Islet You Decide

BREAKING NEWS: The Florence Park darts final has been postponed!!!

ISLET, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Ctr, 7/3/20

Along with Vic 20, Chip Taylor, Bellowhead, Jurassic 5 and Fixers (non-wankered version), Islet gave us one the truly classic Truck festival sets, a decade ago.  But, whilst that gig was a fractal disco performed by howling cultists, a psychedelic percussive clatter apparently intended to deter (or possibly invoke) demonic intervention, over the years they have slimmed in size, and become more refined.  The ritualistic impetus has survived though, as they enter the venue tonight from the back, prancing lightly and tolling sweetly sonorous bells, the effect of which is either fairy wonderland or Kesey mushroom fayre, depending on your outlook.  It’s certainly not the sort of thing one usually witnesses in an old-fashioned community centre, just next to the dartboard.  Euphonious though this is, we are glad when they take to the stage and prove they can be more than stoned and twee.  In fact, so sharp are they that they are able to salvage a potentially atmosphere-killing technical glitch with some smart improvised patter, and the rest of the performance is no less focussed. 

Islet clearly have a love for the brief pop song form, no matter how obliquely they approach it, but despite this they share a trait with many krautrock acts, being simultaneously warm and organic, and sleek and other-worldly.  They’re proud to tell us that they’re soon to be supporting Foals – announcement embargo be damned! - but they have more in common with an avuncular Glass Animals.  The clipped bass, which could have come from an unknown Northern soul album by The Free Design, and the loose grooves on the stand-up drumkit make some of the tunes sound like early Ninja Tunes tracks refashioned from moss and houmous, whereas ethereal moments have more in common with one of Aphex’s selected ambient works.  There’s even a strange piece with lovely, liturgical vocals and cheeky synth, as if the Catholic church had created a new ceremony based on The Pepper’s novelty hit “Pepperbox”. Indeed the entire show, whilst never being precious, has a wonderfully hieratic feel.  Perhaps everyone at the gig is married now.  Perhaps we’re all converts, and just don’t yet know what to.  Perhaps, at the very least, the next darts league fixture might feel that tiny bit more significant.

Crack, Class A

This was a wonderful event.  Divine Schism have been right at the top of their promoting game for about 18 months now, got to as many of their gigs as you can...they;re normally reasonably priced, too.

HYPERDAWN/ KID KIN/ THE BOBO, Divine Schism, The Library, 12/2/20

By 2030, middle-aged hipsters will complain about two things: the disappointing appearance of tattoos on sagging street food and craft brew bloated flesh, and why their beloved tapes now sound rubbish, the permanence of both having been ill-considered, in different ways.  Still, there’s an aesthetic in the sounds of tape degradation that one can appreciate, even as it spoils once cherished recordings.  For example, new Oxford artist The Bobo utilises layers of fuzzy, twisted samples of their own voice as virtual accompanists, in a fashion that recalls that odd pre-emptive ghost track that occurs on some worn cassettes.  These enticing vocal pile-ups are joined by effected synth stabs, strewn brightly like scrunched sweet wrappers.  Tonight’s performance is a little hesitant, and could do with a touch more variation, but is often excellent in obscuring epic pop behind a glitchy sonic miasma, much in the way that Jenny Hval might: one track sounds like the pale spectre of a Kosheen banger wandering lost in a barrage of field artillery, which is something we’re eager to revisit.

Kid Kin is back to solo performance after a brief hiatus, and, in swapping guitar for keyboards, they have made their music cleaner and crisper than ever, a spick-and-span contemporary version of the sort of tuneful clinical lushness you’d find as instrumental beds for non-trailer cinema ads and corporate videos circa 1992.  As such, this is glossy music for shiny CDs, not scuzzy tapes, from the tricksy Detroit drum programming to the grown-up, ironed-shirt keyboard curlicues (one selection of near-cheesy piano flourishes is high-end easy listening made ruggedly cool – Richard Clayderman, you da man!).  One track reminds us of Boards Of Canada, so perhaps the set would sound even better recorded to VHS and left in the attic for a decade or so.

Salford duo Hyperdawn smash the outmoded into the modern, their tables laden with tiny sleek keyboards and digital triggers, alongside two huge reel-to-reel tape players.  This wonderful set can be thunderously huge or timid and tiny, but from vast sad looped choirs that sound like 10CC’s “I’m Not In Love” sung by bone-tired analogue banshees, to creamy lopsided R’n’B croons, it never moves far from melancholic melody lines that are a delicate as the long tape loops wound around a handy mike stand.  “Plastic” introduces a home-made string instrument, and comes off like Tom Waits’ backing band having a crack at Cocteau Twins, and “The End Of The World” features frenetic mike rubbing that could be an attempt to isolate and capture a single strand of feedback for a sonic lepidopterist’s specimen drawer.  The response from the spellbound crowd is simply, wow!  Not to mention, flutter.

Universal Credit

It's so pleasing to post a review to a record that is truly excellent.  Seek this one out, if you don't know it.

This differs a tiny bit from the published version, which refers to "downhearted" puppets, because the editor thought that "clinically depressed" might not be appreciated by all readers.  Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm fine with that, I'm not a "political correctness gone made" person, and I think it's important that editors consider what would be right for their readership, and the sensitivity in considering this issue reflects well on them.  However, as I know I didn't intend any malice in the usage, and as I don't think referring to a mental health diagnosis should be any different from alluding to physical conditions creatively - we've all read reviews that talk about "dead leg rhythms" or "sausage-fingered" guitarists or drummers "who must be deaf" etc.  Perhaps those should be made a ting of the past too. Anyway, if you have any thoughts either way, I'd be fascinated to hear them.  

Or, just ignore that self-regarding waffle and buy the album.  Did I mention that it's excellent?

LUCY LEAVE – EVERYONE IS DOING SO WELL (Divine Schism)

“We’re different, you can tell by looking at thumbs!”.  It sounds like a slogan from a rejected SEGA ad campaign, but it’s the outro refrain of one of the many excellent tracks on Lucy leave’s second album (if refrain is the right word for what sounds like three clinically depressed Sesame Street characters intoning a disappointing mindfulness mantra out of time with each other).  In a way, “Thumbs” typifies the album, by taking a nice neat, compact pop tune – in this case a chunky bass-led Sebadoh saunter – and pushing it off balance.  Whether it’s a sudden scribble of Frith/Kaiser guitar notes, an awkward falsetto croon, overblown freak-out recorder flurries or an inscrutable lyric (“alluvial fiasco!”), each track seems to contain one element which at first appears designed to commit musical sabotage, but which turns out to make perfect sense after a few listens.

From the opener, “Talking Heads” – which doesn’t sound like Talking Heads at all, more like Aerial M playing Yo La Tengo -  to the closer “Grandma 2”, a self-effacing Blur song which ends by quoting a 20s novelty jazz tune, listening to Everyone Is Doing So Well is like tripping up and stumbling headlong through the town, never quite falling, never regaining equilibrium, confused yet strangely exultant.  As with previous Lucy Leave releases, there will be those who find this record unnecessarily oblique, too understatedly asymmetrical, and conclude that the band is scrappy and can’t play – news update: they can play like motherfuckers – but for those of us who would edit the fuzzball abandon of “Gymnastics Club” into the prom scene of every John Hughes movie, this album is mysterious, ludic and quite, quite wonderful.  We love it.  You can tell.  Look at our raised thumbs.