Swarm of Locus

Second review from the latest Nightshift. These are my thoughts on some of the acts at December's In A Different Place all-dayer, and a bunch of this copy was interleaved in with the editor's review. This actually sort of stands up as cohesive on its own, though.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, Bully, 14/12/25 

Opening an all-dayer can be a tough task, but Antonia’s song ‘White Rabbit’ eases us into a long day with gorgeous wispy candyfloss sweetness. The whole of her lilting set is bright and delicate like sunshine through clouds, and our only criticism it’s that she’s too self-deprecating. 

A good festival will always feature some choice covers, but who had vintage hymn ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’ on their bingo card? The setting of Bunyan’s 17th-century verses popped up as part of Pea Sea’s long opening number, along with fluent guitar runs somewhere between the folky intelligence of Richard Thompson and the chilly elegance of Papa M. ‘Silloth Green’ is a more concise tune, gnarly poetic lyrics against chugging guitar giving indie Dylan vibes.

Barrelhaus had to cancel their place at both the first two IADP festivals. They’re here today though. They play one of their melodic riffing rock tunes and it sounds amazing. They start a second. They start it again. After the third time the backing track packs up, the set is abandoned – for Christ’s sake, can someone join the band on drums so they can play in 2026? 

Part of a strong scene is that is provides fertile ground for collaboration, and Ian de Quadros is probably Oxford’s premier sonic connector, so it’s no surprise that a six-song Tiger Mendoza set features 4 guest vocalists. Emma Hunter, Octavia Freud and Helen Pearson all feature elsewhere on today’s bill, but it’s a treat to see Mark, Restructure’s erstwhile ranter onstage again, giving some revolutionary Sleaford mob provocation over a DJ Shadowy beat. On the big Bully stage Tom Martin’s restless visuals have never looked better. 

There’s plenty of party music in the world, but not enough hangover music. The Pink Diamond Revue have cornered this market, their menacing instrumental rock a mixture of acid house wooziness, elementary thumping drums and Duane Eddy guitar twangs which feels euphoric at first, but soon curdles to a queasy paranoia. In case it’s not obvious, this is a very good thing. 

Zarbi also loves the sour times. Their early work was all post-dubstep spaciousness but today the reverbed vocals and scuzzy guitar bury shoegaze sonics beneath a mushroom mulch. Led Zep gave us ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ but Zarbi – wrapped in a dressing gown like the Arthur Dent of underground soundscaping – sounds more like a trudging ‘Mirkwood March’. 

There’s a constant pull between uplifting pop and intense rock to In-Flight Movie’s set. The guitar, synth and drums trio sound like Joy Division one moment, and Numan the next, and even manage to chart a course from Depeche Mode to Explosions In The Sky in one song. This powerful and energetic set might be their best we’ve witnessed, with clear, yearning vocals. 

31hours played the first IADP, and Jo from that band now trades under the name The Cloud, adding his supple falsetto to glitchy guitar and synth parts, sometimes gnarly, with drums as crunchy as Corn Flake pilates, and sometimes surprisingly sweet and jazzy. Inevitably there’s a Radiohead connection, but the reference point that really feels best is noughties Björk, with intricate ideas bombarding songs but never destroying their tuneful catchiness.  

Many people may find Silent Weapon the event's most challenging act, but not us, we love the sound of pummelling industrial electronics that sound like electrified girders sliding down a digital scree slope onto irascible hornets. Anyway, once you attune yourself to the demonic barrage, much of the music can be oddly blissful especially when arpeggios spiral beneath white noise waves. 

Octavia Freud claims that one song tonight is “existential electronica” but it’s a damned sight more fun that this implies. His lairy godfather Mancunian diatribes are sweetened by Emma Hunter’s lovely vocals and bolstered by Ian de Quadros’s chunky guitar. The setlist ranges from therapy to alcohol abuse, but it’s ‘No Venue Situation’ that feels most apposite: “sing our songs until we’re famous”, he sings, but in this room, at least, he already is. 

End on a high is strong advice, so the buoyant sprightliness of Balkan Wanderers is the perfect end to a busy day. Some of the pounding rhythms would feel at home in a speed metal song, but the elegant lightness of the rest of the band keeps the music joyous. Recently recruited vocalist Becs has slotted in seamlessly, and the accordion has given new textures, but it’s still Clare Heaviside’s eloquent clarinet that steals the show. Ending an all-dayer can be a tough task, but only because after bobbing about to ‘Sleep Around’, the best pubic lice ditty ever, nobody wants the band to stop for the night.  Or possibly ever. 

 

Peachy Keen

Nowadays there's no January Nightshift, so as the writing period stretched over two months, I wrote two reviews (I think the maths works out). Here's the first, a review of a very strong EP, go seek it out.

HANNAH LOU LARSEN – PEACH PINE OCEAN (self-release) 

There’s a tendency towards low-level sexism in music criticism in which even positive reviews of female artists tend toward the diminutive, annexing work in a paddock of ornamental prettiness which keeps it away from the citadel of Big Artistic Statements. This is the world in which a towering, mercurial talent like Björk can still be routinely called a charming elfin chanteuse. So, if we describe Hannah Lou Larsen’s new EP as “enchanting”, we’re not using it the way a lounge lizard might describe his Belgravia hostess, but to express how this record feels like a magic(k)al ritual - yes, it’s delicate and airy at times, but the references to the natural world, but lyrically and via field recordings sliced and sprinkled throughout, say more about powerful elemental forces than well-kept gardens and scenic views. 

‘Move Like Rivers’ is the poppiest offering, but even this is unhurried and incantatory, like the mechanical ghost of a Bat For Lashes tune, and shares the mysterious and slightly disorientating air of the whole collection: the title track is underpinned by reverby flaps that sound like someone riffling playing cards in a black hole and which are the sonic equivalent of a confusing labyrinth (it also has some gorgeous snatches of clarinet, as if caught from across a chilly moor, reminding us of Mark Hollis’s glorious solo album). 

‘Memorials’ is amniotic folk, a limpid, melodic autoharp strum, with intimate vocals reminiscent of Stina Nordenstam, whereas ‘I’m Sorry’ foregrounds electronica, giving us a brittle synthesised pizzicato skirmish that sounds like Alex Kidd snapping icicles in a cavern. The vocals here, with their slightly wry tone and subtle treatments, bring to mind Laurie Anderson. Listen to this EP and you’ll fall under its spell...but just maybe not in the cosy way, more in the way in which you check your soul is still all there. 

Look Deep Into The Parker

Seems like a good while since I last posted a review, but we have 3 in quick succession.  First up, here's my take on an album released in 2005. Don't worry if you've not heard of it, I hadn't either.

FRANCESCO CAFISO & STRINGS – A TRIBUTE TO CHARLIE PARKER (Umbria Jazz/ Giotto Music)

The closer we get to the present day, the less likely it is that an album has a significant presence in my mind. I turned 30 in 2005, and from this point onwards my income  allowed me to purchase so many more records than I once could have imagined, whilst the time I have to actually play them has withered, so twenty-first century albums just impinge less on my psyche, no matter how good they are. When it comes to the cultural experience, distant landmarks loom so much larger than those in proximity. It’s like perspective in reverse. 

So, once again for this issue I’ve just grabbed a CD from the little pile of recent ultra-cheap random charity–shop purchases which happened to have been released in 2005. This review will be written as I spin the disc. As with the Ladytron review I’ve not heard this record, but unlike Ladytron, I’ve never even heard of the artist.  The first question that springs to mind is how one might create a tribute to Parker. His big achievement was in his technique and the fluidity of his playing, the way he brought new ideas to jazz, and it seems that a tribute to that would either involve copying solos note-for-note (a bit pointless), or similarly bringing your own character to standards (in which case, it’s not meaningfully connected to Parker). Even with Hendrix, another great who brought a riotously fresh angle to well-trodden musical structures, there are at least a bunch of his songs to cover, but Parker only penned about twenty tunes. A quick glance over the tracklist reveals no ‘Yardbird Suite’, no ‘Ornithology’, no ‘Ko-Ko’, and every single composition was firmly part of the musical backdrop before Parker got to grips with them. How will this pan out?  Pressing Play...now! 

‘I’ll Remember April’ wafts in with some nice rich syrupy strings. Oh wait, is this all based on Parker’s influential With Strings album (or, originally, pair of 10”s - Pedantic Ed)? Yes, looking more closely at the cover, it very much is – not only does it use the same colour scheme in its quite hideously ugly sleeve, but it says it there in capitals, I just hadn’t noticed. This puts the interpretative element into even more of a straitjacket, as the arrangements are all nailed down, though in another way it makes more sense, perhaps like a new performance of a classical suite. 

Having a little search whilst ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’ spins I find that saxophonist Cafiso was 16 when he made this record. By Gad, already I can see that the playing is preposterously good and confident for that age. His tone so far is more wheedling than Bird’s rich warmth, but that at least brings his own voice to the music. The backing band/chamber orchestra is most elegant too, work has gone into this. ‘Out Of Nowhere’ continues the sophisticated feel, and it’s a great composition from back in 1931 - I first came across it because The Cardigans nodded to it in ‘Travelling With Charlie’ from their retro-twee classic album Life – and it was specifically the perfumed swoon of the Parker version they were thinking of, I’m certain. Then we get ‘Everything Happens To Me’, another grade-A song, and those billowing strings and sweeping harps capture the early-50s vibe immaculately. 

But ‘Summertime’ falls just a little flat. Maybe I’ve heard the tune too many times in my life, but also the sax feels too busy, trying to fill all the gaps rather than flowing, and with a raspy edge: if there’s one thing you can say about Bird, it’s that his playing sounded organic. But a highlight is ‘Dancing In The Dark’ - no, not that one – the sax is so fluent, and it contrasts with the reliable, slightly square arrangements underneath it in just the way Parker’s original takes did. Also, I see that the median sales price on Discogs for this CD is £8.99, I apparently got a bargain. 

As the album continues, my attention begins to wander a little. Perhaps 18 tracks is just too much of this style to experience at once – after all, the first With Strings 10” featured a mere seven. But the tracks are quite formulaic, opening with the strings swelling; a fast nimble sprinkle of sax notes, normally in a descending pattern; the main melody stated twice with a little ornament; an orchestral break; then solos. It definitely works, but a switch-up wouldn’t hurt, which is why ‘Just Friends’ grabs the attention, with the sax line sprightly but not jittery, and gesturing more closely to the sort of thing Parker might have done with a smaller jazz combo, and this is followed by ‘April In Paris’ which puts a focus on the oboe almost as much as the sax, and feels like a vintage Sinatra arrangement. The Latin percussion introduction to ‘Repetition’ - no, not that one – sounds like wild carnivalesque bacchanalia in this context, but it’s the penultimate track, and perhaps should have come in earlier. The final track is the only original, a solo blues called ‘Prayer For Charlie’ and it’s rather lovely, saying more about Cafiso as a player than the rest of the album. 

Overall I’d rate this album as impressive, and possibly as good, but I’m not sure what purpose it serves, beyond being a calling card for a talented young musician: more a demo reel than an artistic statement. The battle between emulating With Strings and adding a personal twist isn’t always won, and throwing in pieces that weren’t part of the original sets feels like overkill. I will keep this record, it is certainly worth another spin or two, and would serve compilations well. One day, though, the lure of £8.99 may prove too much... 

Gwan Tuwizmo?

Bit of a funny one, this. I'm not 100% sure whether I thought Mazawattee were good, the sound was so dire it was impossible to tell. That's odd, The Bully is normally great for sound. So, I decided to assume they were good, because they clearly know what a tune is.

MAZAWATTEE/ NO WORRIES IF NOT/ RICH RAINFORD, Bully, 13/11/25 

Rich Rainford’s songs are unashamedly big and emotional. Everything he plays tonight has a huge melodic vocal lines and warm earnest lyrics that immediately grab the listener. Structurally the songs are relatively simple, but they’re also light, soft and inviting, like a ziggurat made from Duplo bricks and marshmallows, hitting like stripped back Snow Patrol tunes, and even jaded cynical music reviewer realise that in an increasingly bitter and unhappy world a rousing anthem like ‘Raise Your Voice’ is a lovely thing. 

Another lovely thing is fresh French bread, although, unlike No Worries If Not, we prefer to eat it rather than wave it around in choreographed shapes over sleek electro. This boulangerie banger of an opener sets the tone, being musically shiny and enticing, but also irreverently humorous (hint: they’re not really singing about baguettes). The tracks hark back to the turn-of-the-century camp club pop of Trouser Enthusiasts, and the vocals are delivered with deadpan exuberance, if that’s not a complete paradox. Pitched somewhere between Confidence Man and the Footlights revue, No Worries If Not will make you dance, and have you enter a world of pain. 

Mazawattee play rootsy indie something akin to a soft-focus Hothouse Flowers, or The Daintees with a penchant for smooth Californian classic rock textures. ‘Waterslide’ is a gently skipping quavery pop tune that feels as though it's been beamed directly from Truck 2002, and is typical of the band’s natural melodic sense. Perhaps because there are some technical problems tonight, a brace of simple acoustic tracks sound best, showcasing how the strong the two vocalists are. A gig where the sound only really sems to balance for the last number may not be the one on which to judge Mazawattee, but even in these circumstances we can tell they have a winning breezy naturalness. Is it summer yet?  

Versailles Chorus Versailles

And here's the final instalment in my latest batch of LFTWY reviews. Warning: contains Eurovision.

SÉBASTIEN TELLIER – POLITICS (Record Makers) 

There have been plenty of great art statements in 21st-century Eurovision. From Verka Serduchka’s reductive grinning singalong which dared you to take something about as complex as ‘The Birdy Song’ seriously in 2007, to Käärijä’s somewhat petrifying Poddington Peas bovver-boy stomp in 2023 (which Bambie Thug presumably saw and thought “you call that unnerving industrial electro, do you? Wait till my song next year...which is also sometimes a jazz ballad”). There’s even the stone cold genius of Rambo Amadeus in 2012, who brought the most low-key funky groove ever to the big stage in Baku, but turned off most people by stumbling about like a greasy bewildered wino, and got a special rule instigated after the random draw put him first in the first semifinal, thereby confusing vast swathes of the viewing audience from the outset, so from now on the producer crafts the running order. Oh, and of course there’s Konstrakta’s ‘In Corpore Sano’ from 2022, which is pretty much the greatest song of the millennium with a stage show giving Matthew Barney and Peter Greenaway. 

But amongst this feted/hated group of tricksters there is one excellent piece of pop art playfulness which didn’t really ignite the voters or the pundits, for some reason. In 2008 Sébastien Tellier rode onto the stage very slowly in a little golf buggy to deliver a strange breathy, wide-eyed little tune, half-scruffy, half-dapper, like a melange of Dennis Wilson and Jarvis Cocker. A third of the way through he sucked helium from a beach ball and made his voice go all squeaky. His backing singers were women with beards stuck on (Conchita Wurst precog!). It must be one of the Frenchest things ever seen, despite being the only time a French Eurovision entry has been in English. 

A few years before that, his second album Politics came out, though it wasn’t a big hit, reaching number 123 in his home charts, and achieving bugger all anywhere else. But it’s really quite good fun, and here are some highlights. 

• The fact that the opening track is called ‘Bye Bye’ and is like a 70s Paul Simon song gone awry, with nice warm brass that just splurgily collapses halfway through like someone took the Spanx off
• The fact that ‘Wonderafrica’ does indeed sound like a funkier cousin of the precipitation-blessing 80s classic 
• The fact that ‘Broadway’ is not brassy and stagey as the name suggests, but is soft and burnished and honeyed in a hammock of strings 
• The fact that ‘Ritournelle’ has Tony Allen on drums dropping a light, flighty groove for nearly 8 minutes which sounds like the funky drummer went on a Ryvita diet, and has no vocals but some almost Bruce Hornsby piano chords 
• The fact that ‘Benny’, immediately afterwards, has the silliest, hammiest vocals possible to make up for it - you have to love the way he delivers “human rih-soar-zees" 
• The fact that ‘Mauer’ has a stoned maggot of a synth wending all the way through 
• The fact that ‘Ketchup Vs. Genocide’ is called ‘Ketchup Vs. Genocide’ 
• The fact that the album finishes with ‘Zombi’, which sounds like music from a game in Fun House or something and is quite preposterous 

 

 

Logo Technics

 Another from LFTWY, and my first article about an Oxford act. Trademark were so good live.

TRADEMARK – FEAR: DISCONNECTION (self-release) 

The first review I ever wrote for publication was in November 2002, for BBC Oxford’s website, having started to get involved with Oxford’s music scene a little earlier, so with this issue we enter the era where I can talk about local records I bought direct from the creators. I promise I’ll steer an evasionary course away from old war stories and anecdotes about people you’ve never met, though. 

Trademark were a live favourite of mine, a trio of lab-coated geeks when who wrote wonderful techno-pop tunes, played them live brilliantly, threw in incongruous one-off covers, sometimes had a giant perspex plug, and were not unknown for tripping over their own gear onstage. This is their 2003 release, although some of the songs got a lick of paint and turned up again on their debut proper, Want More, released a year or two later by Truck Records. The base sauce for their concoctions was simple, consisting of crunchy, intricate rhythms in the style of contemporaneous Warp acts such as Black Dog, big bold 1982 synth lines, and surprisingly emotional, if far from histrionic, vocal melodies. Oli Horton’s voice was never perfect, and he tended to get a bit pitchy, but as with Marc Almond this often worked in the songs’ favour. Sometimes when he sang in a lower register, as with ‘All Too Late’, a clomping Depeche-a-Sketch joint on this album, the notes are more reliably hit, though perhaps a tiny fraction of the character is lost by this. 

It’s still a great tune, though, and this CD if full of them. Interestingly, on revisiting this album, the lighter tracks sound the best: whilst they were never an industrial or EBM band, some songs are bigger than others, whether that’s from a fatter bass drum kick or a more impassioned vocal (‘My Life In Stereo’ has a blasted cabaret feeling which made it perfect for opening gigs). The pick of the chunkier tunes is ‘Sawtooth Lust’, which is something like an abrasive mechanoid take on Bowie’s ‘Breaking Glass’, and is interesting for the joint vocal by usually mute member Paul Soulsby. The lyrics on this one feel forced and awkward, though the line “I saw an eyesore” is amusing, something a goth Giles Brandreth might come out with. 

Of the less aggressive songs, ‘Helpless’ is the softest, in sound and outlook, a song of attraction 100% free of priapic desire, simply about how a certain lass can make the singer go a bit wibbly, featuring the ultimate nice-boy lyric “Don’t let me fail her as a friend”. It sounds wonderful, with a Broadway ballad melody delivered in a delicate falsetto, and a warm bassline that’s purest Pet Shop Boys. ‘Sine Love’ is also lilting and beautiful, using the sine wave as a metaphor for purity in love (no big prize for guessing how the lead synths sound on this and ‘Sawtooth Lust’). The hissing digital percussion sounds like Aphex Twin whispering in your ear. But even this work of beauty is beaten by ‘Stay Professional’, an understated British romantic tragedy with SNES harp and staccato synth stabs. It has the natural-artificial simplicity of a zen garden, and sounds like an Erasure song melancholically gazing at a moonlit lake. 

Self-released albums like this are fascinating. It’s a proper statement rather than a cheap demo, but it’s still half-lost to posterity: the Trademark Wikipedia page acknowledges it, but intriguingly replicates the typo that appears on the printed disc which isn’t on any of the packaging. I have no idea how many copies were sold, and whether they were retained by the purchasers, so my CD may be one of only a handful in the wild (though I have just discovered they made an album in 1999, which ran to 25 copies). Although anyone intrigued by this review should definitely seek out Want More instead, Fear: Disconnection has a nascent charm, and if nothing else it shows how much graft goes into honing a band before its professional debut release – but maybe that statement barely even means anything in 2025. 

 

No Nose Is Good Nose?

I saw Lunchtime For The Wild Youth editor Russell Barker last night at a gig, and fine company he was. He also passed me the last 3 issues, so here's my thought on an album from 2002, with '03 and '04 to follow soon.

SPARKS – LIL' BEETHOVEN (BMG) 

Two things sprang to mind as I turned over this record sleeve, prior to spinning it for the first time after purchase. 

Firstly, that’s a weird place to put the apostrophe. It’s an abbreviation of “little” so “li’l” would make more sense, and there’s precedent, such as the US comic strip Li’l Abner. Lewis Carroll would probably favour “li’l’”, judging from the way he wrote words like “sha’n’t”, and in a pure sense that fits the best, but I’ve never seen it in the wild. Later, in the mumble rap era the apostrophe was tossed out altogether as too old-fashioned, and we got Lil Wayne and Lil Yachty (and how overjoyed was I when an American rapper finally came up with the name Lil Savage). 

Secondly, I was reminded of an article in a long-ago Fall fanzine, which drew parallels between the gruppe and Hancock’s Half Hour episodes: just as we could imagine Tony moping in shows called ‘Fit And Working Again’ or ‘Bournemouth Runner’, we could imagine MES ranting about blood donors in songs named ‘The East Cheam Centenary’ or ‘Lord Byron Lived Here’...and that’s before we get into CB radio. Similarly, the names of tracks on this album just perfectly sum up comical fragments of life, like sketches where you don’t actually need to write the dialogue: ‘What Are All These Band So Angry About?’, ‘I Married Myself’, and ‘Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls’ are just too immaculate. 

If the songs barely need more than a title to conjure images, it’s lucky, because in lots of cases that’s about the sum of the lyrics. ‘How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?’ is just an old gag split into bits and repeated – a Brit would have to imagine someone singing “My dog’s got no nose” over and over – whilst ‘Your Call’s Very Important To Us, Please Hold’ describes the experience of listing to the robotic corporate phone voice at great repetetive length, like a Warhol diary extract.  

Musically this record was odd at the time, but makes perfect sense now. Sparks’ previous records had been wry glam rock enigmas or sunshine-smiling digital pop bangers (which were still wry), but this album has hardly any drums, as alluded to by opener ‘The Rhythm Thief’, and the music is mostly little cellular ersatz orchestral motifs shuffled and stacked. Sparks seem to have got into the likes of Glass and Adams, whilst their twentieth-century composition influence bag held fragments from Stravinsky and Bernstein (whilst their dog’s got Nono’s (I apologise unreservedly for that joke (I don’t really))). This is not the sophisticated chamber tunage of Van Dyke Parks, but neither is it the joky half-formed zombie-pop of Denim – perhaps the best contemporaneous analogue is The Magnetic Fields.  

‘My Baby’s Taking Me Home’ is possibly the album’s high point, pretty much just the title repeated forever.  It’s small and huge at the same time, like a stadium anthem written by Morph. The album ends with ‘Suburban Homeboys’ a single which must not have inspired much faith of a hit from any stakeholder, full of witty sketches of the titular middle-class scallywags and cheeky parping synth tuba playing pseudo-techno riffs – shouting schlager, schlager, schlager! It sort of sounds like a Broadway book number crossed with a US college song, which no actual homeboy would ever be seen dead nodding along to (“My posse repping this track? Nah, my dogs got no-nos!"). “Props to our peeps and please keep your receipts” might be one of the best couplets in the last 40 years of pop...and doesn’t it sound a tiny little bit like a modern-day Tony Hancock?