Unfetter Cheese?

Nutshaft's editor was hit by a surprise change in submission dates by its printers this month, so I had to change my schedule and write this review in a few stolen moments.  To be honest, it came out alright, although it might be a bit purple...and I got the LP name wrong in the original.  Still, the editor should have corrected it, isn't that his job, or something?  Here's the Dec Ocelot plug thing, whilst we're at it.

I went to a gig the other day.  It was promoted by It’s All About The Music (although as this was not their first event I’ve been to where the promoter didn’t even enter the building, I wonder whether there isn’t an ulterior motive).  I saw some great music from Oxford, Swindon and California via Berlin, but I was driven to write about Charms Against The Evil Eye, Oxford’s whirlpool of prog, pop and Pitt Rivers signage.

Once upon a time Matt Sewell had a band called The New Moon, and they made some very pleasant lightly psychedelic folk-pop tunes, about cosmology, bifurcating felines and a very strange, acid-fried photographer.  The songs were good, in a crepuscular Robyn Hitchcock vein, but the band never quite did them justice, decent though their efforts were.  It was the addition of a new name and a supple, almost jazz-inflected rhythm section that lifted the band and made them one of Oxford’s secret gig pleasures, often to be found in the dusty corner of some odd line-up somewhere in the shire, playing to a select coterie of appreciators.  Not that they can’t ramp up the noise and the three chord garage fuzz if they end up higher on the bill...even if someone not a million pages from this column thought they resembled The Black Hats’ dads at this point.

If you like your songwriters intellectual, melodic, laconic and looking a bit like Vic Reeves, then I suggest crossing your fingers, carving an oaken talisman, donning a Mesopotamian pendant and heading out for some Charms Against The Evil Eye.

FREE CHOW – ASLEEP WITH MY HAND IN YOUR MOUTH (Own label download)

Sometimes, you just know the title came first.  Take Robert’s Web, the atrocious 2st century Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown in which comedian Robert Webb introduced ‘net clips with a dead-eyed resignation.  Or, consider Jesus In Furs, Free Chow’s Christmas song: surely the name came first, and the concept of throwing nativity lyrics at The Velvets’ finest bondage anthem later.  Either way, it’s great fun, a Benylin-wooze of varispeed tape vocals and cheap guitars which, considering the LP also on offer, is not too sacrilegious.

For, Asleep With My Hand In Your Mouth is a brutal stream of tacky noise and schoolboy taboo bashing, somewhere between The Butthole Surfers and V/Vm, sliming its way from the ersatz sex waltz of “This Is My Scrotum” to the Stylophone country of “Freight  Train”, presets goosestepping over common decency with every bar.  Childish nonsense, in many ways, but high quality childish nonsense: we love the Chicory Tip bass keys on “Don’t Touch Kids”, the Rocky Horror meets Jigsaw weirdness of the opener, and the fact that jukebox, pukebox rock ‘n’ roller “PB Party” manages to make jokes about both Hamlet and putting peanut butter up your arse.  When our tabloid media increasingly indulges in ethical paradoxes, denouncing pornography whilst celebrating unceasing titillation, demonising supposed deviants whilst shoving airbrushed teenage midriffs where the actual news used to go, perhaps the only option is to blow a big raspberry, stick two fingers in the air and make an ugly pop song about pederasty.  We like this record.  We may not always enjoy it, but we like it.

Vampire, Weak End

Here's a review.  And here's another Ocelot article to go with it.  Presumably the new one is now on the corners of bars, as from yesterday.  I seem to have got a month out of sync.  I'll have to write an extra review to catch up with myself.

Audioscope deal in vintage stereo equipment.  Audioscope also manufacture hearing aids.  And furthermore it’s a Welch Allyn model of audiometer.  But ignore all that Google noise, because so far as we’re concerned, Audioscope is a charity festival in Oxford, that since 2001 has raised over £22,000 for homeless charity Shelter.  The principle is simple: get some of the best acts from rock music’s leftfield into a room all day, ensure the volume is loud and the bar is fully stocked, and get people to pay a very reasonable amount to get in and see top acts like Can’s Damo Suzuki, Wire and Four Tet, and well as lesser known experimental noiseniks from Oxfordshire and beyond.  And they sell cupcakes, which is something akin to nirvana after 4 solid hours of beer, doom metal and breakcore.

On 23^rd November at The Jericho you can see America’s wonderful avant-Morricone types Califone topping the bill, but our personal tips would be Ghostbox’s hauntological heroes Pye Corner Audio, spooking you royally like the ghost of the Children’s Film Foundation in a cave  made of synth, and Tomaga, who twine effects around live drums and twist them into a fascinating sonic skein.  In short, you should attend because Audioscope is good value, raises money for a superb cause, and features loads of funny noises.  In fact, go back to that Welch Allyn website; there’s a mysterious clinician sticking a little machine in a boy’s ear, which pumps out randomly selected tones.  Perhaps those two Audioscopes aren’t so different after all.

ALEXANDER SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO/ NOSZFERATU, Oxford Contemporary Music, North Wall, 17/11/13

The Alexander Schlippenbach Trio have been touring for 43 years, and judging by Paul Lovens, you’d think they’d never had a night off.  With his three day stubble and tired, loose black tie, he looks for all the world like The Simpson’s ill-starred salesman, Ol’ Gil Gunderson.  When he hunches over his low drumkit, the clattering avalanche he creates makes us think of some lovably unfortunate rom com loser trying to wash dishes in a speeding caravan.  The trio’s improvisation is a masterclass, and, at twenty minutes, far too short.  Over Lovens’ astonishing percussive barrage, Schlippenbach lays down roving piano chords that, much like a David Lynch plot, seem to very nearly make perfect sense, and Evan Parker is a huge, unflappable presence in the centre of it all – although he does eventually reach his trademark sax skirls, for much of the set he interjects slow, sad lines as if he were trying to find a Broadway ballad somewhere in the fracas.

Before that, Noszferatu played three new compositions, that skirted the edge of jazz.  In fact, good though it was, sometimes, you wished they’d skirt a little further; take Finn Peters “43”, a piece that starts with mournfully zenlike flute, bowed vibraphone and single piano notes, like individual pixels in some wintry scene, but develops into a cocktail Debussy miasma that was a little overly pretty.  The best piece is Dave Price’s “Twitcher”, scored for piccolo and various bird calls, a huffing, squeaking concoction sounding joyously like a rubber-clad gimp doing calisthenics. 

After the interval both acts come together to play three further compositions, but despite some interesting elements, and inevitably fantastic performances, the soundfield feels a little crowded.  Hanna Kulenty turns this to her advantage in “Smokey Eyes”, sounding like all the cues from an episode of Columbo happening at once, tense woodblocks rubbing against eerie flute and love theme piano, but generally we wish both acts could have played separately for longer instead.  They end with Joe Cutler’s “Flexible Music”.  It’s enjoyable, but the trios sounded a damn sight more flexible in the first half.

Bluetoneberries

The Art Bar is the new name for The Bully.  As yet the internal art count is low, and I fear this tally will not improve.  It looks hideous - no more hideous than the hideous Bully, of course, but this hideous was at the cost of money and half-baked conceptual brainstroming, I suspect; I wonder whether it will mean an increase in turnover?  I wonder, but I don't predict.   At what point, precisely, did clumsy, blanket rebranding replace thinking about how to servce customers or supply a product calculated to be liable to turn a profit?  Anyway, here's the October Ocelot thingummy.

In October, Klub Kakofanney celebrates its 22^nd anniversary.  Just think about that for a moment.  22 years of monthly events.  In a culture where nights like My Friends Stopped Coming After Three Events Productions, This Is Harder Than It Looks Promotions, and What Does “Budget” Mean Again? Incorporated come and go, the idea of a promoter lasting more than 6 months is barely conceivable, and yet Phil Freizinger and Sue Smith, two bedraggled punk hippy renegades, have managed to put on events for over two decades that are surprising, engaging and welcoming.  And sometimes rubbish, granted, but often one of the best nights out in Oxford.  Join them at The Wheatsheaf for 3 days on the first weekend in October, and on the first Friday of every month thereafter.  You’ll find an eclectic range of performances, a quirkily friendly atmosphere, and dancing so clunky it looks like it was choreographed by George Romero.

Phil and Sue can also be caught most weekends in some benighted Oxfordshire pub or other plying their trade with The Mighty Redox.  It’s a presumptuous adjective to have in the name, but their woozy syrup of psychedelia, funk, blues and Gong-scented silliness really is a powerful pick-me-up.  There aren’t many bands who can throw squealing guitar workouts, harrowing banshee howls and even bass solos at rural bar-proppers and not only get away unscathed, but actually make them frug like fools by the end of mammoth sets.  If you’ve been doing something for 22 years, you’re either doing it right, or are oblivious to what you’re doing wrong; either way, we’ll be there to do it too.

SUPERFOOD/ ARTCLASSSINK/ GUS ROGERS, DHP, Art Bar, 14/10/13

Kill Murray are unable to perform because of illness, so vocalist Gus Rogers fills in solo, strumming a fuzzy guitar over what could be A-Ha backing tracks, and singing in a high, delicate slur, like the ghost of a tramp.  Gig cancellation is pandemic in this town, so we applaud Gus’ decision to perform under straitened circumstances.  It’s impressive that one track even sounds quite spell-binding, even as it’s depressing that there are trendy types all over the shop offering essentially the same half-baked fare and garnering plaudits from every angle.

Never trust a restaurant where the main menu is more than two pages.   Chefs should be celebrating what they do best, not offering everything in a desperate attempt to please the world.  Artclasssink approach music like a beered-up posse at such an establishment, ordering willy-nilly, and suggesting “just put it all in the middle, mate, and we’ll mix and match”.  And so Joy Division portentousness scratches against glistening Cocteaus guitar, whilst Mansun choruses straddle mall-rock thumping.  That it makes no sense is its charm, but when the band lose their rhythm or let their composure slip – worryingly regularly – it’s as if that dining party were passing out one by one.

Birmingham’s Superfood are an up-and-coming band.  You can tell because the tracks on their Soundcloud have so many celebratory comments that listening to them creates a pop-up strobe effect that burns the word “sick” onto your retinas.  Sadly, this online fever has not translated to a large turnout, which is a shame, as it feels as though the band would thrive on a vibrant crowd.  Their rhythms are insistent, but lithe and bouncy, and the vocals are approachable and warm, and they look as though they’re just waiting for the next good time to catalyse.  The songs sound like Ride without the pedals mixed with first album Blur, which is fine, even if they also resemble The Bluetones with alarming regularity.  It would be supercilious to claim that a young band can’t find inspiration from the music of the mid-90s, but it would be nice to see these decent musicians stretching themselves.   After all, look at the back page of this magazine: Britpop clearly hasn’t yet finished eating itself.