Outstanding In Afield

Here's my second review for this month's Nightshift. The editor reviewed the In A Different Place all-dayer, but as he was one of the organisers and had shifts on the door and so on, I wrote some copy. You'll find the text below interpolated into the review at feb.pdf.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, 1512/24 

Whilst one might expect the front bar to host acoustic acts, there’s a surprising array of styles and genres on display throughout the afternoon. However, opening act Aphra Taylor is a textbook example of a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. This is definitely not to say that her set is generic, though, her voice full of smoke and sweetness, and her delivery enlivened by tiny trills and ornaments that make the performance unique. 

The merch table is surprisingly sparsely utilised during the day, but Sinews are selling a  “horseface T-shirt". Considering their set is like having your face trampled by rabid stampeding stallions, this seems fitting. Their post-hardcore flagellation draws obvious comparisons to Fugazi or Drive Like Jehu, but there’s a sensitive heart beating somewhere within the maelstrom. 

Baby Maker’s songs are like the flayed and brittle skeletons of new wave pop, with bouncy tunes reduced to chugging drum machines, cheeky guitar twangs, and wry vocals, offering hints of Arab Strap’s laconic lofi story-telling. The set is sometimes more intriguing than successful, but the character shines through. 

The most intense set of the day is possibly delivered by Pet Twin, whose music has morphed over the last year from sparse confessional pop to huge theatrical workouts, which seem to be cathartic rituals for Gallagher as much they are spectacles for the audience. A typical track merges thick treacly bass, heart-wrenching vocals, and euphoric keys, so that you’re not sure whether to dance, weep, or collapse in the corner. One or two tracks have slightly messy endings, but really who cares about the landing once you’ve soared in flight? And, just at the point we think things couldn’t get any better, The Bobo comes onstage for the subaquatic ghost rave that is ‘No To Dread’. 

Like Baby Maker, Lord Bug’s songs are sparse and idiosyncratic, more like half-remembered dreams than pop tunes, and like Aphra Taylor, Libby Peet’s vocals lift them to spellbinding new places, her voice warm and jazzy yet introspective and mysterious, and her delivery full of wonderful slurs and rubati, so that she comes off like a strange melding of Amy Winehouse and Lou Barlow. For an act with a track called ‘Dog’s Dinner’ this is a beautiful and balanced set. 

The sound levels for GIGSY are perhaps a little low, but Khloë’s explosive stage energy would be enough for a gig to sound epic if the PA were rolled up newspaper attached to a dictaphone. Her music is a crunchy electronica take on dark-minded 80s synth – EDM meets EBM? - but the melodically aggressive vocal lines are built from club pop fun and burning rage, in equal measure  

Two of the themes running through today’s event are vocalists with wired stage presence, and music with a stoned psych groove. Both of these come together for local favourites Flights Of Helios, whose set is an eclectic melange of post-punk wiriness and expansive folky textures. Chris Beard is an imposing frontman, swaying at the front of the stage, screaming, crooning, cajoling and entreating by turns like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher, a Dickensian villain, and a praying mantis. There are touches of adventurous acts such as Spiritualized or Ultrasound in their set, but as a nod to Christmas, they turn ‘Good King Wenceslas’ into a psych-punk mantra, perfect for anyone whose Christmas dinner is composed solely of brandy butter and brown acid. 

The Subtheory bring back the classic trip hop sound, with low-slung beats, slinky bass,  and hazy late-night vocals (plus, unexpectedly, some excellent restrained guitar solos). Whilst it might be fair to accuse them of cosy 90s revivalism, they do it so incredibly well, and this set has the greatest spaciousness and poise of any on the bill. Cate Debu’s vocals are cool and clear, sitting unhurried at the centre of the chunky grooves, and with James from Pet Twin joining in the singers supply a softly spoken personality to the songs, so that they’re as much Portisheart and they are Portishead (sorry). 

As with Mandrake Handshake at last year’s festival, In A Different Place is headlined by a band who have moved from Oxford to London and found great success. Pecq might play their biggest gigs as part of touring bands for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks, but they more than own the stage as a trio, coming on to near darkness and launching into some understated tech-pop tunes that might convince you that “crepuscular bangers” is a genre. They take us on a slick, sleek ride through well tooled dreamy electro, but actually it i  the subtlest moments that they truly bewitch, and a hushed bleepy cover of ‘Wichita Linesman’ morphs into one of their own songs in a bubbling pool of squelchy synthtones. 

Strange Party?

Warm, isn't it?

ODDBALL, Isis Farmhouse, 8/6/19

This week the leader of the free world told us that the moon is a part of Mars.  We laughed at the time, but, spending a day in the colourful whirlwind that is the Oddball festival, suddenly such maverick cosmologies start to seem feasible – after all, we’re gearing up for Iffley lock to become a distant banlieue of Saturn with the Sun Ra Arkestra’s first ever trip to Oxford, and by six pm, a glance into their eyes reveals that a fair percentage of the crowd seem to have taken a psychic trip to Proxima Centauri, even if their physical husks still walk among.

And whilst we’re considering something as topsy-turvy as Commander Trump piloting Spaceship Earth through the inky galaxy, how about having the comedown before the trip?   We’re used to Moogieman making quirky, scientifically accurate new wave, like Robin Ince fronting Devo, but today he and drum machine prodder Stefano Maio turn in a set so bleak and unpsychedelic it’s actually otherworldly.  Imagine a John Carpenter soundtrack playing on a slowly decelerating Victrola whilst razor-honed guitar chords accompany the deadpan pronouncement “Don’t get lost”, and you have a set highlight.  New song “Journey To The East” is pretty much just a squelchy synth ostinato with some sententious metaphysical pronouncements intoned over the top, and is basically the opening to Sapphire & Steel rewritten by a paranoid Gurdjieff.  It’s brilliant, but (ironically) disorienting, and we’re glad we had the beautifully cascading kora notes of Jali Fily Cissokho to ease us into the festival.

There’s an outstanding representation of Oxford acts, from The Elephant Trip’s smoking-is-cool, shades-indoors-at-night Black Angels grooves, to Tiger Mendoza’s suet-fried melding of lysergic hip-hop beats with leather-clad rock guitar riffs, courtesy of Chris Monger from Shotgun Six (surely a shoe-in for Oddball 2020), to grief-pop heroes Flights Of Helios, who tonight get the balance between the band’s Pink Floyd vistas and Chris Beard’s stricken angel vocal spot on.  In fact, the festival’s only poor decision – apart from a few people’s final pint – is the installation of an onsite barber, whom we saw doing no business all day.  Who wants their aerials cut, man?

Whilst the day offers plenty to perplex sonically, perhaps the oddest experience is finding that the pub itself has been inexplicably rechristened the Android Garden, and that behind the bar instead of pint-pourers we find Chief Mixalot DJing some late 90s drum and bass classics - anyone witnessing the rare sight of Nightshift dancing is advised to repair immediately to the Psy-Care healing tent for a lie down.

We come across some new names during the day, Ia(i)n Ross clearly being such a new name that the event’s programme can’t decide how to spell it.  His amniotic synth washes are pleasing, but not as exciting as the old-fashioned hardware techno of ex-Vienna Ditto scamp Nigel Firth debuting as Oxford Audio Archive.  Plenty of acts on today’s bill, especially the spoken word artists, are gnomic, but Nigel’s the only one who’s gnomelike, sitting cross-legged behind a coffee table of teetering gadgets, and giggling quietly like he’s just got the jokes in Alice In Wonderland. His messy, but euphoric electronica has the glowing warmth of Pete Namlook, the ludic lo-fi chutzpah of Aqua Regia, and the sleek insistence of Hardfloor.  It’s enjoyably unpretentious, but when a Bollywood spectre starts to haunt a scrapbook jungle collage, it’s actually rather lovely too.

Perhaps the cream of the local crop, though, are expansive indie psych rockers and tambourine fetishists Knobblehead, who turn in an outstanding set of huge chugging tunes, mixing wild vibing with good honest melodic catchiness, part Brian Jonestown Massacre, part Jefferson Airplane.  At some points the blaring trumpet and tuneful chants even recall James circa Seven.  This is comfortably the best set we’ve seen them play, possibly because it’s the first time they’ve all managed to fit onstage simultaneously.

After all this, The Sun Ra Arkestra is an unusual headliner, but if this isn’t the sort of festival where expectations can be ravaged, nobody here has even tried to power a Moog by plugging into a leyline, and if bandleader Marshall Allen, at 95, hasn’t earned the right to do what the fuck he wants, then we’re from Betelgeuse (NB by this point, we aren’t entirely sure we’re not from Betelgeuse).  Tonight, they mostly eschew the frenzied freedom and synthesised abstraction of much of the back Ra-talogue for a smooth but slightly abstract lounge swing, including a surprisingly straight take on croon classic “Stranger In Paradise”.  Gavin Bryars once tried to capture the music of the Titanic’s band as they sank underwater, but the Arkestra make the sound of a Reno casino band melting into their daquiris, and if they seem to be treading water occasionally – space is the placeholder – and it isn’t the stellar voyage we expected, they sure can Pleaides tunes.

And then, it’s out onto the towpath for a moonlit stumble back to the mundane world.  Should the planets align, and Oddball return next year, we’ll certainly be there at the outset, ready for take-off.  Start the countdown, commander Trump...and smoke me a covfefe, I’ll be back for breakfast.

Truck 2016: Saturday

If Black Peaks recall The Club That Cannot Be Named, the Saloon stage is pure Bennett brothers Truck history.  Alt-country might boast the most inaccurate prefix in music history, but we won’t hold that against the late noughties style acts who fill this corrugated shed with sweet tones, not least the smooth-voiced Stevie Ray Latham who starts our Saturday.  Later we catch Samo Hurt & The Beatnik Messiahs, in which a man who amusingly resembles an occasional Nightshift scribe and Oxford promoter bashes out dirty Diddley country garage in the middle of the floor, like Carl Perkins pan-handling for pennies outside C&A

From The Alarm to Stereophonics, Wales seems to turn out a lot of big-boned melodic rock.  Fleur De Lys keep this tradition alive and whilst their clumpy tunes might not win any races, they could melt hearts with an impromptu break dance at the school prom – or perhaps we’ve been influenced by the sort of feelgood films on show in the cinema tent.  Do people pay nearly a hundred quid to come to a festival to watch The Goonies in a tiny hot enclosure?  Apparently so.  Probably more fun than checking out New Luna, in fairness, whose generic driving rock has a few tie dye guitar sounds, but is let down by growly vocals that seem to be trying desperately to puff the music up to stadium size.  They could have learnt a lot from Prohibition Smokers Club over the on the Veterans stage, where ex-Oxford boy Lee Christian is leading a rinsing P-funk Prince-flecked soul revue.  Each song is a sticky blast of glam rock and filth...rather like the dressing rooms from 70s Top Of The Pops must have been, we now suspect.

Anelog exist on the tuneful cusp between indie and MOR, and their set seems equidistant between Belle & Sebastian and Huey Lewis, which might not be the highlight of the day, but is a fuckmile better than Dagny, the experience of whom can be triangulated from Miley Cyrus, Icona Pop and the stale air in a balled up prawn cocktail crispbag.

Many of the best bands pull you in two directions at once, and Flights Of Helios make a big happy hippy haze into which Joy Division darkness and Chris Beard’s tarnished monk vocals swirl.  The placement of Horns Of Plenty amongst the crowd for “Dynah And Donalogue” is truly inspired. 

Brighton’s Thyla sound rather a lot like Belly, which is a very pleasant thing to do.  Nothing revolutionary here, but they’re a hell of lot more memorable than the next 3 acts we sit through, whose names we shall not dignify in print.  It’s up to Luke Smith & The Feelings to make us smile again with their existential Chas ‘N’ Dave schtick.  Luke is old Truck through and through, out of step with the prevailing ethos, nice, slightly bumbling, and well-loved by a vocal minority: perhaps he’s the Steventon Jeremy Corbyn.  Most surprisingly moving moment of the weekend comes from a rewrite of oldie “Luke’s National Anthem”, turning it into a lancet sharp anti-Ukip lament.

Luke may not be the epitome of cool, so we are inspired to check the fashion trends: it looks as though 2015’s dungarees and backwards caps are being taken over by crushed velvet crop tops and bumbags.  Yep, every tenth person on site has a bumbag, generally worn to the front, which means they should probably be rechristened cash mirkins.  The other popular look is “multicoloured wastrel”, as many people indulge in a giant paint fight on Saturday afternoon.  It looks as though the paint won.  Probably outwitted them.  Oh, and some girls seem to have come dressed as Magenta Devine, we won’t try to work out why on earth that should be.  Minecraft t-shirts still reign untroubled amongst the under 10s.

We naturally have to visit Afrocluster, in case they sound like Fela Kuti doing krautrock.  They don’t, inevitably, but they are a phenomenal rap/funk band, with a cracking frontman, a sashimi slicing horn section, and a rhythm section so far in the pocket they don’t know where to put their keys.  It’s an astonishing bubbling groove beast of a band, that is right up there as one of the best of the weekend: score another to Gorwelion Horizons.

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.

Truck-A-Doodle-Done

Hand a bit better, but still twinging.  Who heard Belshazzar's Feast at the Prom two nights ago?  Kicked arse, my friends, kicked arse.



Truck 2012, Saturday

Saturday morning rolls around, and everyone’s sipping tea, eating bacon and peering through sunglasses.  In the old days, couldn’t you get a nice healthy pasta salad at Truck?  Now, it’s all pizza, curry, doughnuts and burgers.  Oh, come on, we can’t eat a burger for yet another meal.  We absolutely refuse.  Oh, go on then.  And stick some bacon and a fried egg in it too, whilst you’re there.

The See See start our non-cholesterol day with laddish indie psychedelia strung between Cast and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.  There’s quite a lot musically to recommend them, but the effect is spoilt by a desperate, shopworn swagger onstage.  Watching them is like idly flicking through a 90s copy of Loaded in the STD clinic waiting room.  We imagine.  Opening the main stage, Yellow Fever are proving that real stage presence comes naturally to a lucky few, even if they’re barely old enough to get into venues.  With a vast gaggle of young fans crowding the stage, and some rubbery, twitchy little tunes, the band remind us a little of the early days of The Dead Jerichos.  Impressive though the set is, they’re still finding their feet musically – some of the twiddly guitars clearly shoot for Foals but come up nearer to Level 42 – but when a band improves this much between every gig we see, we know it won’t be long before they write a track we can adore.

Banbury’s Pixel Fix, mind you, make Yellow Fever look ancient.  They put in a most commendable effort, but could do with coming out from The Arctic Monkeys’ shadow and developing the electronic elements.  If they hung around at the Second Stage they might have seen Toliesel, and picked up a few tips.  Their references might not be revolutionary – there’s a lot of the Americana with table manners we used to hear from The Epstein, and a little of Aztec Camera’s well-bred pop music in the mix – but they show that quality songwriters and musicians will always be worth listening to.

Plenty of experience in Flights Of Helios too, a band that grew from The Braindead Collective, and who have been in roughly ten trillion great Oxford acts.  Each.  They make windswept, open-ended pathos-pop, that moves between the dubby warmth of ambient popsters like Another Fine Day, and a darker shoegazing paranoia (with bits of The Dark Side Of The Moon laying about in between). Oddly for a band who developed from an improv project, there are a couple of moments that feel too formal – a disco hi-hat rhythm sounds slightly gratuitous at one point – but this is neverthelessone of the sets of the weekend, bursting with ideas.  The best moments feature Chris Beard’s fragile, melismatic vocal lines floating liturgically over hissing keyboards and fizzing guitar.  A man next to us explains how one track brought a tear to his eye, and that hadn’t happened since Babe II: Pig In The City.  He tells us all about his favourite scenes, too.  Lucky us.

We’re impressed by just how unreconstructed Kill It Kid’s priapic blues and scuzzy cock rock is.  They have good, honest heavy rock structures, and not one but two excellently coarse vocalists.  One Zeppelinised howl from either sex, nice touch.  However, when the chemical toilets are emptied during their set, and a vicious stench wafts across the crowd just as they sing “dirty water tastes so sweet”, we have to make an exit, in case cosmic irony starts playing more dangerous tricks.

The Last Republic are very boring.  Their light synth rock could be from the closing credits to an old brat pack movie, and even whilst you try to listen your brain keeps drifting onto other topics, no matter how idiotic.  So, anyway, apparently in Babe II there’s a really good slow-motion fire scene with clowns, and a part where “Mafia dogs turn the pig into a kind of Jesus”.

Jesus, time for a pint.  We’re ecstatic to see that this year the bars only serve organic ale and cider on tap, instead of pissy High Street lager; if Truck can find someone next year to sell us an espresso and a bottle of good claret, we might be really on to something.  Outside the bar we find some other journalists taking refuge from The Last Republic.  Hilariously, a snapper from a publication that shall remain nameless misunderstood the request for a security photo this year, and sent in a shot of The Skatalites to prove he was a music photographer.  If you saw a white man in his 30s trying to get backstage with an ID photo of an aging black ska musician, we know who it was.

Right, enough of this chatting, we need to go and see Crash Of Rhinos.  Their post-hardcore sound is definitely enticing, although they have too many subtle, thoughtful passages when what they really need is more...well, more rhino.  Over at Jamalot nothing much is happening, except for some little kids busting some funkily awful moves and three lubricated lads pulling off the tricky Three-Way Chest Bump manouevre, who jovially tell us to “fuck off” for reading the paper whilst dance music is playing.  Fair point, we concede...but we bet they never finished the Guardian cryptic crossword. 

We’ve enjoyed Emmy The Great a lot in the past, as a solo performer.  With a backing band her songs seem to have had the edges sheared off, and the lyrics lose some of their bite, and the whole thing comes off prettily quirky, like The Juliana Hatfield 3, so we go back to the Second Stage to see Man Like Me.  This proves to be one of the better decisions we’ve made in recent times.  What we find is three cheeky London lads shouting, throwing shapes and climbing up the tent rigging whilst the backing track plays what we suppose we should call post-grime, but actually sounds like Village People pastiches knocked up on some kid’s iPhone on the way over.  It’s terrible.  It’s brilliant.  It’s a euphoric mixture of early Beastie Boys, The Streets and some half-arsed entry into a T4 roadshow talent competition.  It’s truly brilliant.  It’s truly terrible.  As pop music should be.

65 Days Of Static are a band whom we’ve admired, but never quite understood before, but perhaps on a Man Like Me high, we find their crescendo-happy set deeply invigorating.  Synths buzz and massed percussion is crashed, like a Stomp cover of “Mentasm”.  It’s a set of pure gall and energy and we’re sudden – and  incredibly late - converts.

Lucy Rose makes some quite lovely and delicate music.  So far as we can tell.  Can’t get in to the tent, you see, so good for her.  Luckily, Mackating are at Jamalot making The Heavy Dexters look like amateurs by going on a full ninety minutes late, and with half the band missing.  So, OK, not a set for the annals, but the interplay between the buoyant dancehall delivery of Fireocious and Ilodica’s sweet Horace Andy quaver is delicious.  It’s also great when Fireocious stops the band mid-song, warning “Put some pace in it, bloodclot!”, like we’re witnessing a reggae Totale’s Turns.