We Need To Talk About Jo(h)n

I Googled Myleene Klass quickly whilst writing this review.  Now I see her knickers in my sidebar whenever I go on Facebook.  It must be by far the most commercially viable thing I've Googled in about 2 years.

LCO SOLOISTS & JONNY GREENWOOD, Beard Museum, St John The Evangelist, 21/2/15

There are a number of people who have taken the sometimes shaky walk between pop and classical but, whether they’re iconoclasts who rubbed against their new world (Zappa), surprising traditionalists (Lord; Sting) or vapid embarrassments (Klass), the popular star generally retains centre stage.  Interestingly, neither Jonny Greenwood nor his promo people have over-publicised his recent compositions for concert hall or celluloid and, whilst this event probably sold out more quickly than your average contemporary music gig, it’s clear that serious (if not necessarily austere) music is the sole focus tonight.  Perhaps we should file Greenwood as “cross-under”.

Tellingly, Jonny isn’t onstage that much, leaving the spotlight to the excellent London Contemporary Orchestra Soloists.  His one solo showcase, Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint” has surprisingly bluesy phrasing, as if yanking the airy serenity of Metheny’s famous version down from the clouds to dingy bars and city streets.  As a composer his work is balanced and varied, highlights being “Miniature”, which adds to tambura drones a cold constellation of Satie piano notes and aching violin that is positively Vaughan Williams, and “Future Markets”, a full throttle dirt-ride for strings like a cross between Bernard Herrmann and Can.  Occasionally the soundtrack origins of much of the music can make it feel a little pat and guilty of emotive signposting, but the sound has a depth and mystery that makes it far more Penderecki than Korngold.  Only “Self-Portrait With Seven Fingers” disappoints, using the audience’s phone-triggered tinny plinks to create a Fisher-Price carillon: the aleatory concept is intriguing, but it’s mostly just annoying.

Although the LCO musicians are a honed ensemble, the night’s highlights come from two solo pieces.  Oliver Coates’s version of cello and effects piece “Love” by Mica Levi takes the blasted romanticism of the original version and emphasises a cheap seasick awkwardness, until it resembles V/Vm tackling Nyman, and Anna Lapwood’s take on Messiaen’s Bachian boogie-woogie pile-up “Les Anges” on the SJE’s organ perfectly mixes the twitchy intricacy with the devotional intent.  That the applause for these two pieces is as warm as that for Jonny’s guitar spot speaks volumes about the quality of these performers, and the open-minds of the audience.

One Alauda

I just watched a film called Octopus 2.  I hadn't watched the first one, but I managed to follow the plot anyway. This review, from the latest Nightshift, features the typo I made, "Glad Plugin".  The editor either didn't notice the missing E, or just assumed it was something cool he'd never heard of.

SKY:LARK/ SCREEN WIVES/ MASIRO, Idiot King, Cellar, 7/2/15

Depending on where you cast your gaze you can see any number of representation of underground music in the media: glossy molls swigging bottled lager and singing along with the next big thing; gorgeous soft-focus festival folkies snapping each other on smart phones; rock-crazed ne’er-do-wells spiralling into drug abuse; Swindon.  But nothing sums it up for us better than the sight of a man dressed only in his pants crawling round a basement stage, trying to gaffer a bass drum back together.  Either side of this dose of literal DIY music, in a necessarily curtailed set, London’s Screen Wives twist out an angular, Fugazoid hardcore that kicks like a hoof to the solar plexus, but has room for cheeky, witty little trills and paradiddles.  The songs are brief, the band hissing short bursts of noise into the venue like a demented Glade Plugin.

Before that, Oxford’s Masiro had treated us to one of their displays of sonic science. The twitchy, multi-part structure of their music is always impressive, like a metal-flavoured Don Caballero, and even like Primus without the schoolyard japes, but they always manage to bring in some melodic or textural originality to save us from mere academic cleverness.  The set is like a spiderweb from a fly’s point of view: intricate, beautiful, sludgy, and completely deadly.

Intricate being one thing we wouldn’t accuse Sky:Lark of trying for.  Over a bed of unwavering feedback, the trio thrash through dense repetitious snarling grooves something like Motorhead with a krautrock fixation.  The best moments of the set are when the vocals bawl and screech over two note unriffs like Finnish minimalists Circle crossed with Megadeth, and the worst moments are when they stop.  There’s the odd snatch of fuzzy melody, but in essence theirs a brief onslaught of brash noise, to finish a night of intriguing, exciting music...and not an iPad or a crackpipe in sight.