader Of The Starry Skies – A Tribute To Tim Smith – Songbook 1’ online:

Tags: Andy Partridge, Cardiacs, Christian Hayes (Bic Hayes), Craig Fortnam, fund-raising, gestures of faith, glorious twitch, head spins gently, intimations of ancientness, intriguingly mixed bags, Julianne Regan, Katherine Blake, Kavus Torabi, kinda blue, Knifeworld, listening to women, Mark Cawthra, Max Tundra, men and women singing together, Mikrokosmos, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Oceansize, Rarg, rattlebag, Robert White, Rose Kemp, Sarah Measures, Stars in Battledress, Steven Wilson, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Magic Numbers, The Milk & Honey Band, The Monsoon Bassoon, The Scaramanga Six, The Trudy, Tim Smith, tribute albums, Ultrasound, William D. Drake, word salad

Comments 3 Comments
Categories 2010, album reviews, alternative pop, alternative rock, crossover, dance music, Early Music, electronic, electronica, experimental music, folk music, folktronica, freaktronica, math rock, pop, post-punk, progressive rock, psychedelic rock, punk rock, reviews, rock, sampledelia

January 2002 – EP reviews – The Scaramanga Six’s ‘The Continuing Saga of The Scaramanga Six’ (“full walking-heart-attack mode”)

27 Jan

The Scaramanga Six: ‘The Continuing Saga of The Scaramanga Six’

“Horsepower – horseplay!” As The Scaramanga Six plunge down into Pressure Cage with a ferocious blurt of punched-out amplifiers, they show they’ve evolved into a much more direct band than the psychedelic gangland chroniclers they’ve been before. Now less haunted by intimations – and more stirred by actual events – their Birthday Party/Six By Seven dirty-rock assault is more bloodshot eyes than shifty gazes.

Pressure Cage, in particular, is a blazing reaction to all manner of stress – fantastically blunt and brutal. In a mottled fury, Paul Morricone seethes against ram-raiders, bad business deals and the nine-to-five in full walking-heart-attack mode, as the guitars vent gallons of spleen in a whirl of booze-induced bludgeoning. “I love being a suit-and-tie, / my face is red and I’m gonna die. / Don’t force me or you’ll tip the scales – / I’m just a workhorse in your pressure cage.”

The frightening violence of small men oozes across this EP: Scaramanga territory, for sure. While Pressure Cage’s narrator restricts his own petty tyrannies to domestic violence and to intimidating waitresses, the protagonist of Big in a Small Town haunts the scenes of past humilations and (to a backing clang of pulsating guitars and death-metal screeches) ferments savage bile as fuel. “This was a schoolyard: / the boys, they used to play hard. / I swore revenge at the things they would do – / I’d make them eat the shit from my shoes!”. He may or may not be the hard-nut and big-shot he claims to be (“round these parts, know my voice – / know my roles, know my Royce!”) but he’s obviously bonded himself to his hometown with vicious sentiment – “ring me up and I’ll show you round…/ This is the place I was born – / I swore I would take it, I swore I’d do more,” – and with a kind of predatory benevolence (“they are good people, / I know they’re grateful.”)

But Scaramanga songs are ultimately less about power than they are about damage. Steve Morricone delivers The Stupidest Man in the World in hollow, flinty, brittle tones (like Nick Cave with a punctured lung) while drums, guitars and whining Moog fold up melodramatically around him like a collapsing shack. “His path is paved with such bitter regrets / as he ponders on the sweet lips, all the work he did neglect… / You kids, with your hearts so young and so free, / take some advice from this broken man you see.”

The stunning Singer of Songs staggers from the horror of burnout and loss, and of seeing your own swollen hands break what’s precious. “I don’t know my strength – did I brush you away / when all I wanted to was keep you in place?” laments Paul over seasick organ. Still there’s that helpless clutching after vindication, after control (“I’m the singer, the singer of songs / I can’t help but speak the truth and do no wrong,”) even though the song ends in a roar of sirens, churning guitars and a confessional howl of “I can’t help myself… I mean it…”

And as for the hope of breaking old habits… well, resignation drenches the final song alongside the weary old cinema organ. “Is there a chapter where the man loses heart?” Paul ponders aloud. “Is this the beginning of a new avenue? / Will your replacement just repeat after you?” Having broken the scabs on the psychic wounds of the dark Yorkshire streets their songs inhabit, The Scaramanga Six don’t bring any balm. What they do bring, though, is a devastating observation of the cycles of violence and desperation that breed there. This band gets ever more powerful, ever more essential.

The Scaramanga Six: ‘The Continuing Saga of The Scaramanga Six’
Wrath Records, WRATHCD02 (Barcode)
CD-only EP
Released: January 2002
Get it from: (2020 update) buy CD from The Scaramanga Six Shop; download from Google Play; stream via Deezer, Apple Music or Spotify
The Scaramanga Six online:

Tags: Huddersfield (England), Paul Morricone, The Scaramanga Six

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories 2002, alternative rock, EP reviews, garage rock, hard rock, reviews, rock

April 2001 – EP reviews – The Scaramanga Six’s ‘Are You One of the Family?’ (“shrouded in threatening, paranoid twilight or caught in the jaws of mean streets”)

27 Apr

The Scaramanga Six: ‘Are You One of the Family?’

Sidle into the world of The Scaramanga Six carefully. When it’s not simmering in darkness or in the threat of chucking-out time aggro, it’s shrouded in threatening, paranoid twilight or caught in the jaws of mean streets. There’s a jagged, brutally slashing organ; guitars that bludgeon and swipe; heavy beat-downs of choruses; and voices that crack and fray nastily with the surge of the music. This is hard-centred pop music, made by five tough-looking guys in suit-and-ties and a woman who looks like the gang boss’ daughter, taking her own team out to batter the husbands of her schoolday rivals.

Or maybe it’s in the mind. Though the Scaramangas seem steeped in a very English, Godfathers-style violence of petty brawls, drink-fuelled action (“give me some courage, and make it Dutch”) and frustration penned-up in hometown limits, they aren’t numbed by it. Instead, they use it as the spur for a fierce, dramatic rock with the fierce intensity of Pixies, Cardiacs or – most precisely – Six By Seven. There’s an explosive force to Paul and Steve Morricone’s band that equals that of Nottingham’s hard poets of anti-glamour. And if they’re not as sophisticated as Pulp (another ready comparison) they’ve got bigger claws.

The jerking brutality of Are You One of the Family, in which Paul’s grim vocal balances on shards of gasping organ, sets up this EP’s general atmosphere of dirty surrealism. It’s a nightmare of social claustrophobia in which “everything is family – / the cars that pass, the crazy gas that’s surrounding me” and where “everything you see and do / comes back to someone who you are related to.” A place in which there’s no escape from surveillance: “a man will stop and ask my name / I needn’t answer – our names are the same. / I have cousins in the trees; / and, in the bushes, uncles watching over me.”

Ladies and Gentlemen is also family business – ostensibly, it’s a sentimental song, but Paul sings it with a battleship-grey clang which suggests that someone at the party will be going home in a box. “We are gathered here today, in a room sitting comfortably. / Let me shake your hands. / You want to be entertained, you want to be out for fun / and there is someone amongst us here / who I can never forget.” Beyond the funereal organ and the leaden-weight crash of guitars, nothing actually happens… but the Yorkshire Mafiosi atmosphere soaks the air.

Relief from this tension is briefly found in the pop-eyed psychobilly of Grasp the Candle, in which Steve Morricone is let off the leash to trade screams with guitarist Julia Arnez, going for the debaser vote in a shambles of scuzzy drums, Birthday Party crashes and throbbing veins. “I’ve been sharing my bed with the drones from the hive, / I think I’d rather be buried alive… I hear you moaning and groaning – / my love is ripe for the dethroning.”

For Disenchanted Melody, the tension is back – although this time it’s in the even-more implicit shape of a hushed, mantric Slint-meets-Velvets thrum; a hauntingly sour psychedelic vocal drone, filled with foreboding. A guitar sets up a ceaseless metallic shiver behind the murmuring, harshly lovely harmonies and the gathering darkness of the words. “Night collapses suddenly… disenchanted melody / gently washes over me – / the sound is there, / the sound of air…” Even before the final burst of clanging guitar racket and hellish chorale, the air’s been sucked away around the song, whipped off down the streets where the family prowls.

This is a dark and powerful band, who hang around like a threatening cloud even after the music stops.

The Scaramanga Six: ‘Are You One of the Family?’
Wrath Records, WRATHCD01 (barcode unavailable)
CD-only EP
Released: April 2001
Get it from: (2020 update) buy CD from The Scaramanga Six Shop; download from Google Play; stream via Deezer, Apple Music or Spotify
The Scaramanga Six online:

Tags: Huddersfield (England), The Scaramanga Six

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories 2001, alternative rock, EP reviews, garage rock, hard rock, reviews, rock

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Misfit City

October/November 2018 – upcoming English rock’n’rap gigs – Collapsed Lung, The Scaramanga Six and Sleepy People (variously 12th, 13th and 19th October; 2nd, 3rd, 16th, 17th and 30th November)

November/December 2017 – more assorted Smithery – BarmyFiveseveN play Tim Smith at Connector V, Amsterdam (2nd November); Spratleys Japs’ Wonderful Winter Wonderland tour of England (14th-17th December)

November/December 2016 – upcoming British gigs – William D. Drake plays Preston (with Paul Morricone and All Hail Hyena!), and London (18th November, 1st December); Bob Drake unveiled in London, helped by Kavus Torabi and The Beetles (9th December)

November 2016 – upcoming gigs – The Scaramanga Six in Winchester and London (5th, 12th) with A Formal Horse, The Bitch, The Fiascos and Zen Motel

July 2016 – a pair of one-day English festivals on the 16th (EppyFest 5 in Stroud, The Whole World Window in Preston)

December 2010 – album reviews – Various Artists ‘Leader of the Starry Skies – A Tribute to Tim Smith – Songbook 1’ (“an unmapped musical crossroads… one of the most diverse tribute albums imaginable”)

January 2002 – EP reviews – The Scaramanga Six’s ‘The Continuing Saga of The Scaramanga Six’ (“full walking-heart-attack mode”)

April 2001 – EP reviews – The Scaramanga Six’s ‘Are You One of the Family?’ (“shrouded in threatening, paranoid twilight or caught in the jaws of mean streets”)

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