Yaaba Ranked

Bit of a starry-eyed entry today.  I thought it was important to record how I acually felt at this gig, but also important to identify what was down to the performers and what was down to the atmosphere and the contrast to my earlier experiences.

Of course, the irony is that on a different night I'm sure the frugging neo-hippies and west Oxford world music yoghurtistas would have driven me to an acid rage.  I am fickle.

No I'm not.

YAABA FUNK, Bossaphonik, Cellar, 3/3/17

Some gigs feel like more than nights out.  Having wrestled our way out of a cashpoint mugging at the hands of a man in black tie – as neat an image of Britain in 2017 as we can imagine – we stumble into The Cellar to find a smiling Bossaphonik crowd.  Old, young, street smart, backpacker scruffy, black, white, male, female, blurring the division between the two, and all dancing happily I(if not necessarily aesthetically).  It’s at times like this we feel that Nightshift’s Oxford is a better version than any you’d find on celluloid or tea towel.

Even for those not having a minor emotional epiphany this gig offers a top flight band to make the night special.  Depressingly, a funk gig  is often just bread and circuses crowd-pleasing, little more than a mass of blues change ballast between overlong solos and silly shirts, whereas great funk is taut, minimal and sometimes disorienting.  One of the most extreme examples is Fela Kuti’s afrobeat, with repeated riffs extending for whole gigs and LP sides like huge landing strips for politically charged sweat soaked sentiments.  Brixton’s Yaaba Funk understand this perfectly, and although they have bouncing, high life influences, their longform pieces stretch into the distance, riveted intermittently by stainless steel horn stabs.  The vocals have the simple immediacy of slogans chanted from a barricade, four square but always no the edge of impassioned abandon.  Conversely the brass section spins off into improvisation (ribbons of Ben Webster sax and Dizzy-ing trumpet spirals) but always returns to tight punching just when the music threatens to get flabby.

And that’s it: repeat until euphoric or revolutionary, whichever comes sooner.  There’s a brief period in the doldrums three quarters of the way in, a call and response section going to seed and growing ugly and untameable over 5 long minutes, but this is the only misstep.  We’ll support any band that uses its double agogo tattoo to call a room of punters together despite their differences, when so many outside the Cellar are trying to drive us apart because of them.

Bossa No, Ta

I had to go to work today. On a Saturday, I ask you. Still, time and a half, eh? This, coupled with the fact I have to retype this review - which is the very last from the ancient archives - means I don't have time to tell the Cowley Lavatory Story. Remind me to do it Tuesday.

MOTIV, Bossaphonik, The Cellar 20/1/06

It's something of a truism that most rock bands are better live than on record, and that songs breathe a little more easily in the vibrant atmosphere of a performance than they do in the strict confines of the studio. Oddly, the new breed of hip hop influenced club jazz bands seem to crank out fluent, funky nuggets on record, but onstage they descend into stadium rock bombast and sluggish clumsiness. I'd heard an EP by London-based seven-piece Motiv, a few years ago, and been impressed. Firy horn solos were bounced on elastic basslines whilst jazzy keyboards rumbled in the middle distance and insistent rhythms punched the whole thing along. What was most intriguing about the recording was the way they kept hold of that dancefloor staple, a rich and constant groove, while allowing the saxophonist space to take his solos to far more exciting places than most club jazzers would dare.

Stuff them onstage in The Cellar, however, and this attention to detail goes out the window. They don't play too baldy, but it all feels hollow and unconvincing - they sound less like they're playing together, and more like they happen to be playing near each other. The drummer is frankly excellent, but nobody seems to be overly concerned with playing off his springy rhythms. Listen, in funk the beat has to be exact if you want it to work: the downbeat has got to be a singularity, not a quantum packet.

It's a tragedy that Motiv can't seem to fall in line, as there's so much individual talent on display. The saxophonist still boasts an impressive technical range, from angular Maceo lines to abstract Coltrane squiggles, whilst the trumpet and flugelhorn player has a neatly contrasting melancholic tone, something like Clifford Brown on occasion. But too often the brass are approximating the requirements of the music, sawing when they should be stabbing. Similarly, occasional rapper The Cheshire Cat and a female vocalist are pretty adept on the mike, if slightly too content to shout, "Are you alright, Oxford?" between every tune. As a friend of mine put it, "It's hard to see whatr this band is doing wrong...except the gig".

All in all Motiv seem to be coasting, content to let their musical funky footsoldiers turn into shambling zombies, content to shout "Power to the people!" instead of making any meaningful connection. Yes, the majority of the audience are very appreciative, but stick anything approaching dance music on at midnight on a Friday in a licensed venue and people are guaranteed to go ape. Motiv could still be a very good band, if they could just find a little passion and precision. James Brown once sang "Get up! Get into it! Get involved!". Well, there are worse mantras a band can adopt...