Supernormal 2025 part 2

Nadeem Din-Gabisi, dressed in a lion mask like Tiger Mendoza’s cousin, may be Saturday’s highlight. This low-slung Brit-hop set (key reference: Roots Manuva) is glorious, and the lyrics eruditely explore everything that is good and bad about this country - the track title ‘Pub Lunch’ sums that up, and it sounds something like one of the lighter productions on Skull Disco. He samples the Parry’s ‘Jersualem’ and even quotes Morrissey - if he wanted an example of something from Britain that’s both great and an absolute embarrassment, he hit the bullseye. 

The Supernormal cabaret makes a welcome return, and this year we get lip-synching divas, absurd comedic turns, and some surprisingly earnest and lovely Moroccan song, but MC Ginny Lemon is still the highlight, managing to make slurring a tune with a fish on your head seem like the funniest and most subversive act ever. 

Kalkin are a highly original drums and fiddle duo. Their first number has snatches of jigs but tears along relentlessly, as if the film Speed had been set in a folk club. There is also a whiff of Velvet Underground in a churning mid-paced track, but they peak with a wistful Gavin Bryars-type exploration accompanying a 6-note piano loop, which finds new angles on every repetition, some murky and dark, some bright and soaring. Meat Strap on Friday cover equally broad terrain, sometimes fragmented funk we christen Wacko Pastorius, sometimes like a sashimi chef slicing up Slint with James Blood Ulmer seasoning. They also have inscrutable dedications, including “for the man who invented athlete’s foot”. They add a double bass player, then a flautist - we leave wondering whether they'll continue to expand exponentially and burst the Red Kite tent. Zoh Amba is even more unpredictable, a few opening minutes of solo sax skronk acting as a Wire-reader's Trojan horse to sneak some acoustic songs somewhere between Michaelle Shocked and Neil Young ont the main stage. 

Rainham Sheds invert the Lixenberg Performer-Audience Gambit. Their set starts with a hand-stitched alt groove which is partly like 90s Fall, but mostly like a bladdered and belligerent Bis, whilst vocalist Kate Mahony rolls through the crowd towards the stage with a chair she is part wearing, part fighting. When she gets to a mic, she screeches and wails like an ill-tempered baby, before letting the audience take over the honours. This is pop music as late-night pub car park argy-bargy, terribly messy but open to all. 

Coffin Mulch on Sunday play death metal, and they like playing death metal, and we like hearing them play death metal, because they play death metal really well. Sometimes, you don’t need to do anything new, you just need to do it monstrously loudly. Contrast this with the slightly more stately Meatdripper, a stoner/doom quartet who can hit quite a surprising groove: have you ever had the urge to shimmy your hips whilst the loud overtones trouble your bowels? In true Supernormal fashion, as we enjoy this onslaught a man in a Greggs onesie outside the tent is helping someone dressed as a tea table rearrange pink wafers. Probably they were dislodged running away from furniture scourge Kate Mahony. 

We’re expecting Big Farmer, a band featuring members of Supernormal’s build crew, to be a good honest garage racket, but although they have a hardcore heart, there’s a lot of wit and space on display. The nearly spoken vocals lean slightly towards Idles, but they’re less gruff, and the second number’s delivery sounds weirdly like Eddie Argos, if Art Brut took more cues from Fugazi.  

Brìghde Chaimbeul plays the Scottish smallpipes, and although all compositions are sourced from Skye, she makes intriguing arrangement decisions. One piece is so slow it is probably counted in beats-per-month, whilst another swirls round and round a couple of motifs like bellows-blown techno. Is that a smoke machine wreathing her head or mists magically transported from a Munro? We don’t know enough to say where the trad tunes end and Chaimbeul’s inventions begin, but we know this is exceptionally beautiful - and being blasé about boundaries is where we came in, right? 

If we’re being true to ourselves, Supernormal is our favourite festival. Looking out for others, we strongly advise you all attend next year. Make it happen! Hell, it even only rained for about 20 minutes... 

Scud Missive

I have now reviewed Supernormal so many times I think I might take a rest next year and let someone else have a crack...course, I'll still attend, it's the best festival ever.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 1-3/8/25 

“Come onstage with me if you want to get out of the rain”. When did you ever hear a festival act propose that? But, it's Sunday lunchtime and Loré Lixenberg is opening her performance space to the damp people of Braziers Park, which just about sums up Supernormal, a festival where the line between artist and audience is often blurred, broken, or moshed into oblivion. We should mention that Lixenberg is a highly trained operatic mezzo-soprano and her invitation arose whilst she was interviewing a random member of the public in a sprechgesang style (discovery: the phrase “that’s so bloody typical” is astonishing when delivered like Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder). The interviewee is called Scud, and is an actual legend, talking with wit and passion about the value of public libraries, going full Phil Minton in an impromptu bout of vocal improv, and telling stories of inventing parkour (disputed) and discovering punk as a nipper. Punk acts feature elsewhere this weekend, but the whole event embodies punk’s central tenets “Make it happen!”, “Look out for each other”, and “Be true to yourself”, and is as incredible as ever. 

Our Friday starts with Distraxi, who sounds pleasingly like someone howling with rage whilst faxing a kazoo, before we visit The Vortex for the first time. This wonky shed space hosts plenty of multimedia business over the weekend, but the simple show by The Panama Papers is one of the best. The music is mostly lugubrious sax and electronics, with some low intoned vocals somewhere between Swans and Crash Test Dummies, but the magic is in the slideshow projected behind them, in which the Dept of Improvised Investigations hilariously claims that noise and improv are a front or tax dodge – can selling 20 home-made tapes be a viable business model?  

Rory Salter suggests it can, perhaps, because the Barn stage is so packed we can’t see what on earth he’s doing, but we love the drifting tones that sound by turns like Snap, Crackle & Pop doing plumbing in Twin Peaks, a Woookiee crèche, and To Rococo Rot making balloon animals.  

Folk is a large part of Supernormal, tapping into the spirit of homegrown rebellion that’s existed for centuries. The Charmers are a coven folk quintet with a “Song for the dykes...a spell for the banished”. Milkweed perform a cosmic folk horspiel based on an Ulster Cycle tale which we admittedly can’t follow, but the fuzzy rustic lope is a delight. They introduce a pair of vocalists for one passage, who turn out to be Bridget & Kitty, from the Round Table folk club in London. They perform unaccompanied duets in Braziers House on Saturday which are unfussy and beautifully controlled and crystalline, a world away from that theatrical barleymow “folk-singer accent” we’ve all heard. That an apparently unrelated song is dedicated to Palestine without any stretch shows the communicative power of these old compositions.  

If folk music is earthy, immediate, and deeply bloodthirsty, Gorgon Vomit are a folk band, being an excellently intense old-school metal pummel party, with guitars whinnying like rabid Kazakh horses. They have a Jamaican vocalist, and track names like ‘Babylon Detonator’, but this actually makes very little difference – possibly because metal is universal and inclusive of everyone, and possibly because you can never hear the lyrics, anyway.  Headbanging with dreads makes you look like a metal Medusa, though, so props for that.  

Quieter pleasures are on offer, though, like Judith Hamann whose wordless vocals and cello are ECM ambience meets Arvo Pärt meets a gate swinging in the wind. Slow bowing like a calm but wintry sea alternates with quick light taps on the neck, hypnotically.  

A Widget is something small, oddly shaped, but useful, which fits this band, featuring a guitarist from Big Joanie, and our own Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani on drums. They make a strangely lopsided funk pop, somewhere between ESG and Hall & Oates, with one tune even sounding like a cheeky Chic. The vocals are blokey and spoken, but with a wry warmth taking us to the sunny side of The Streets. They’re a pier-end, market-stall British version of a knowing post-post-punk groove band - Elsie Tanner Soundsystem, anyone? 

There's another local win on Sunday, when Oxford’s improv hero Pat Thomas duets with drummer Dan Johnson, eschewing keys in favour of...maybe a tablet? All we can see is Pat sitting studiously in a beret like a French professor at a ludicrously vast table. Regardless of how the noises are generated, they sound fantastic, electronic chitters intertwining with skittering drums. Later in the set the beats get chunkier and we are strafed with blurts and clatters – this is probably what it’s like to play Donkey Kong from inside one of the barrels. 

En Creux is the solo work of Lucia H Chung, a London-based Taiwanese artist, with no-input mixer. Listen for a few seconds and it’s just static and crackle; listen for two minutes and spotty rhythms emerge; after 10 we hear classic electro grooves crossed with manic squeaks, like Egyptian Lover rogering a bouncy castle. Remember Eddie Large’s routine about celebs starting their cars? Imagine that covered by Autechre.

Abstraction is physical not aural at the BRUK UP dance workshop. It’s fascinating to learn about the avant-dancehall moves – think a middle ground between breakdance, the Thriller video, and trying to cross a ropebridge whilst wankered – but it seems Nightshift doesn’t have as many shoulder muscles as the instructor... 

Given its ostensibly inclusive can-do nature, it’s a surprise you don’t see more physically disabled punk performers, as this music comes from spirit and rage, not the corporeal (with the occasional exception of blood alcohol content). Sublux are a churning hardcore band fronted by two wheelchair users, one of whom has a proper incandescent shriek, and the other of whom has a little machine that makes bleepy noises almost without cessation, whether a song is playing or not. Feral. 

Soundart Radio’s shack allows anyone to sign up and broadcast sounds online, and through small speakers near the main gate. Counter-intuitively, the shows that work the best are those that veer away from Supernormal styles: local noise artist Plague Arish layers up some excellent tape hisses and hums, with thudding submerged rhythms that sound like a helicopter trying to take off in a blancmange, but draws a sparse audience, whereas a handstand competition and Vengaboys tunes get the crowds going. Context is everything, we guess. 

Paper Money

I wasn't best happy with this review. It's all fine, but I'm not sure I captured the last band very well, and teetered too much between liking and disliking the opener. Still, it's Supernormal this weekend, and I have a review pass, so expect a very long review before too long!

DAILY TOLL/ MYSTERY BISCUIT/ FIVER, OMS, Library, 11/7/25 

It’s like a game you might play after Christmas dinner, describe Fiver without using the word “Nirvana”. The solution, saying “”Mudhoney, might be considered gamesmanship and cause Granny to stomp off to the sherry decanter in a huff, but it’s actually a smart move, because Fiver’s take on US grunge has a rootsier, warmer heart that aligns them with the second in command in Seattle’s 90s army. There are even a couple of needling atonal moments which recall Dinosaur Jr, though in fairness, there are also times when Fiver remind us what side of the Atlantic they’re from, delivering bouncy rock somewhere between Wildhearts with a healthier lifestyle and Therapy? without the library cards. Inverting the adage, Fiver tonight suggest that the destination is more important than the journey, and to get to pleasingly chunky climaxes and rousing choruses we have to start each song with slightly clunky, chugging rhythms.  

Mind you there’s chugging and there’s chugging. Forget sub-Oasis pedestrian rockers, think of the steady heartbeat of John Lee Hooker, the relentless greasy grooves of ZZ Top, and the sleek kraut repetition of Can. Mystery Biscuit chug like a sleek silver machine rather than a rumbling old banger, painting bright Edgar Froese synth lines over modern psych tunes. They are experts at knowing when to build, and whenever it feels as though the rhythms couldn’t get more intense Marc Burgess switches from keys to second guitar and the music soars even higher. Perhaps the best track tonight is a slower burn, featuring a long recording of poet e e cummings, which is great with a capital G (somewhat ironically). 

Australia’s Daily Toll seem like the sort of band who’d appreciate a gag about the orthographical preferences of Modernist writers, they have a bookish indie air which makes one think of hand-illustrated C90s of Peel sessions and annotated paperbacks. Although their opening number swims into view from a miasma of bowed bass, their vintage introspective indie isn’t aggressively lofi, but neither is it prettily twee and toothless. Perhaps the best reference point is Yo La Tengo at their subtlest, with a touch of Mazzy Star around the glistening guitar, in handmade Sebadoh wrapping. Despite harking back to a very specific era, there’s plenty of variation, from a surprisingly insistent Jah Wobble bassline in one number to a bit of Dry Cleaning recitation in another, and even a studiously rocking cousin of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Their name evokes enrvating chores, but this inventive band is quietly invigorating. 

Axis Of Dawson

Why doesn't hurt Siobhan Fahey if you throw fruit at her?

Banana Armour

NB The word "readers" was inadvertently omitted form the printed version of this review - my error, I fear - so now you can read it in fully idiomatic English for the first time.

RICHARD DAWSON/ ONE LEG ONE EYE, Divine Schism, Cowley Workers Club, 12/6/25  

Anyone who relishes the expansive bleakness of Lankum should immediately seek out Ian Lynch’s side-project One Leg One Eye, a duo focusing on drone, texture, and oppressive sonic fugs. Tonight's excellent set opens with metaphysical observations about the nature of God from sampled Irish voices atop thick, dark tones in a way that recalls the haunting atmospherics of From The Bogs Of Aughiska. Later a cortège-paced folk song is joined by buzzsaw drones and massed organ notes until it sounds like a spectral Luke Kelly guesting on Scott Walker’s Tilt with Charlemagne Palestine on keys. The track – in as much as elements can be extracted from the sonic blanket that overlays us for forty minutes – ends with what might be a bucket of cutlery emptied in a chapel. Both hurdy-gurdy and uillean pipes are played, but anyone expecting Séamus Ennis sprightliness or bouncy jigs will be confused – mind you, with the venue’s mobile disco LEDs twinkling behind the stage giving Phoenix Nights flavours, the whole set feels like a twisted dream. 

If One Leg sketch landscapes with sound, Richard Dawson captures characters with words. His songs are impeccably economical vignettes in the vein of Hemingway stories or the cool illustrations of Joyce’s Dubliners, except they’re almost impossibly English, with opener ‘Polytunnel’ asking “Could you manage a slice of toast/ Or a little bit of soup, my flower?”. Into this celebration of turnip-pulling a tiny line is almost hidden, “It's Karen who was always the green-fingered one”, offering a glimpse into a deep history for the narrator, and so many of tonight’s songs are about hobbyists – allotment diggers, YouTube ufologists, sponsored runners – undertaking tiny activities as if in defiance of a vast, and often unfriendly, world.  

This isn’t a poetry recital, though, and Dawson’s guitar playing is as fascinating as it is adept, swapping between elegant picking and crunchy abstraction like a hybrid of Davey Graham and Gary Lucas. Those who have trouble with his voice would find that the Dawson mannerisms – argue amongst yourselves whether they’re unconscious tics or a stylistic signature – even more pronounced tonight, especially the octave-leaping swoops to strangled falsetto or husky chest voice. But, like Dylan, he swaps melodic fluency for dramatic power, with ‘Jogging’ tonight being especially visceral, somehow a howl of rage and a clarion call for being alive simultaneously. In a way Dawson is Richard Thompson for socially awkward literature students; in another, he’s Chris Wood for Wire readers; but perhaps he’s simply unique. 

Thrust Never Sleeps

This is one of those gigs performed by old friends, which you go to out of loyalty, but which actually turn out to be excellent.

ANTON BARBEAU & THRUST/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE, Common Ground, 16/5/25 

Charms Against The Evil Eye inhabit that sweet spot characterised by free festivals at the turn of the 80s, in which laidback hippies rubbed against nascent new-wavers, mellowing proggers started to think about adding more tunes, and rock took on jazz influences without the self-conscious fusion fanfare. Many of Charms’ songs sound as though they may have started as bucolic John Martyn reveries before being sharpened and sped up with amphetamine intensity, all rubbery bass and hyperstrummed guitar. Set closer ‘Terry Walpole’s Camera’ chucks 60s psych-pop at us with punk energy, like Buzzcocks in kaftans, and more whimsical numbers still come with a caffeine jolt, putting extra canter into the Canterbury sound; even ‘Green’, the set’s most stoned and wide-eyed track is Caravan with go-faster stripes. It’s a delightful set, the band having quietly become a great proposition whilst you weren’t looking. 

Charms become THRUST to back Anton Barbeau, a prolific Californian songwriter who resided in Oxford for a few years in the noughties. Although he is keen to stress that it has been 7 years since he and the band have been in the same country, let alone room, concerns  on- and offstage about rustiness evaporate as they fly into live favourite ‘This Is Why They Call Me Guru 7’, a sort of bubblegum kraut-rock mantra. Barbeau’s best material balances literate surrealist troubadouring with drug-pumped spaciness and pure pop hooks - think Robyn Hitchcock Presents Popol Vuh Vs ABBA – and tonight is a glistening string of classics, from the compact chug of ‘Dust Beneath My Wings’ to the Eurovision–inspired sex-romp that is ‘Milk Churn In The Morning’, via the abstract collapse of ‘Banana Song’ (which might be the only moment the set veers towards egregiously wacky). Local folker Susanna Starling joins for a couple of excellent numbers, including ‘Leave It With Me, I’m Always Gentle’, one of Barbeau’s most elliptically lovely lyrics. It may have been years since he played in Oxford, but tonight may be the best set we've seen. To apply twisted Ant-logic, he should definitely visit less frequently more often. 

Stigmata Catch-up

Here's your bonus minireview. The editor of Nigthshift couldn't turn up in time to this gig, so I reviewed the first act.  You can find their review of the other acts, Traidora and Distraxi, at nightshiftmag.co.uk/2025/may.pdf.

HOLY WOUNDS, Whiplash, The Bully, 9/4/25 

It might just be suggestion because Holy Wounds feature Taz Corona from the mighty Undersmile, but we seem to detect a doom underpinning to their ritualistic abstract noise - even the most untethered section of screech and drone seems to come with an unspoken trudging beat. Taz plays guitar, growls and does that ghost-of-an-evil-child-monk voice she's so adept at, whilst Kieran Wakeman crawls on the floor doing...indefinable noise things. At one point he plays a horrific rusty scythe with a violin bow, and if it makes no discernible sound, we aren't about to dare tell him. 

Mothers of Inventory

This is my main review for Nightshift this month, but there's actually a tiny uncredited review in there as well.  Think of it as a secret track. I'll post soon. How exciting, eh.

INDEX FOR WORKING MUSIK/ BEDD/ MYSTERY BISCUIT, Divine Schism, FPCC, 6/4/25 

Mystery Biscuit’s cosy kosmische sound melds disco-kraut drums, spacy synths, and subdued indie vocals. ‘Balthasar’ is a thoroughly pleasing chug which inhabits a zone labelled “Pink Floyd funk” but perhaps the best encapsulation of the band is new track ‘Someone Killed My Dog’ - we hear youth culture is helping the police with their enquiries – which is 50% Lou Reed, 40% Hawkwind, and 30% Wooden Shjips...and if you think the maths don’t work, you might not be in the right dimension. 

We steer clear of talking too much about technique, there are vast, dusty swathes of the internet for that sort of thing, where every fourth word is “tone” (and the other three are Stevie, Ray, and Vaughan). But still, we must point out the incredible control of sextet Bedd, playing on a cramped stage through a relatively elementary PA, and yet always sounding beautifully tempered and effortlessly airy. Tonight’s set takes in sweet jangle pop, lofi trip-hop, epic surges of spangly post-shoegaze guitar noise, and even something like Animal Collective without the goofy stoned FX, but the songs are balanced and organic, even when the end feels a hundred miles from where they started. Jamie Hyatt’s vocals come from the unhurried 90s indie school, though there’s enough vulnerability to avoid Britpop smugness, and some of the harmonies bolstering the lead lines are quite gorgeous. The last song even has a keyboard line that recalls Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’, of all things. 

We hear someone describe London’s Index For Working Musik as “dark surf”, which isn’t a bad shot. Whilst they unfortunately don’t sound like a vampiric goth band doing twangy instrumentals (a concept that gives What We Do In The Shadows a new meaning), they do add a Nick Cave austerity to scuzzy hypnotic rock, whilst the prominent cello parts sometimes turn them into a chamber-music Cramps. There’s an apparently unintended, but pretty enjoyable hot mix on said cello, which either has the scraping intensity of John Cale’s viola, or hangs a Jesus & Mary Chain noise curtain in front of the band. In contrast to this, the best pieces are actually the most refined, with warm twinned vocals recalling country laments or even Pentangle. This slightly muddy set might be the one on which they’d like to be judged, but it’s still enticing, and perfect dour entertainment for some of Oxford’s dark serfs.   

Digs Your Own Whole

 This review went over the word count, but the editor kindly kept it all in. 

HOUSE OF ALL/ THE PLAN/ TOP SHORTAGE, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 15/3/25 

When we first saw Top Shortage we tentatively labelled them “avant-grunge”, and although the set was spirited, we were equally tentative about calling them “any good”. A lot can happen in just over a year, however, and tonight they are excellently gnarled and weighty, the opening number dark, oppressive and grimy like an abandoned underground carpark, through which the ululating punk-yodel vocals drift like a suspicious wraith: think Metal Box with the dub extracted. At other times they resemble a twisted Francophone Television, and a new song sounds as though someone tried to reconstruct a fragmented Devo tune without looking at the pieces in a round on The Krypton Factor. The band is still sometimes scrappy, but this merely highlights the mocking sneers as they take aim at suburban bigotry. 

Southend’s The Plan have a warmer disposition. Their sprightly twin vocals and twangy little guitar parts make them a stick-man sketch of The B-52s, whilst a cute dinkiness in the keys gives them an air of Pram at their most ramshackle. A tendency towards 2/4 country rhythms is intriguing, but not as much as the lead vocalist’s rectangular Diddley-style guitar, which looks as though it was hewn from some ancient cellar door. Perhaps some of the songs are over too quickly, and the set never quite achieves full momentum, but it is nonetheless chirpy and likable. 

There are two reliable ways to make your post-punk band sound great. Firstly, have two drummers (some practical drawbacks here), and secondly, have Steve Hanley on bass (best of luck with that one). House Of All, a band formed entirely of ex-Fall musicians – plus a stand-in for guitarist Pete Greenway who cannot currently tour – actually have three drummers trading places on two stools, and there are a few old faces beaming happily at the sight of Paul Hanley and Karl Burns bashing away together for the first time since 1984, but even those not versed in Fall history will concede that the band sounds like a twitchy thunder god hot-wiring a juggernaut.  

Unless you’re one of Mark E Smith’s sisters, everyone agrees that the one person justified in making Fall-style music is Martin Bramah, founder member of the group and teenage friend of MES. Although there has been a Stalinist rewriting of history to claim that every element of The Fall was under Smith’s control, it is likely that Bramah was responsible for bringing many of the influences squashed together to birth the Fall sound. We hear a lot of those tonight, from the scuffed garage psych evident in opener ‘Aim Higher’ to the Lovecraftian grotesqueries in the lyrics to ‘Harlequin Duke’. Bramah’s declamatory vocals somewhat resemble those of Smith, but there’s a liturgical air to his gnomic utterances, and by the end the gig feels like one long fractal sermon. In a late-career inspiration burst, House Of All have released 3 albums, plus 2 full-length collections of live tracks and reworkings, in a mere two years. Tonight’s honed set has a strong sonic blueprint, but enough ideas and variations to make each track exciting and unique. Always the same, always different, might we say? No, actually, that sounds stupid... 

I'm sure it's not the intention, but this headline band's name just made me think of peanut butter

I felt more at home with this small gig - I even got to sit on an old sofa for a lot of it, which is certainly nicer than being crushed in the O2.

THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG/ SUNGLASZ VENDOR/ BIGHANDSANDALLGRISTLY, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 6/2/25 

You know a band will be ungainly with an awkward name like bighandsandallgristly, but at the outset their hesitant tinkly confections with timid violin and quavery vocals barely cohere at all. As the set progresses they shape up like a cross between Dirty Three and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whilst still resembling very shy baby otters who have found some instruments (all except the drummer who is unusually busy and who brings a Broadcast bounce which is lovely but does tend to drown out the rest of the band). Their best track is like bossa nova in the shape of a lumpily crocheted cardigan, and we find the set ultimately unconvincing whilst being oddly fascinated to see them play again. 

Perhaps bighands... were invited onto the bill by The Last Whole Earth Catalog who were fed up with having the stupidest name within a three-mile radius. They share a low-key eclecticism although TLWEC’s music is far more cogent, often bringing Vanishing Twin vibes with 60s soundtrack keys, sugary boogaloo vocals and crisp, tidy rhythms. Despite it being a grimly cold evening, they warm the room with summery lilo pop that has enough intimacy to feel direct and honest, and enough textural savvy to hold the attention. Occasionally it feels like there are one too many people with one too many ideas on stage, and maybe a jazzoid instrumental sounding like a Kia-Ora-fueled Matt Bianco is a bad call, but overall this is a strong set. 

Bristol’s Sunglasz Vendor have a name that is only mildly infuriating and so let the side down, but are definitely the pick of the night sonically. Again, they bring different styles together, from the most spartan of slowcore minimalism to rasping Sonic Youth noise rock via some gnarly wired Pixies pop but it’s all so much more organic, partly due to the excellent bassist anchoring everything with unflashy lines whilst barely blinking, let alone rocking out. ‘Ice Cream Tubs’ switches gears again at the end of the set, with Cassels-like rant-rock disenchantment, but even this reduces to a strangely arid desert of tiny tones and tics half-way through. We might have had very little idea what was coming next for most of tonight, but with Sunglasz Vendor it was invariably a pleasant  discovery. 

I Like Big Mutts!

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift, this is the review of the famous band (or famous enough to fill Oxford's largest venue, anyway...my mum's not heard of them).

FAT DOG/ ZIPLOCK, O2, 16/2/25 

With two sets of bright ravey keyboards, sprightly drums, and inscrutable, deadpan vocals Ziplock probably shouldn’t be funky, but they deliver a slice of Happy Meal electro bounce-pop which is part ESG, part EMF, and part whatever sounds good on an E. Halfway through the set they swap the Hoover synth lines for a thicker buzzing bass clomp and couple it with some surprisingly intricate and tricksy drum patterns until they sound rather wonderfully like Add N To (X) doused in cherry cola.  

They share members with Fat Dog, but in the thirty minutes between sets any desire for concepts like delicacy and elegance are presumably scoured out of them in some  backstage ritual, possibly involving dogs' heads and Tennent’s Extra. Their dance-punk attack is far more intense on stage than on record, Joe Love’s vocals rarely dropping below a nasal bellow, and the pounding gabber-adjacent electronic pulses often drowning out the live drums. The sound is elementary and elemental, not so much broad strokes as hard slaps. And it certainly galvanises the crowd to frenzied moshing within four bars flat. On the downside, the fiddle and sax are almost entirely inaudible for the whole gig, and a tendency to smother the vocals in unchanging delay turns the gig into a giant enveloping thump-hum, like being harangued by a totalitarian DustBuster. As non-stop pummelling goes, though, it’s all good clean (dirty) fun, and a larger stage than their last Oxford visit has not leeched the infectious energy from the band. 

There’s a clear line to be drawn back to the sleaze rock of Fat White Family – or more accurately, their chunkier sick-sequin spin-off Moonlandingz – but in some ways Fat Dog are more like a diseased glam version of Laibach, all joke jackboots and coked-up EBM, spiced with the controlled chaos antics of Gogol Bordello. What they lose in depth tonight they gain in potency, and if we long for some of the Ziplock quirkiness to vary the tone a little, the majority of a teeming Academy clearly couldn’t disagree more, howling along with every word, leaping like loons and hollering appreciation at every possible juncture: fair play, nothing wrong with a night of hedonistic noise (but do stop doing that woof-woof chant, you sound like the audience on The Word, and that runny dollop of lad culture is best left in the 90s).   

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. 

To Say Nothing Of The Newt

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift. This one is a pretty typical record of a not hugely exciting release.

MONTMORENCY – LIVE AT NEWT STUDIOS (self-release) 

Young children always like to be told stories they already know, and certain roots music fans are the same, ever eager to hear jazz standards or trad classics one more time. Sometimes familiarity allows an artist space to dig into a song (there’s a reason Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest recordings are all American songbook chestnuts, rather than new compositions), and sometimes it can be used as a springboard for new and radical ideas (Albert Ayler’s honking attack on Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ sounds as though it's from a different universe to Ella’s). Montmorency – who get points for being named after the dog in Three Men In A Boat – have addressed four folk club warhorses on this EP, originally recorded in 2022. Do they bring anything new to the barn dance party? 

Most noteworthy are the vocals, with a simple unadorned tone at odds with the Mummerset aural cosplay of most folk singers, and the lightly quavering conversational tenor of ‘John Paul Jones’ almost reminds us of the literate angst of Hefner’s Darren Hayman. The other standout element is the lead guitar, which has a refined twang on ‘Shady Grove’ recalling the understated urbanity of The Shadows or even Bert Weedon, whereas the solo on ‘Sugar in the Hold’ comes with a whiff of Dave Gilmour. These moments of character catch the interest, but the upbeat countryish hoedown ‘The Fox’ falls woefully flat, and despite being a tale of carnivorous nature at its bloodiest has all the vim and vigour of a PTA meeting. There’s stuff to like about Montmorency, but these recordings are unlikely to become anyone’s go-to versions. 

Now I'm A Receiver

I just saw a little clip on YouTube entitled 'David Jason explains where the famous Only Fools And Horses lines came from'. The answer is that John Sullivan wrote them. So I've saved you two minutes if you ever feel tempted to click that link.

HUDSON SCOTT/ APRIL MAGAZINE/ CITIES & MEMORY/ BAT BLOOD PUDDING/ ANDREW HYKEL MEARS, Divine Schism, Fusion Arts, 8/11/24 

Bat Blood Pudding sounds like an unlikely recipe, and the music that Tom Dowse of the excellent Dry Cleaning makes under the name is equally oddly constructed. Half of his set is very good, based on murky prerecorded sounds from a vintage 4-track sprinkled with samples and some surprisingly sweet hushed vocals, the charming dusty grooves coming on like Boards Of Canada remixing Loop Guru. But he also picks out some Bert Jansch/Nick Drake parts on an acoustic, which would be great if they weren’t preposterously over-amplified, tinny and plain ugly. We respect artists with a strong sonic signature exploring a new approach, but sometimes conventional technique exists for a reason. 

Cities & Memory are far lighter on the ear, Stuart Fowkes’s compositions based on global field recordings being big on soft textures, synth pads and mellifluous sequenced melodies, recalling early 90s ambient acts like Global Communication or Pete Namlook; this chimes with the mutating computer-generated projections of bright green never-ending tunnels preceding the set, which resemble a Future Sound Of London video (or a Chernobyl endoscopy). Don’t let these 30-year-old references fool you into expecting something moribund, though, this music is intelligent and engrossing, with fascinating insights into the source material. 

San Franciscan duo April Magazine are more organic, just sparse bass, guitar and vocals, with a warm cloak of low feedback (though this last part may not be intentional, judging by their faces). It’s gorgeously woozy stuff, sounding by turns like Yo La Tengo at their most introspective, the Velvets at their most subtle, and Spacemen 3 at their most stoned (which is saying something). Occasionally they lose focus and stumble, as if someone had tied together the laces of the shoes they’re gazing at, but overall it’s a warm hug of a set. 

As tonight is a launch for Ambient Receiver, a periodical edited by Andrew Hykel Mears, who opens the night with some poetry, it’s no surprise to find his old Youthmovies bandmate Hudson Scott on the bill. Previous recordings dipped from the well of urbane late-80s pop that nourished the erstwhile Blessing Force movement, and were impeccably made but too freeze-dried and knowing to excite. Tonight, he plays trumpet and synths through layers of treatments and effects. There’s a wistful Miles feel to the spacious music – imagine In A Silent Way losing its way and ending up in a deserted misty valley – or perhaps it’s a glitchy, introspective version of Mark Isham’s widescreen soundscapes, with some of Rhys Chatham’s experimental melding of horn and electronics. A quite lovely set: ambience received, gratefully. 

 

Mac Lack

Here's an interesting one: I am pretty sure most of the crowd thought this a much better gig than I did. A lot of friends and peers were there, and whilst they've all been too polite to bring it up, I am certain they raised their individual eyebrows whilst reading. In fairness the gig wasn't bad, or even disappointing, it was just frustrating: I recall a story about Derek Bailey accidentally whacking his guitar against the wall behind the stage making a right old racket, and instead of worrying he looked interested, then did it again a few times - that's what this gig needed, less apology and flustered worry when things went  wrong, and more leaning into the experience. Also, who gives a fuck if your synth is out of tune when you're arsing about, just carry on, because stopping to retune is really uninteresting.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER/ MEANS OF PRODUCTION, Heavy Pop, The Jericho, 11/10/24 

When Means Of Production first unveiled their stark industrial mantras in Oxford seven years ago, they immediately became one of the city’s best live acts. A swerve towards acid house a couple of years ago only pushed them up the rankings, and any chance to witness their cold mélange of found texts, mundane yet inexplicably unnerving projections, and ruthlessly honed electronics should be grabbed. Perhaps the first track or two don’t quite gel tonight, but doubts evaporate by the time they get to ‘Resuscitation Status’, a squelching cousin of Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child?’ which creates mortality-paranoia just by listing fragments of a hospital discharge letter: it’s the sound of time’s wingèd chariot drawing near with Hardfloor blasting from its tape deck. 

Two things are impossible to miss about Look Mum No Computer. One is Sam Battle’s charming exuberance – he's a wide-eyed, motormouth suburban urchin like you’d ordered Damon Albarn off Wish – and the other is his stage set-up, dominated by a vast modular synth which barely fits on the Jericho’s stage, and looks like Optimus Prime sneezed LEDs onto a Welsh dresser. His first piece is a swirling buzzing blizzard which sounds like two Tangerine Dream albums playing at once whilst being pulled into a black hole, and his next is a digipunk banger with howled vocals. This is excellent. But the rest of the set feels like scientific research into the best way to kill momentum. Songs stop with an apology halfway through because something doesn’t sound right. He repeatedly asks for cover suggestions from the audience, that he ultimately can’t play (a lengthy attempt at ‘Tainted Love’ is eventually abandoned in favour of a brief burst of Adamski’s ‘Killer’). It’s interesting to watch someone work in real time with complex equipment, but it’s much more satisfying when something cohesive is created - and this rare cohesion sounds fantastic, with banging rhythms and some Sakamoto-influenced lead lines. We respect the risk-taking – if your improvising doesn’t come with the fear of disaster, you’re not improvising at all – but Battle could lean into the unexpected more instead of grinding to an awkward halt. Back in the 80s people got called “synth wizards”. On this flustered evidence, Look Mum No Computer would be Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. Actually, Dukas’s ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ would sound awesome on this rig...unless it ended up as Adamski’s ‘Killer’.

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. 

Supernormal 2024 Part 3

 Shocking material gets a far more original airing in Fish El Fish’s set in The Vortex, a blacked out, and sometimes unbearable stuffy stage hosting many multimedia shows. Accompanied by visceral collages of images from medical textbooks, and over rubbery squelches and thick gloopy effects, a pitched-down voice recites a barely comprehensible monologue dealing with corporeal disgust, sexual shame, and a shocking new interpretation of the children's TV show title Johnny Ball Reveals All [Can we check with Ginny Lemon’s lawyers before publication?]. Far from a harrowing experience, the set is hilarious, especially when the speaker sounds like Mark Radcliffe’s Fat Harry White persona stuck near an equine orgy in a traffic jam. Appealingly appalling. Other acts who harness the power of the Vortex’s large projection screen are Wojciech Rusin, whose digital animations of mutating classical architecture are joined by harp, contrabassoon and a mezzo singing parts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Handel opera, all of which are inevitably electronically fucked with, and Susannah Stark, capturing Sheila Chandra’s folk-drone vocal style alongside single accordion notes and hushed percussion beneath a huge abstraction monochrome drawing. But La Brea Pulpit work the venue the best in compete darkness except for two thin blue spotlights, making their oppressively complex, restless electronic noise all the more intense. If Space Invaders were filmed with the merciless detail of Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene, then cowering under one of those crumbling bombed bridges might sound exactly like this. 

Punk of course finds its place on the line-up, picks being Bristol’s Gimic, who bring a surprisingly groovy shimmy to artcore bludgeons, Fashion Tips’ Chicks On Speed energy, and the barely processable skree-treble wall of Cuntroaches, who destroy grindcore beats and Motörhead riffs with digital noise and whose version of ‘Happy Birthday’ makes Hendrix’s ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ sound like James Last. Some acts are punk in outlook rather than sound, notably Slagheap, a joyous quartet who can hardly play, but whose inept, barely formed songs have a weirdly cohesive pop centre, and whose lyrics about eating too much pie are worryingly relatable. Some very young children also bash out a clunky stumbling creche and burn clatter after the GLARC workshop, and they are already making improv jams twice as well as Al Karpenter, a band whose vacuous jumble of charmless noises and cool posturing quickly irritates.  

However, although a couple of acts gesture towards topics without expanding the discourse – sure, equality good, capitalism bad, but how about a tune? - there are very few missteps on the bill, and some towering highlights. Sister Punch is an indescribable piece of Commedia dell’Arse theatre in which a gone-to-seed Mario wrestles a slutty dogperson and bursts balloons, and Zohastre are drums, electronics, tape hiss through a wah-wah pedal, and an unnerving plastic owl – the part where it sounds like a hurdy-gurdy playing Underworld’s ‘Rez’ made us grin like fools. Also up there are Tristwych Y Fenywod, with misty and airy Welsh vocals, a tiny plucked dulcimer through delay, muddy dub bass and ‘Metal on Metal’ digital drums. Imagine Broadcast doing Clannad. Smote’s set builds from the machine-tooled repetition of Einstellung, through Can-tight grooves, to Pelican post-metal flourishes, and is bloody great. But perhaps the act we enjoy most is CHEWY SHE, who leap from a Hawkwind synth intro to ultra-tight Sparks-flavoured electro-disco, with impeccable choreography and even costume changes. Who’d have thought a pinnacle of Supernormal would be rehearsed, professional pop music? Even hardened alt-culture types can back look at their prior expectation at the end of this glorious weekend and say “Sorry, I haven’t a clue what this is”. 

Supernormal 2024 Part 2

 Acts stretching the definition of musical sonics are YOL, who simply rubs items against the floor to make squeaky gate/hiccupping chicken sounds whilst ranting about a “national bucket hat shortage” for 12 minutes (which is about 20 times better than you imagine), and Mosquito Farm, much of whose set involves bouncing balls into close-miked vessels on a jumble of retort stands - or more accurately, mostly missing – over clanky loops. It looks like a carney rube failing to win at an alchemist’s sideshow, and sounds like Tom Waits’s relaxation tape. The Thicket stage mostly hosts rituals and magical lectures this year, and whilst Janis & The Sonic Travellers’ performance – a kimchi recipe disguised as a seance, enlivened by La Monte Young violin spirals – is diverting, the area feels under utilised. Having said that, nipping over in the early evening on the dubious advice of a punter who claims that Dr Jerry Thackray (FKA journalist Everett True) was going to cover Fall songs there, we discover a deserted glade and the enchanting ambience of Matthew Olden’s sonic installation ‘The Irrepressible Force’, a computer-controlled mélange of drones and creaks; at Supernormal even a prank turns out to be an epiphany. 

Our time in Ipsden would not be complete without some free improv in the barn, the pick of which features Rachel Musson (sax), Mark Sanders (drums), and Matt Davis (trumpet), whose technique is less extended than elongated, playing through the spit valve and using a tambourine as a mute. 

Techno is well represented this year. Nkisi closes Friday’s live roster with what sounds like an 80s Doctor Who tension cue stretched out for an hour. We get turn of the millennium glitchy loops from Dangsha, squishing Mille Plateaux style clicks into thick, compacted, fuzzy minimal techno: Underfelt Resistance, anyone? Two consecutive sets are more danceable, the classic late-90s crusty style of Portugal’s excellently gurning Zancudo Berraco reminding us of Meat Beat Manifesto and the more urbane of Megadog’s regulars, whilst Rrose’s hypnotic rhythms are more sleek and inhuman. Rrose presumably took their name from Marcel Duchamp’s female alter-ego, proving that drag and high art have been connected for a long time, and there’s a strong queer cabaret element to this year’s line-up; if the frankly filthy Midgitte Bardot has the best name, Ginny Lemon reduces us to childish giggles, drawing us into the tent with a riff on Verka Serduchka’s Eurovision classic ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’, and keeping us in there dicking about like a hungover avant-Chuckle Brother. Their improbably funny rewriting of ‘Toxic’ about RuPaul has a “few legal edits”, and therefore is entirely composed of wordless mumbles. Lydia Lunch is less guarded in conversation, baldly calling Nick Cave a cunt, whilst dropping such nuggets as, “A nice clean set of balls goes a long way”. She’s an amusing X-rated raconteur, but her schtick is ultimately the rehearsed platitudes and self-caricature of more mainstream after-dinner speakers. 

You Know My Ipsden Lie

Supernormal is always fantastic, but this was one of the best. I very much hope it returns in 2025.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 2-4/8/24 

The opening act at Supernormal is Spiritual Advisor & Nice Strangers, about which the programme states, “Sorry, I haven’t a clue what this is”. We can’t tell whether this is the compiler giving up, an obscure conceptual joke, or a hint that Graeme Garden will be doing some bucolic festival puns - “Bring me the hedge of Alfredo Garcia!” - but the fact that we considered all of these options and more proves the extent to which Supernormal sits outside the standard festival experience. If the average music weekender consists of acts trotting out their biggest hits, punters killing time until the headliners arrive, epic queues and agonising bar prices, then Supernormal is a communal experience in which performers and audiences mingle together without a sniff of a VIP area, and in which every change of act offers a surprise...not always a welcome one, mind, but that’s part of the fun. Connections can be drawn between acts all over the bill, so in true Supernormal spirit, this review will entirely ignore the running order. 

Shake Chain are a band we’ve seen many times in Oxford. In most environments the clear split between the band on stage playing excellently wiry post-punk and performance artist Kate Mahony doing some maggotty crawling around (or outside) the venue is shocking, but such is the semipermeable membrane between audience and performer at Supernormal, her brattish toddler presence in the crowd barely raises an eyebrow, though her mewling and puking vocals still sound great. Other acts who spurn the stage’s boundaries are Robyn Rocket, who strolls slowly round the field delivering soothing little delayed trumpet lines over ambient washes and susurrations and is probably what they play when the ECM office is hungover, and Maria Uzor, who spends a good percentage of her set dancing or kneeling in front of the stage. Her intriguing, bouncy songs have a pop heart, an experimental mind, and a raver’s sweaty trainers, as she co-opts a vintage Hoover synth sound and a digital tom rhythm resembling Raze’s ‘Break 4 Love’. Slimelord also make some classic genre nods, but not the ones we expect from the name: yes, they can churn out sludge passages, but underneath that they’re barely disguised death metallers, all cantering riffs, barked vocals, and a bassist whose windmilling hair gets caught on the Shed stage’s splintery roof. 

Connections to deeper traditions occur throughout the weekend, especially in those sets happening in or around Braziers House itself. Paul Dunmall’s solo sax set drops in the odd free improv sputter and squawk, but his fluent smiling lines sound more like Paul Desmond with the odd sheet of Coltrane sound, and his piece on soprano gestures towards Parkerish runs and eddies. Paddi Benson & Grace Lemon’s uilleann pipes duos, with a little rhythm guitar underpinning, were inspired by ballroom dances held in Bedlam Hospital, but are not wild or careening, instead inhabiting a lovely space between folk forms and cellular minimalism. We don’t have the expertise to state whether Jali Fily Cissokho’s Senegalese songs exist within any tradition, but we know that his kora playing is wonderful, spicing delicate cascades of notes with slashing chords. Yakka Doon plays pure 60s coffeehouse folk in the sitting room, and we imagine John Renbourn or Bert Jansch chiming in at any moment. An acapella number is especially beautiful, particularly as our position behind a piece of antique furniture means we can’t see anything, and it sounds like a tuneful ghost - “Show the spectre some affection”, as Leo Robinson notes in his modern day take on Harlem Rennaissance/beat jazz poetry. Isiah Hull delivers his writings alongside the band GG, who often sound like a stuttering Slint who can’t quite get started, and we christen the marriage of emotional verses and laissez-faire sonics “slachrymose”.  Wormhook also features spoken word and austere monastic singing, though phrases like “toad pulpit boil nexus” make for more dense texts, accompanied by a pseudo double bass made from a big branch and a length of rough hawser, which creates a powerful guttural rumble, but isn’t big on variation. Infinite Livez’ lyrics are poetic in spirit, but his delivery is soulful and looped, like an understated lofi Jamie Lidell, and his occasional flute invokes Rahsaan Roland Kirk. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underdogma?

I go to Supernormal, the UK's best festival, in a few days, which is exciting.  Watch out for a review in a month or so. 

THE SUBTHEORY – SHARK TANK (self-release) 

Sometimes we reviewers get paranoid about only making comparisons with old music, but as this new album by The Subtheory makes lyrical references to both vintage Cypress Hill and DJ Shadow, we feel justified in looking to the 90s for touchstones. From the smoky Loop Guru tabla groove of ‘All Other Things Can Wait’ at one end, to the prowling Mezzanine bass of ‘The Wolf In The Fairytale’ at the other, this album masterfully nods towards trip-hop and downtempo classics from the dying days of the twentieth century. We can also pick out the cultured cool of Lamb on ‘Footprints’, a laconic rap on ‘Blessings and Lessons’ which embodies the unhurried mentor spirit of Faithless’s Maxi Jazz, and the after-hours-hip-hop-DJ-discovers-forgotten-spy-theme flavour of Portishead is captured immaculately on ‘Crown of Thorns’. 

But Shark Tank’s real victory is that it sounds like more than a list of impeccably curated reference points, and exhibits real character. A lot of this is down to the vocals of Cate Debu, a thistledown diva whose airy melancholia gives the songs depths that a thousand other chill-out acts wafting through chrome-and-velvet bars can only dream of. Guest vocalists lift the record to even greater heights, Pet Twin adding his introspective burr to the insidious snaky bass of ‘Song of the Damascene’ (which despite its title sounds less like a thunderbolt conversion and more like a lingering sense of dreadful doubt), whilst Emma Hunter’s unmistakable voice lends authority to the chorus of ‘The Sicilian Defence’. The Subtheory have licensed a lot of music to soundtracks, and perhaps there are one or two pieces here that are tastefully unobtrusive enough for a Netflix drama, but too smoothly polite for a proper listen, but this is a minor gripe: whether you lived through the 90s or have only spun the playlists, Shark Tank is both authentic and original, which is a tricky – or even Tricky – target to hit 

Diametric Straits

 Sorry, totally forgot to post this last month.  

THE EXACT OPPOSITE/ SECRET RIVALS/ LIFE UNDERGROUND, Jericho, 10/5/24 

In an entertaining set, Life Underground pull us in lots of directions, but all of them turn out to be separate paths up the big glowing mountain named Melodic Rock. So, signature track ‘Sunshine’ is a mixture between Roy Orbison and Steve Harley, two very different acts, but both of which are big on tunes.  Elsewhere we pick up on some 70s Dylan pronouncements, an early Kinks jangle, an airy glide past Fleetwood Mac, and a very small pinch of Bowie pizzazz. Sometimes the sound is clumpy Sunday pub-session rocking, but there’s enough attention to hook and songcraft here to make Life Underground well worth revisiting. 

Their best weapon might be drummer Mike Gore, who plays with a light carefree innocence which owes more to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, or even skiffle, than it does to anything after 1966. When Gore joins Secret Rivals for their final song, it’s an unexpected joy as he brings a strange country lope to the tune. Prior to this some charmless programmed drums had marred an otherwise strong set, airless and graceless tom fills from an emo karaoke disc undercutting songs that want to fizz and bubble. Secret Rivals Mk II might not have the fight-pop ‘tude of the early incarnation, but Ash Hennessey’s vocal alternates nicely between Lush-style softness and cheeky rants, with Jay Corcoran busting in almost randomly with Scrappy Doo yelps. The Cure-chorus guitar sounds great, as do the rolling basslines from erstwhile Masochist, Vincent Lynch. Next gig, will they be a fourtpiece? 

As soon as Nigel Powell sits behind the drums, the Rivals’ lovable sloppiness is exorcised by clinical precision. Not that The Exact Opposite - Nigel with his old Dive Dive bandmate Jamie Stuart - can’t be fun or lovable, but their streamlined, stripped back mecha-indie is meticulously thought out, and their performance is flawless (one hilarious high-sped lap of the venue in search of a capo notwithstanding). The vocals are agile and striking, the guitar is just on the well-behaved side of angular, and the drums are impeccably controlled, whilst also packing a kick in the ribs when Powell wants to drive a point home. These songs are playful, intense, and yearning, and ae testament to the duo’s long history writing and playing together. Were they as good as we expected? The exact same.