Foggy Notion

Mr Clegg, Mr Compo and Ms Batty were unable to attend this gig, I suppose...

MR FOGG/ BRAINDEAD COLLECTIVE/ TARIK BESHIR, Pindrop/Kicking Ink, UPP, 17/9/09


When internet promotion for a gig describes it as a “cosmic event” and an “amazing astral vibez show” featuring “projections from the ether” expectations are low – surely we’re either going to be dumped amongst a teeming mass of well-medicated hippies attempting to marry us off to Princess Leyline in a giant naked healing ceremony, or in a hideously knowing Shoreditch preenfest. As it is, despite one preposterous neo-Oakey fringe flapping gratuitously, this turns out to be a friendly evening of approachable music. The ethos is best encapsulated by Brickwork Lizard Tarik Beshir, who plays songs on his oud accompanied by fiddle and qanun, a large plucked dulcimer. Beshir doesn’t boast the ghostly keening tone of great North African singers, but his quiet voice adds to the conversational feel of the set. Where the ambience is uncomplicated, the music is anything but, fragments of melody mutating like fractals, and fiddle lines arcing away gloriously.

Once, when musicians wanted a busman’s holiday, playing outside their normal bands, they’d start covers acts. Now they all choose free improv. Fears that Braindead Collective - featuring members of Guillemots, Keyboard Choir, Joe Allen Band, etc -would be a smug bundle of poorly placed skronks are dashed by their opening salvo, a Godspeed-plays-the-spectralists cluster of wafts and pulses. The set may be improvised, but it’s built on small packets of horn melody and bolstered by groovy basslines and tap-tempo laptop effects, until it ends up resembling the jazzier end of the Ninja Tunes catalogue: The Cinematic Orchestra without the rustle of Rizlas, perhaps, or Mr Scruff through a refracting lens. Surprisingly coherent.

Mr Fogg’s post-Radiohead glitch-pop is the most conventional fare on tonight’s bill, but he makes up for it by squeezing at least three sets’ worth of rock cliché into his performance. Musically it’s all rather good, some well written laptop pop songs performed with the broad strokes of the contemporary “mainstream alternative” (think Four Tet versioned by Muse), and there are some great arrangements, especially the gorgeous trombone interjections, but the effect is scuppered by thirty minutes of desperate rockist posing and manic “good evening Wembley” gurning. We’re the sort of people to find all stadium postures pretty ridiculous, but what looks dumb in Budokan is almost unbearable in a slowly emptying provincial cinema. Go see Mr Fogg, but take a blindfold to enjoy the experience.