This is the Title of the Review

 Below is a review. This is the introduction to the review.

MARY LATTIMORE/ WALT McCLEMENTS/ AFTER THE THOUGHT, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 15/9/24 

Matt from After The Thought’s strumming hand is attacking his guitar strings on ultra-Gedge setting, but the sounds in our ears don’t match the image. Instead of thrashed jangling chords, we get soft snowdrifts of glistening sound, an undulating, endless vista in which to get thoroughly lost for thirty minutes. Like a lot of the best longform drone music, nothing seems to be happening, but take your bearings every five minutes and you’ll find that the sonic landscape has utterly changed: sometimes there are thick low tones like a bank of shruti boxes playing at once, at other times the tones are brighter and more layered, and at one moment it sounds like a barbershop quartet surrounded by bees being pulled into a black hole. The set ends with a melancholic sample of World War I song ‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’, with a tune stolen from ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and the misty effect is pure Gavin Bryars. 

Walt McClements’s accordion produces similarly billowing waves, but the sound is more intense and dynamic, an array of peals highlighting overtones from all those free reeds. He also tends to cycle through stately funereal chords in a clearer way to Matt, as if Yann Tiersen had decided to try to become a one-man Silver Mt Zion. It’s a quite wonderful set, and the highlight comes when the LA-based musician picks up a trumpet to unfurl bold lines over the rich swell of his accordion buttons, which is simultaneously mournful, euphoric, and eerie, like a Badalamenti-Morricone showdown. 

He’s the perfect person to join harpist Mary Latimore on tour, as they both pit elegant delicacy against enveloping textures in their playing. Lattimore takes frequent momentary breaks from her technically impressive string plucking to toy with an effects box in her lap, and garnish the music with 57 varieties of pitch delay. It’s almost as if she’s seeing whether she can derail the beauty of her pieces with unexpected tweaks, and it’s surprisingly how often the music resembles 90s electronica, from the well-dressed arpeggios of New London School Of Electronics, to the wonky wobbles of Cylob. There is a danger that the lavishly applied FX might reduce everything to a small parade of tricks, but each time the set threatens to become samey, there's a new gem displayed, from the limpid loveliness of ‘For Scott Kelly, Returned To Earth’ to a final duet with McClements. Plus she was on Neil Halstead from Slowdive’s virtual pub quiz team, so she’s definitely cooler than anyone reading this. 

Your Future, Our Clatter

I'm listening to George Melly reading various poems about jazz.  He sounds wankered.  Good lad.

RATTLE/ FARM HAND/ AFTER THE THOUGHT, Divine Schism, Fusion Arts, 26/3/19

It’s been some years since Matt Chapman Jones performed as After The Thought, but we assume the music has been quietly playing somewhere all the while, the stately melodies and soft, glowing synth pads hiding behind the moon or in the spaces between electrons waiting for him to plug in again and broadcast them.  Wielding a guitar, keyboard and a Tetris endgame block of pedals, Chapman Jones ladles Mogwai noise onto John Carpenter motifs, simplicity taking us by the hand, and bouncing us between fuzzy warmth and isolationist eeriness.  Don’t make us wait so long for the next one.

Another person who would be welcome to come back over the Severn Bridge is Shape Records founder and Islet member Mark Daman Thomas, AKA Farm Hand.  If After The Thought’s palette is relatively sparse, Farm Hand’s is positively digi-Spartan, consisting of loops or tinny backing and vocals that tend to be so smothered in reverb or effects that lyrics are largely indecipherable, although when he tells us the songs are about “summers in rural mid-Wales” or “eating nettle soup”, we believe him.  There’s a playfulness in the performance, Thomas prancing around, cracking jokes and jamming over a recording of himself greeting each and every one of us by turn, but although his set is a cheerful lo-fi joy - a market stall knock-off of Fixers’ cyber-euphoria – there’s also a strangely monastic feel to much of it, like religious rites corrupted into secular games.   Perhaps there’s never much distance between druid and clown.

A scribbled note on the door of Fusion Arts reads “No drumming tonight.  Sorry!!”  But, seeing as Nottingham duo Rattle had dragged a pair of drumkits all the way to Oxford, we guess they decided the ignore the injunction.    In common with the other acts, their music is ostensibly simple, but powerfully hypnotic, repetitive interlocking patterns occasionally decorated by tuneful little chants.  Like vintage techno or even vintager New York minimalism, there’s a shudder of excitement when a chugging groove is punctuated by a new element, a sudden authoritative snare crack or floor tom tattoo (or some sparingly utilised dubwise FX from a gent hunched over a tiny mixing desk).  Rattle sound like a robot Art Blakey playing under some demonic skipping rhymes.  You try keeping that sort of wonder out with a handwritten sign, mortals.

That Petrel Emotion

I bought my first charity shop records of the year this afternoon, and I'll be at my first gig of the year in a few hours.  2015 has, therefore, begun.

I don't think this is a very good review, but my editor seemed pleased enough, so what do I know?

PETRELS, PADDOX, AFTER THE THOUGHT, Pindrop, MAO, 11/12/14

They called it Dronefest.  Hard to argue, as there isn’t a moment tonight when guitars or keys aren’t filling the air with drones.  Before any act has officially started, Lee Riley and members of Flights Of Helios and Masiro are sonically decorating both the venue space and the upstairs bar with thick tones, the sort that soon start to seep into every thought - one of Nightshift’s more wild-eyed writers greets us with “I’ve been here 45 minutes.  It’s brilliant!”   Apparently, lonely souls even continued playing to an empty foyer whilst the acts performed in the basement, although we can’t believe anyone listened (Schroedinger’s remix, anyone?). 

On the stage, After The Thought shifta slow, elegant notes round in the manner of Eno’s Shutov Assembly with early 90s twinkles a la vintage Global Communication, not to mention a penchant for heartbeat rate decay that’s positively Pete Namlook.  Although the set gets pretty claustrophobic and the high tones nag, it also sounds like warm, friendly pop music underneath.  Is Bubblegum Tinnitus a genre?  Or have the drones started to twist our thoughts, like a dystopian 70s alien infiltration.

Our first impression of Paddox is that it’s brave to puncture such prettiness with loosely sprayed static coughs and rusty corvid caws.  Our second thought is that it isn’t brave, but idiotic, and our third that it is clearly unintentional.  The set is awash with technical snafus, bad connections and unwanted hisses, and whilst there are delightful moments, not least a mournful Gavin Bryars violin motif that floats above the pulsing noise (deliberate and otherwise), we’re left feeling we’ve not seen a performance that it would be fair to judge.

Petrels set is inventive and varied, in a fashion that the event’s name might not have implied.  The excellent tonal tapestry brings to mind images of blasted souls trapped in an old Amstrad floppy drive, skirling seabirds enveloped in thick syrup (perhaps in tribute to the stage name) and even some Artificial Intelligence offcuts.  The set ends with a looping emotional chorus, like the refrain from a lost Spring Offensive song slowly disappearing into a searing sunset.  As we leave James Maund is still making guitar noise in the foyer.  Perhaps he’s still there.

Good Will Punting

Here's my review of this year's Punt festival. Fragments of it were used in Nightshift's roundup, but obviously only the nice bits, because they booked the acts.  Music In Oxford didn't do a review this year, sadly, so most of this is being seen for the first time.  Calm your thundering heart and read on.

Random thought for today, has anyone ever made this awful joke?  Cartoon frame of Minnie the Minx or similar, clearly the last one on the page, in which she's tucking into the traditional pile of mash with snorkers sticking out at angles having a "nosh up" in a "snooty" restaurant.  She's looking at us, saying.  "Reader, I married him *Chortle*".

THE PUNT – Purple Turtle/Cellar/Wheatsheaf/Duke's Cut/White Rabbit, 8/5/13

Like cultural futures market traders, some people go to see unsigned acts so that they can spot successes early on: “I saw them before you’d ever heard of them, chum” is a common cry, and might be one familiar to anyone who caught Young Knives, Stornoway or Fixers at previous Punts.  Tonight’s event is odd because, although it may well source a few similar anecdotes for future pub raconteurs, for those of us who live in the here and now the bill is chock full of potential, but a little short on match-fit performers and finished articles.

The Purple Turtle PA, sadly, doesn’t seem to be either of those.  As an engineer battles gamely throughout the night, the timings fall further behind schedule, and the sound becomes more and more wayward.  For Phil McMinn (who has played the Punt previously as part of Fell City Girl and The Winchell Riots, despite his cheeky onstage claims) this is a minor issue and, although the mix might be missing some laptop trickery, his acoustic songs with violin touches cut through technological difficulties. We’ve always admired rather than loved his previous acts, finding them too bombastic and desperately emotional to truly embrace, but this outstanding set hinges on his fantastic, ruby port voice, and a knowing way with melody and dynamics.  If the music is more down to earth than his old bands’, then the lyrics certainly are, touching on mountains, tents and, quite possibly, pony trekking and Youth Hostels, with a wordy dexterity that occasionally recalls Joni Mitchell.  Give that man a gold star, and some Kendall mintcake for his napsack.

More veterans stripping things down next door in The Cellar, as Listing Ships take to the stage for the first time as a trio, having lost a member to parenthood (which has probably killed more bands than drink, drugs and gate reverb put together).  No offence to the departed guitarist, but the band is a revelation as a threepiece, giving the compositions enough space to add a cheeky sashay to what was once a clumping krautcore goosestep.  Tonight keyboard parts reveal new squelchy qualities, and basslines suddenly exude the aromas of dub and New York punk funk: seriously, we can suddenly hear ESG in there, along with the predicted Tortoise and Explosions In The Sky. 

Candy Says...relax!  They might as well, they’re still soundchecking back at the PT.  Oh, they’re about to start...oh, no they’re not.  Must dash.

Beginning to know what a ping pong ball must feel like, we nip back to The Cellar for a bracing waft of Duchess.  We enter to a delightful bit of summery, Afropop fluff, which bears a marked resemblance to Bow Wow Wow.  It’s often lovely stuff, but they could do with going a little more wild (in the country) to lift these promising songs.  Perhaps if they swap one of the percussionists for some gigging experience, we’ll have a great band on our hands.

Limbo Kids have made some superb recordings, which is what you’d expect from members of Ute and Alphabet Backwards.  In the White Rabbit, though, the glacial fragments of late 80s chart hits they arranged into delicate towers of song seem to topple like so much icy pop Jenga.  The vocals are cheery but thin, the band look a little uncertain, and the whole affair is tasty, but somewhat undercooked.  This is their debut gig, we understand, and the conclusion is that they could well have been the best act of Punt 2014, but for now they’re just providing the hold music before our first visit to our favourite Oxford venue.

The Wheatsheaf, apparently held together by scraps of tattered carpet and the accrued tar of ancient cigarettes is not only our Oxford bolthole of choice, but also the most fitting venue for some proper rock in the Punt, making its rock ‘n’ roll case from the tattooed boozers in the downstairs bar to the leaking toilets in the venue above.  In the darkness with a pint of cheap ale is perfect place to see Bear Trap, a scuzzy quartet of grungers who look as though they should come from Oxford, Michigan, making mall rock in the back room of the local Lutheran chapel to kill drab small town weekends.  There are backwards baseball caps on- and offstage, all nodding vigorously to greasy rock that kicks like an irate lumberjack, but whines like a petulant teen.  We’d be lying if we said that these thrashed chords and raw snarls were in any way original, but we’d also be lying if we said we don’t sup back that cheap ale at double speed, with a dumbass grin on our silly face.

If Bear Trap look American, Ags Connolly doesn’t half sound it.  Not only is his music old school one-man melancholy country – or Ameripolitan music, as he and his fellow Shaniaphobes like to call their sound, to differentiate it from whatever stadium schmaltz is being labelled country this week – his voice is pure Midwest drawl, which is odd as when speaking he betrays his West Oxfordshire home.  Normally this would be an unforgivable crime, but Ags’ voice is just so damn good, unhurriedly lolloping along the melodies like a cowpoke taking an easy stroll back from church on a glorious day, that all is forgiven.  Like Bear Trap, his music isn’t going to break new ground, but if it’s looking to break a few hearts, it might just succeed.

Fearing that we’d neglect The Duke’s Cut if we didn’t make the effort to walk there now, we make the rush there to check out The August List.  Thankfully, it’s not as punishingly busy as last year, but it’s still hard to make out much of this enjoyable duo’s music from the back of the crowd, in the doorway of the Ladies’.  Experience tells us that the music is a sweet, smily balance to Ags’ lachrymose laments, with unhurried porch-swing ditties drifting in from some mythical Deep South farmstead.  There’s an unforced connection between their voices that you only get if the singers are brother and sister, or husband and wife.  Or, judging by their musical reference points, both.

We have thoroughly enjoyed Death Of Hi-Fi’s recent album, but live, and shorn of many of the guest vocalists, their music feels like a functional backdrop, rather than a main event.  Like the paranoid feeling that things keep happening in your peripheral vision, the music always seems as though it’s about to usher in something big - whether that’s a stunning guest turn or a brash corporate pep talk, we’re not sure – but it never quite does.  Only rapper N-Zyme really makes a mark onstage, and he displays a nervous energy that seems to hamper his performance a little.  A strong band best suited to the studio, perhaps.

Our experience of tonight’s Punt has been of people doing old things very well, and people doing new things that might need a little nurturing or rethinking before they’re great, but that doesn’t mean that any of the performances are bad.  Except Nairobi’s, that is.  It’s a little unfortunate for them that both Duchess and Limbo Kids have nodded towards the post-Foals African influenced rhythms they favour, and we try to bear in mind that the PT sound system is shot away, but even with these byes, what we see is clumsy and disappointing.  With guitars doing an ugly Hi-Life widdle over clunky drums and a vocal that sounds like a disconsolate moose, it’s as if this set has been put together solely to annoy Andy Kershaw.  Sadly, the wonky world music jam happening in the doorway of Moss Bros as we wend our way back to The Wheatsheaf is more satisfying.

Like a hideous breeding experiment between Stump and The Peking Opera, The Goggenheim bring some much needed theatricality to the Punt.  Everything about this band is grating, from the unjazz skronk of the sax to the repulsive Man At C&A striped vests to the shrill declamatory dada vocals, and yet, against all logic, their songs feel like glorious pop nuggets. Whilst the band nail the wayward blowouts of improvisors Bolide to trashy backbeats and Beefheartian trellises, matriarchal abstract diva Grace Eckersley wails and coos barely coherent mantras.  There’s an otherworldliness about The Goggenheim, as well as a love of the cheap and brash, as if it were the sort of thing two-dimensional sci fi monsters might listen to on their night off. 

And so, we leave the frugging Macra and boogying Aquaphibians and make our way to The White Rabbit for the Punt’s denouement.  In a way, the biggest revelation of the night is how well this works as a final venue: the Goggenheim provide a mystifying climax, and this welcoming little pub acts as a come down party.  We slurp down a nightcap and enjoy After The Thought, who starts off in the style of Artificial Intelligence electronic acts such as B12 or early Black Dog, and then adds a sizable tray of guitar pedals.  There’s a sparse, almost systems music feel to the loops and rhythms, and a lot of the set sounds like the third Orbital album with half tracks turned down and someone playing guitar over the top.  The effect is hypnotic but, just maybe, it’s not quite as good as the third Orbital album without half the tracks turned down and someone playing guitar over the top.  Like much of tonight’s bill, After The Thought is an act with a relatively short gigging history, and we’re sure that soon this enjoyably textured music will become even more encapsulating.  Whether Matt Chapman will become an “I saw him first” topic for future boasts we don’t know, but we do know that we’ve explored a varied set of local acts, and supported a bunch of excellent Oxford venues that should be cherished, which is perhaps enough of a boast for anyone with a real love of live music.