Here's my second review for this month's Nightshift. The editor reviewed the In A Different Place all-dayer, but as he was one of the organisers and had shifts on the door and so on, I wrote some copy. You'll find the text below interpolated into the review at feb.pdf.
IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, 1512/24
Whilst one might expect the front bar to host acoustic acts, there’s a surprising array of styles and genres on display throughout the afternoon. However, opening act Aphra Taylor is a textbook example of a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. This is definitely not to say that her set is generic, though, her voice full of smoke and sweetness, and her delivery enlivened by tiny trills and ornaments that make the performance unique.
The merch table is surprisingly sparsely utilised during the day, but Sinews are selling a “horseface T-shirt". Considering their set is like having your face trampled by rabid stampeding stallions, this seems fitting. Their post-hardcore flagellation draws obvious comparisons to Fugazi or Drive Like Jehu, but there’s a sensitive heart beating somewhere within the maelstrom.
Baby Maker’s songs are like the flayed and brittle skeletons of new wave pop, with bouncy tunes reduced to chugging drum machines, cheeky guitar twangs, and wry vocals, offering hints of Arab Strap’s laconic lofi story-telling. The set is sometimes more intriguing than successful, but the character shines through.
The most intense set of the day is possibly delivered by Pet Twin, whose music has morphed over the last year from sparse confessional pop to huge theatrical workouts, which seem to be cathartic rituals for Gallagher as much they are spectacles for the audience. A typical track merges thick treacly bass, heart-wrenching vocals, and euphoric keys, so that you’re not sure whether to dance, weep, or collapse in the corner. One or two tracks have slightly messy endings, but really who cares about the landing once you’ve soared in flight? And, just at the point we think things couldn’t get any better, The Bobo comes onstage for the subaquatic ghost rave that is ‘No To Dread’.
Like Baby Maker, Lord Bug’s songs are sparse and idiosyncratic, more like half-remembered dreams than pop tunes, and like Aphra Taylor, Libby Peet’s vocals lift them to spellbinding new places, her voice warm and jazzy yet introspective and mysterious, and her delivery full of wonderful slurs and rubati, so that she comes off like a strange melding of Amy Winehouse and Lou Barlow. For an act with a track called ‘Dog’s Dinner’ this is a beautiful and balanced set.
The sound levels for GIGSY are perhaps a little low, but Khloë’s explosive stage energy would be enough for a gig to sound epic if the PA were rolled up newspaper attached to a dictaphone. Her music is a crunchy electronica take on dark-minded 80s synth – EDM meets EBM? - but the melodically aggressive vocal lines are built from club pop fun and burning rage, in equal measure
Two of the themes running through today’s event are vocalists with wired stage presence, and music with a stoned psych groove. Both of these come together for local favourites Flights Of Helios, whose set is an eclectic melange of post-punk wiriness and expansive folky textures. Chris Beard is an imposing frontman, swaying at the front of the stage, screaming, crooning, cajoling and entreating by turns like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher, a Dickensian villain, and a praying mantis. There are touches of adventurous acts such as Spiritualized or Ultrasound in their set, but as a nod to Christmas, they turn ‘Good King Wenceslas’ into a psych-punk mantra, perfect for anyone whose Christmas dinner is composed solely of brandy butter and brown acid.
The Subtheory bring back the classic trip hop sound, with low-slung beats, slinky bass, and hazy late-night vocals (plus, unexpectedly, some excellent restrained guitar solos). Whilst it might be fair to accuse them of cosy 90s revivalism, they do it so incredibly well, and this set has the greatest spaciousness and poise of any on the bill. Cate Debu’s vocals are cool and clear, sitting unhurried at the centre of the chunky grooves, and with James from Pet Twin joining in the singers supply a softly spoken personality to the songs, so that they’re as much Portisheart and they are Portishead (sorry).
As with Mandrake Handshake at last year’s festival, In A Different Place is headlined by a band who have moved from Oxford to London and found great success. Pecq might play their biggest gigs as part of touring bands for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks, but they more than own the stage as a trio, coming on to near darkness and launching into some understated tech-pop tunes that might convince you that “crepuscular bangers” is a genre. They take us on a slick, sleek ride through well tooled dreamy electro, but actually it i the subtlest moments that they truly bewitch, and a hushed bleepy cover of ‘Wichita Linesman’ morphs into one of their own songs in a bubbling pool of squelchy synthtones.
