Bloody blimey space invaders, I've been busy today! At work, at home, on the way to my bi-annual haircut, I've been running about like a mad bugger. Not a terrible thing, I like a busy life, but I'm feeling the effect now. Anyway, here's one from a few years ago.
Oh, just in case it looks weird, "PMT" is a music hardware shop in Oxford. It stand for Professional Music Tehcnology; if you think the acronym is embarrassing, you should see the fucking logo.
SLEEPS IN OYSTERS/ THE SILKROOM/ AMBERSTATE - Melodic Oxford, Port Mahon, 5/06
Melody in music works like plot in fiction: it's not essential, but it can be a useful entrance point, and, if done well, is a joy in its own right. Melodic Oxford is cleverly arranging events that explore how wide a variety of musicians have a melodic sensibility at work. With supper jazz drums, sub-aquatic bass, langourous vocals and keys that lalternate between ridiculous Rick Wakeman-style arpeggios and sonar blips (mostly produced by slapping a vocoder mike), Amberstate serve up smouldering tunes like a lo-fi Smoke City. If you like the thought of the second Lamb album made in a garden shed, give them a whirl and go home happy.
Oddly, The Silkroom seem to run on melodic empty. They sound like Franz Ferdinand with three quarters of the songs removed, so to make up for this dearth they play ridiculously loud and put the vocals through some effects. Sadly, all the pedals in PMT couldn't disguise the singer's two-note youth club blurt, and the set feels lax and flabby. They could have a future making Billy Mahonie-style stop-start music, but tonight we infinitely preferred the stop.
Sleeps In Oysters refresh our waning Sunday spirits with an intriguing set. They have enough fuzzy loops and glitches to make Sunnyvale blush, yet they embellish them with gorgeous tuneful figures on toy glockenspiels and such, like a Fisher Price Sigur Ros. The glacial female vocal lines are a treat too, though the male counterpart is a little nasal. Their racks of equipment test the Port's sticky tape sound system, but they shouldn't let it get to them so obviously, as their music is joyous.
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