This one was cut very slightly for this month's Nightshift. Firstly a couple of words were trimmed to squeeze it into the page, and secondly the rape image was toned down. Can't argue with that, really, but I must say that Harpo raping a swan, like some sort of inverse carnival Zeus, tickles me enormously.
That's all.
APARTMENT HOUSE, PLAYHOUSE, OCM/Sound & Music, 15/6/11
“The trouble with state arts funding,” runs the common argument, “is that it only supports things most people don’t like”. Funny that. It’s like asking why Baron Sugar doesn’t get any housing benefit. Tonight’s show, four pieces performed by the excellent Apartment House, selected and introduced by composer Jennifer Walshe, is exactly what Arts Council funding is for: niche interest music that simply wouldn’t work in The Wheatsheaf. The Playhouse is inhabited by a sparse knot of listeners, but the performers make full use of the excellent onstage facilities.
Amnon Wolman’s “Dead End” pits a clarinettist against four noisy toy vehicles that bumble around his feet, as if he were an unfeeling deity surrounded by excitable mortals. At first their constant buzz is annoying, but as the ear calibrates itself the noise makes sense with the clarinet lines. We start thinking about tape hiss, vinyl crackle and all extraneous noises we unconsciously experience alongside music.
Zachary Seldess attempts to evoke the sound of a cranky old New York shower in “124 Milton Street Extract”, using marimba, drums, radio static and rubbed wine glasses (played by five solemn middle aged performers at a table, like a glum seance convened by Jilly Goolden). The two drummers are superb, teetering on the edge of a cohesive rhythm, and the music is more like a photofit of the sound of plumbing, than a snapshot. It’s fascinating and immersive, if a touch too long.
In Peter Capaldi’s film Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, the Czech writer is trying to stay miserable enough to finish Metamorphosis, but has trouble as parties rage around him. “Plateaux Pour Deux” by Pelle Gudmondsen-Holmgreen is pretty similar: a cellist plays parodically dour notes, trying hard to ignore the fact he’s on a small motorised platform nipping across the stage, and that someone is smacking cowbells and honking vintage car horns making noises like Harpo Marx raping a swan. The solo cello coda is pointless, but for sheer spectacle, this is truly unique.
Finally, Jonathon Marmou’s “Dog Star” is composed from randomly selected snippets of melody, but this is unimportant because it sounds like Parisian salon music created by Brian Wilson. At another time it might seem too prissily pretty, but it concludes the night gorgeously, with a fragmented chamber elegance that might just entice fans of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
The next in OCM and Sound & Music’s Listen To This series is at the same venue on 8th September. Should minority interest arts be funded by the tax-paying majority? Take the odd risk on new experiences, and they wouldn’t have to be.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Charlbury 2011 Sunday Pt 2
Our love of louche Gallic troubadours Les Clochards is well documented, so we shan’t dwell on it here. One thing that leaps out at us is the quality of the lyrics in their set (thankfully for this shamefaced monoglot, pretty much all in English today). “Some things were never made clear/ Behind the surface, another veneer” is a lovely couplet in “Lavinia”, and the line “I stood on the fire escape and watched the sunrise” still raises the hairs on the back of the neck in “Tango Borracho”. Songwriting: some of you bands reading this really should try it one day.
Remember Banjo Boy from a few years back? Well, he’s here today, playing with The Headington Hillbillies, and we forget to watch. Very poor. We do see some of The Fenns, a family affair featuring different generations of Charlbury locals who get the best response of the weekend. Proficient covers isn’t really our bag – and having to listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” twice in one day is really testing us – but The Fenns boast plenty of charm, and there’s evident pleasure being had on and off stage, so we just sneak away quietly.
So, congratulations are in order to the Riverside organisors once again for another wonderful festival. A lovely weekend, and entirely for free: an obvious point, perhaps, but one worth repeating. If you doubt the effort that goes into running Riverside, take a look at the film of the site being set up on their website, embedded from Twitney, which we suppose is a Witney version of Twitter (of course, they’ve had social networking in West Oxfordshire for millennia, it’s called in-breeding). Riverside should be supported, cherished and celebrated by anyone who appreciates live music, especially today, when so many festivals have all the character and charm of a gulag in a Welcome Break motorway services. Same time next year, then?
Remember Banjo Boy from a few years back? Well, he’s here today, playing with The Headington Hillbillies, and we forget to watch. Very poor. We do see some of The Fenns, a family affair featuring different generations of Charlbury locals who get the best response of the weekend. Proficient covers isn’t really our bag – and having to listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” twice in one day is really testing us – but The Fenns boast plenty of charm, and there’s evident pleasure being had on and off stage, so we just sneak away quietly.
So, congratulations are in order to the Riverside organisors once again for another wonderful festival. A lovely weekend, and entirely for free: an obvious point, perhaps, but one worth repeating. If you doubt the effort that goes into running Riverside, take a look at the film of the site being set up on their website, embedded from Twitney, which we suppose is a Witney version of Twitter (of course, they’ve had social networking in West Oxfordshire for millennia, it’s called in-breeding). Riverside should be supported, cherished and celebrated by anyone who appreciates live music, especially today, when so many festivals have all the character and charm of a gulag in a Welcome Break motorway services. Same time next year, then?
Charlbury 2011 Sunday
Hello, good people of the internet. And wankers; a big "hi" to the evil wankers. To be honest, you're relative moral merits are irrelevant to me, just read the reviews and enjoy them. If it turns out you steal nuts from squirrels immediately afterwards, it's no concern of mine.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 19/6/11
As much fun as Saturday was, Sunday packed in a few more surprises for us, not least with Grey Children, the new project for Dave Griffiths, once of Eeebleee and Witches. As befits a first live performance of songs played by a scratch band, there are hesitant, uncertain moments in the set, but the material is very strong, with a muscular poeticism that’s something like a cross between Tindersticks and Sugar, with some excellent baroque curlicues from Benek Chylinski’s trumpet and Chris Fulton’s violin. Not a project we expect to see gracing the stage with great regularity, so it’s a real treat for those who turn up early.
After discovering him last year, we have to hang around to catch a bit of Sonny Black’s performance. You see so much hollow showboating in blues, it’s just great to see a relaxed, unhurried musician who lets his technique serve the music, and not the other way round. Hints of Davey Graham and John Renbourn abound, as well as the greats like Doc Watson. Sonny also plays some nice bottleneck national guitar, a gorgeous instrument which is only spoilt by the fact that just looking at the thing reminds us of Brothers In Arms.
A complete change of style at the other end of the festival, with thumping drum machines and squelching 303 basslines. We have an admission: we have no critical faculties in the face of acid house. None whatsoever. Honestly, just the sound of it immerses us in a wash of serotonin-drenched euphoria, taking us direct to cloud 909. So, for us to observe that Manacles Of Acid are very good indeed is probably meaningless, but they do a bang up job of reliving that wonderful space between Phuture and early Orbital. There’s a lovably ramshackle edge to the show, as lines come in at different volumes, and jack leads are swapped on the fly, but really if you do this music well, it always sounds good, you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook. So, not that dissimilar from Sonny Black after all.
Main stage engineer Jimmy Evil disappears at about this time, so we follow him over to the second stage to witness his progcore outfit Komrad. Since we last saw them, the tracks have been rearranged a little, and the music is less the unforgiving technical metal of old, and has a lighter, post-Zappa bounce: it’s not the all-out jape of Mike Patton’s more leftfield projects, but there is definite humour on display, not least in the genius song title “Parking Restrictions In Seaside Towns (Strongly Worded Letter To The Council)”. At moments the set is a little approximate – with intricate arrangements like these there’s nowhere to hide the odd fluff – but this is a band well worth watching.
People might look at Steamroller and call them dinosaurs. That would be forgetting, of course, that dinosaurs are COOL. An unreconstructed power blues trio will send some people into frothing excitement (especially those who remember the younger Steamroller from their Corn Dolly days), just as it will bore others to silent tears, but even the most vehement critic would have to admit that Steamroller have more than earned their place in Oxford music history, and that drummer Larry Reddington’s lyrics have a knowing humour: he could probably pen a witty lyric like “Back In Ten Minutes” whilst most of his peers were still trying to find a rhyme for “Cadillac”.
We’ve never quite managed to warm to Gunning For Tamar, for some reason. Their music is equidistant between Hretha and Spring Offensive, but for us they don’t have the rigorous elasticity of the former nor the emotive beauty of the latter. Solid, twitchy Oxford artpop, played very well, but not much else to our ears.
The Prohibition Smokers Club have developed in the past year from a random jam session to smooth, stadium soul party. Sort of a mixed blessing, as some of the set is too polite, but the highlights are excellent: “Graveyard Shift” is a smoky sketch of urban night owls, like a collaboration between Tom Waits and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and the final track is a spicy open-ended funk workout. Really they’re the sort of groove revue that can only be judged after two 90 minute sets and a gallon of Long Island Iced Tea, it seems as though they’re just getting warmed up when the gig finishes.
One great thing about Riverside is all the children in attendance who seem to actually love the music. We saw a lad of about four moshing away to Gunning For Tamar, and by the time Alphabet Backwards come on, he’s rounded up a whole bunch of chums, all right in front of the stage. “Oh God,” observes an audience member to us, “they’re flocking. It’s like The Birds”. But then, Alphabet Backwards are a band for the unabashed child inside us all, an improbably joyous froth of pop melodies and chirpy keyboards. The closing track, new to us, sounds like a mixture of The Streets and Supertramp. Brilliant.
We thought Every Hippie’s Dream was world peace, with perhaps the chance to smoke a joint and look at a lady’s boobs taking a close second, but apparently what they like is 60s and 70s rock covers. So, look, when the sun’s out and someone’s playing “Foxy Lady” and they’re not completely rubbish the world can never seem an entirely awful place, but someone’s clearly been bogarting the originality round at EHD’s commune, as there isn’t much character to speak of on stage. They also seem to run out of steam a couple of numbers before the end of the set: if getting from one end to the other of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is a terrible chore, perhaps the covers circuit isn’t for you, lads.
Death Of Hifi give us instrumental hip hop next, which is a tribute to Riverside’s diversity. There are some nice mid-90s beats and some cheeky samples, plus decent scratching and guitar playing, but none of the tracks go anywhere. A rapper hops up to freestyle over one of the tracks, and whilst he’s not quite got the flow of Half Decent, who guested with Prohibition Smokers Club, his presence lifts the music from a moraine of unconnected ideas. A blueprint for future developments, perhaps.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 19/6/11
As much fun as Saturday was, Sunday packed in a few more surprises for us, not least with Grey Children, the new project for Dave Griffiths, once of Eeebleee and Witches. As befits a first live performance of songs played by a scratch band, there are hesitant, uncertain moments in the set, but the material is very strong, with a muscular poeticism that’s something like a cross between Tindersticks and Sugar, with some excellent baroque curlicues from Benek Chylinski’s trumpet and Chris Fulton’s violin. Not a project we expect to see gracing the stage with great regularity, so it’s a real treat for those who turn up early.
After discovering him last year, we have to hang around to catch a bit of Sonny Black’s performance. You see so much hollow showboating in blues, it’s just great to see a relaxed, unhurried musician who lets his technique serve the music, and not the other way round. Hints of Davey Graham and John Renbourn abound, as well as the greats like Doc Watson. Sonny also plays some nice bottleneck national guitar, a gorgeous instrument which is only spoilt by the fact that just looking at the thing reminds us of Brothers In Arms.
A complete change of style at the other end of the festival, with thumping drum machines and squelching 303 basslines. We have an admission: we have no critical faculties in the face of acid house. None whatsoever. Honestly, just the sound of it immerses us in a wash of serotonin-drenched euphoria, taking us direct to cloud 909. So, for us to observe that Manacles Of Acid are very good indeed is probably meaningless, but they do a bang up job of reliving that wonderful space between Phuture and early Orbital. There’s a lovably ramshackle edge to the show, as lines come in at different volumes, and jack leads are swapped on the fly, but really if you do this music well, it always sounds good, you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook. So, not that dissimilar from Sonny Black after all.
Main stage engineer Jimmy Evil disappears at about this time, so we follow him over to the second stage to witness his progcore outfit Komrad. Since we last saw them, the tracks have been rearranged a little, and the music is less the unforgiving technical metal of old, and has a lighter, post-Zappa bounce: it’s not the all-out jape of Mike Patton’s more leftfield projects, but there is definite humour on display, not least in the genius song title “Parking Restrictions In Seaside Towns (Strongly Worded Letter To The Council)”. At moments the set is a little approximate – with intricate arrangements like these there’s nowhere to hide the odd fluff – but this is a band well worth watching.
People might look at Steamroller and call them dinosaurs. That would be forgetting, of course, that dinosaurs are COOL. An unreconstructed power blues trio will send some people into frothing excitement (especially those who remember the younger Steamroller from their Corn Dolly days), just as it will bore others to silent tears, but even the most vehement critic would have to admit that Steamroller have more than earned their place in Oxford music history, and that drummer Larry Reddington’s lyrics have a knowing humour: he could probably pen a witty lyric like “Back In Ten Minutes” whilst most of his peers were still trying to find a rhyme for “Cadillac”.
We’ve never quite managed to warm to Gunning For Tamar, for some reason. Their music is equidistant between Hretha and Spring Offensive, but for us they don’t have the rigorous elasticity of the former nor the emotive beauty of the latter. Solid, twitchy Oxford artpop, played very well, but not much else to our ears.
The Prohibition Smokers Club have developed in the past year from a random jam session to smooth, stadium soul party. Sort of a mixed blessing, as some of the set is too polite, but the highlights are excellent: “Graveyard Shift” is a smoky sketch of urban night owls, like a collaboration between Tom Waits and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and the final track is a spicy open-ended funk workout. Really they’re the sort of groove revue that can only be judged after two 90 minute sets and a gallon of Long Island Iced Tea, it seems as though they’re just getting warmed up when the gig finishes.
One great thing about Riverside is all the children in attendance who seem to actually love the music. We saw a lad of about four moshing away to Gunning For Tamar, and by the time Alphabet Backwards come on, he’s rounded up a whole bunch of chums, all right in front of the stage. “Oh God,” observes an audience member to us, “they’re flocking. It’s like The Birds”. But then, Alphabet Backwards are a band for the unabashed child inside us all, an improbably joyous froth of pop melodies and chirpy keyboards. The closing track, new to us, sounds like a mixture of The Streets and Supertramp. Brilliant.
We thought Every Hippie’s Dream was world peace, with perhaps the chance to smoke a joint and look at a lady’s boobs taking a close second, but apparently what they like is 60s and 70s rock covers. So, look, when the sun’s out and someone’s playing “Foxy Lady” and they’re not completely rubbish the world can never seem an entirely awful place, but someone’s clearly been bogarting the originality round at EHD’s commune, as there isn’t much character to speak of on stage. They also seem to run out of steam a couple of numbers before the end of the set: if getting from one end to the other of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is a terrible chore, perhaps the covers circuit isn’t for you, lads.
Death Of Hifi give us instrumental hip hop next, which is a tribute to Riverside’s diversity. There are some nice mid-90s beats and some cheeky samples, plus decent scratching and guitar playing, but none of the tracks go anywhere. A rapper hops up to freestyle over one of the tracks, and whilst he’s not quite got the flow of Half Decent, who guested with Prohibition Smokers Club, his presence lifts the music from a moraine of unconnected ideas. A blueprint for future developments, perhaps.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Bank Data
The review of this year's Riverside is up at MIO. No arguments yet, but it's early days. Course, I like people moaning about my reviews, because it proves they're being read...yes, even idiots who don't understand what a review is are welcome to join the fun.
I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.
I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11
Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.
Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?
Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.
This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.
We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?
They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.
The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.
Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.
What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.
We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...
Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.
Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.
Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.
And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.
I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.
I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11
Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.
Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?
Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.
This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.
We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?
They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.
The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.
Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.
What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.
We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...
Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.
Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.
Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.
And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
The War On Pteradactyl
Do you know what I'm not doing tonight? Going to The Wheatsheaf. Great place, of course, but if I did it three nights in a row it wouldn't do me the world of good, I suspect. You can't live on a diet of Oxford Gold and tinitus, can you?
V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)
People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.
There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.
But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.
V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)
People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.
There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.
But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.
Monday, 23 May 2011
THE SHAODOW KNWS
I'm listening to Public Enemy at the moment, they popped up on a compilation I have on. I always forget just how great they are. Fittingly, here's a hip hop review, albeit one that doesn't sound like "Don't Believe The Hype".
See you later, silly rabbits.
MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)
He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.
Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.
This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.
What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.
See you later, silly rabbits.
MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)
He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.
Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.
This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.
What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Daisy Bones (Of Dead Saints, Presumably)
I was looking over the posts yesterday, and the number of times I introduce a piece by noting how ill I feel is concerning. Today, just so you know, I feel fine. This gig did its best to alter that, of course...
RELIK/ COWBOY RACER/ BREATHING LIGHT/ BROWNIAN MOTION, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 7/5/11
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”.
Groucho’s words ring true as we leave the Jericho after as much of Relik as we can handle. Daisy Rodgers promotions have been an excellent addition to the Oxford scene for the past couple of years, running well thought out, friendly nights, with lots of character (consider the dubiously named Rodd Of Hotness game, which allows advance ticket buyers to vote for a cover version to be performed on the night). The nights are also incredible successes – whilst many promoters of unsigned bands are found hoping for a turnout in double figures, the only trouble Daisy Rodgers’ door staff has is working out whether they have time to nip to the loo at some point in the steady stream of customers. But, whilst we have only support for the Daisy experience, this particular gig was something of a damp squib.
The depressing thing for us about the last election was not necessarily that the result wasn’t what we had hoped for, but the fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote (let’s not even start discussions on the referendum). Staffordshire duo Brownian Motion evoke a similar feeling: their dramatic, rootsy flurries, pitched somewhere between Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow aren’t really for us, but they truly deserve a better reception than 95% of the Jericho gives them, not so much talking through their set, as howling and whooping like chimps on a rollercoaster. The odd, wistful Cowboy Junkies moment in Brownian Motion’s set are immediately lost in the sea of babble, which is a pity as this is their strongest element.
Breathing Light’s first number has a turn of the 90s, polished goth feel to it, the unhurried, melodic female vocals and lightly scuffed guitar and keyboards instantly bringing to mind Curve, Lush, or even the first Cranberries LP. They’re pretty good at it, but the second number reveals a stronger influence: Portishead. “I Remember” is pretty much “Sour Times” without the chorus, and their Hotness vote-winning cover is “Roads”. They do a decent enough job of aping the introspective Bristolians, and it certainly suits the pellucid vocals, but they don’t really have the gravitas in the rhythm section to pull it off, and the set works best when they bring in a brighter, neo-shoegaze sound that reminds us a little of Tsunami (the US ethereal pop band, not Mark Cobb’s local rockers). It’s a highly promising set from a band who could do with working out what their own voice sounds like.
Cowboy Racer is the new project of Salad’s Marijne Van Der Vlugt. There are some other, session muso types onstage, but it’s Marijne most people have come to see, and it is she whom we find endlessly infuriating. Why does she drop into husky whispers and kooky chirrups mid-song, whilst gesticulating oddly, is it supposed to be sexily kittenish? Why does she suddenly leap on the spot, wild-eyed like TV-AM’s Mad Lizzie, are we supposed to feel swept up in euphoria?
Van Der Vlugt has a pleasant voice, but it’s a bit too thin to keep the interest alive in songs that sound like a toned down Transvision Vamp with electronics from the Byker Grove incidental music library. “R U Receiving Me?” is the best track, with unabashed Tomorrow’s World keyboards and some robotic disco-Kraftrwerk vocals, but even this melding of Yello and Goldfrapp isn’t as convincing as it should be: like the rest of the set, it feels undercooked and presented with a whiff of desperation. It takes them three tries to get through set-closer “Yellow Horse”, even though it sounds like a seven year old improvising over a Megadrive game – again, how can that end up sounding boring? Of course, there are middle-aged men around the stage staring intently throughout and filming the gig for their archives – one guy even has a smart phone in either hand. The technology has changed since they used to watch Salad, but sadly the music is equally slight and unsatisfying.
Relik don’t do much for us, but they are at least generic, not enraging. Their big-boned songs seem designed for fists in the air rock solidarity, taking a blueprint from The Foo Fighters and adding a little bit of Placebo, and we suppose they manage it well enough, keeping the sizable crowd entertained. If you like blocky, unsubtle clomps that sound like The Stereophonics strained through a giant tissue, then Relik will probably do the trick. Also a good choice if you like the idea of gigs (you know, drinking lots of expensive beer, talking through the supports and then standing in a big huddle feeling the same uncomplex pleasure of togetherness), but tend to find concerts in Oxford a bit frightening or confusing. Actually, Relik are good band for people who find the Daily Star crossword frightening and confusing. As Groucho nearly said: A child of five could understand Relik; send someone to fetch a child of five.
RELIK/ COWBOY RACER/ BREATHING LIGHT/ BROWNIAN MOTION, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 7/5/11
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”.
Groucho’s words ring true as we leave the Jericho after as much of Relik as we can handle. Daisy Rodgers promotions have been an excellent addition to the Oxford scene for the past couple of years, running well thought out, friendly nights, with lots of character (consider the dubiously named Rodd Of Hotness game, which allows advance ticket buyers to vote for a cover version to be performed on the night). The nights are also incredible successes – whilst many promoters of unsigned bands are found hoping for a turnout in double figures, the only trouble Daisy Rodgers’ door staff has is working out whether they have time to nip to the loo at some point in the steady stream of customers. But, whilst we have only support for the Daisy experience, this particular gig was something of a damp squib.
The depressing thing for us about the last election was not necessarily that the result wasn’t what we had hoped for, but the fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote (let’s not even start discussions on the referendum). Staffordshire duo Brownian Motion evoke a similar feeling: their dramatic, rootsy flurries, pitched somewhere between Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow aren’t really for us, but they truly deserve a better reception than 95% of the Jericho gives them, not so much talking through their set, as howling and whooping like chimps on a rollercoaster. The odd, wistful Cowboy Junkies moment in Brownian Motion’s set are immediately lost in the sea of babble, which is a pity as this is their strongest element.
Breathing Light’s first number has a turn of the 90s, polished goth feel to it, the unhurried, melodic female vocals and lightly scuffed guitar and keyboards instantly bringing to mind Curve, Lush, or even the first Cranberries LP. They’re pretty good at it, but the second number reveals a stronger influence: Portishead. “I Remember” is pretty much “Sour Times” without the chorus, and their Hotness vote-winning cover is “Roads”. They do a decent enough job of aping the introspective Bristolians, and it certainly suits the pellucid vocals, but they don’t really have the gravitas in the rhythm section to pull it off, and the set works best when they bring in a brighter, neo-shoegaze sound that reminds us a little of Tsunami (the US ethereal pop band, not Mark Cobb’s local rockers). It’s a highly promising set from a band who could do with working out what their own voice sounds like.
Cowboy Racer is the new project of Salad’s Marijne Van Der Vlugt. There are some other, session muso types onstage, but it’s Marijne most people have come to see, and it is she whom we find endlessly infuriating. Why does she drop into husky whispers and kooky chirrups mid-song, whilst gesticulating oddly, is it supposed to be sexily kittenish? Why does she suddenly leap on the spot, wild-eyed like TV-AM’s Mad Lizzie, are we supposed to feel swept up in euphoria?
Van Der Vlugt has a pleasant voice, but it’s a bit too thin to keep the interest alive in songs that sound like a toned down Transvision Vamp with electronics from the Byker Grove incidental music library. “R U Receiving Me?” is the best track, with unabashed Tomorrow’s World keyboards and some robotic disco-Kraftrwerk vocals, but even this melding of Yello and Goldfrapp isn’t as convincing as it should be: like the rest of the set, it feels undercooked and presented with a whiff of desperation. It takes them three tries to get through set-closer “Yellow Horse”, even though it sounds like a seven year old improvising over a Megadrive game – again, how can that end up sounding boring? Of course, there are middle-aged men around the stage staring intently throughout and filming the gig for their archives – one guy even has a smart phone in either hand. The technology has changed since they used to watch Salad, but sadly the music is equally slight and unsatisfying.
Relik don’t do much for us, but they are at least generic, not enraging. Their big-boned songs seem designed for fists in the air rock solidarity, taking a blueprint from The Foo Fighters and adding a little bit of Placebo, and we suppose they manage it well enough, keeping the sizable crowd entertained. If you like blocky, unsubtle clomps that sound like The Stereophonics strained through a giant tissue, then Relik will probably do the trick. Also a good choice if you like the idea of gigs (you know, drinking lots of expensive beer, talking through the supports and then standing in a big huddle feeling the same uncomplex pleasure of togetherness), but tend to find concerts in Oxford a bit frightening or confusing. Actually, Relik are good band for people who find the Daily Star crossword frightening and confusing. As Groucho nearly said: A child of five could understand Relik; send someone to fetch a child of five.
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