IRREGULAR FOLKS SUMMER SESSION, Victoria Arms, Old
Marston, 1/7/17
Irregular Folks say they don’t do headliners, and when
the very first act on the bill is the outstanding Yorkston Thorne Khan, we’re apt to believe them. As we’re alternately buoyed up by Moving
Shadow influenced double bass swells and snarled in dense brambles of sarangi we
watch a special gazebo being set up to stop anyone mooring up a punt and
getting in for free, which has to be the most Oxford piece of security ever –
we feel bad about sneaking in drugs inside our Brideshead teddy bear, now. If
we wanted accompaniment to such well-heeled crime capers Jack Cheshire’s artful, bucolic English prog
is the perfect choice, a gyroscopic blur of prog-pop that spins jazzily somewhere
between Wilco and Fridge. Occasionally a
tiny bit prissy, but overall entrancing, and all enhanced by some Stornobass.
A bugbear of ours is journalists who only ever compare
female musicians to other woman performers, but there are no male equivalents to
the tastefully breathy kookstimme of someone like Joanna Newsom, let’s not beat
around the Bush. Laura J Martin’s tastefully looped pop tapestries are actually at
their best when she swaps the wide-eyed vocals for some percussively cheeky
Herbie Mann flute workouts, anyway.
Oly Ralfe’s
meandering piano fripperies are the only mis-step in the musical schedule, but he
does allow us to recline on the satiny cushions of the bordello-kino on
Mini-Movie Island, a home for short films whose highpoints are leftfield comedies,
reminding us that Buxton and Serafinowicz are as responsible for bringing as
much quirkily literate originality to British popular culture of the past
quarter century as Welsh or Cocker. Not
that the Brits have cornered the market, as proved by a talk in the
consistently excellent Odditorium lecture-yurt about cartoonist B Kliban,
forgotten influence on the syndicated surrealism of Gary Larson or Rupert
Fawcett. And of course there is the
genius of Paul Foot, who MCs the
whole day with the spiralling manic desperation of a teaching assistant failing
their workplace assessment.
With her sparse programmed backing Hannah Bruce at first reminds us of fellow Oxonian Esther Joy Lane
but soon has us thinking of mid-80s Carly Simon and the airbrushed windswept
vistas of vintage Chris Isaak, and so keeps us fascinated even when we’re not
entirely convinced. There’s more
stately, minimal pop from Rozi Plain
which would probably sound harmlessly pleasant if you were enjoying the sun and
the Vicky Arms’ ales, but which is spellbinding when you give yourself up to
it: we’ve heard of acts rewarding close
attention, but Rozi Plain pays out like a banjaxed one-arm bandit, their dinner
party kraut subtlety drawing us in more with every track, until they sound like
The Sundays played by To Rococo Rot.
Doing a Sun Ra cover makes you awesome; doing one so it sounds like The
Cardigans languorously evaporating in a greenhouse made of spun sugar makes you
the best act of the day.
Go Dark is the
new act featuring Doseone, alt hip hop yarnspinner and abstract geek hyper-poet
whose style is ADHD meets AD&D.
Musically the duo, with fellow button puncher and mike wrangler Crash,
is brasher than much of Doseone’s older work, supplying stuttering glitch
treatments of shiny sass-pop that sounds like a Flying Lotus remix of Gwen
Stefani’s greatest hits or a version of Basement Jaxx’s Kish Kash made on a cubist SNES, and the presentation is more
brazen by a factor of about one squillion – the camp stagewear with rainbow arm
insignia is as much Bucks Fizz as it is Buck Rogers. No
wonder the event programme writes the band’s name ALL IN CAPITALS, you can’t
miss this Dayglo sonic explosion, and you shouldn’t miss next year’s Irregular
Folks session, either – how many gigs feature great acts and a fireworks display and a TED talk on werewolf erotica,
eh? Book your getaway punt now, and join
us in 2018.
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