The Goller out of Bass

Why do so many people take their young kids to Costa in Tesco?  Do they think it's like a great day out?  Do they think it's designed for crawling and running up and down?  Unwarranted grouse, I admit, but it gets on my tits, I'm just trying to do the crossword quietly after my shopping.

This was a really good gig, though I confess I was done with it about 20 minutes before the 72 minutes were up.

RUTH GOLLER - OCM, Holywell Music Room, 15/2/22

Some musical combinations just feel right, no matter how many times they’re heard: power trio; string quartet; bebop five-piece; “three MCs and one DJ”, as the Beasties put it. But there’s plenty of scope for new or atypical ensembles, and tonight Ruth Goller from Melt Yourself Down and Acoustic Ladyland - though perhaps most celebrated round these parts as a member of the excellent Bug Prentice - presents her album Skylla using a bass guitar and three vocalists: this makes sense if you know that Skylla, or more commonly Scylla in English, was a multi-headed monster from Greek myth.  The folk-horror angle is amplified by the band’s decision to wear head-dresses that look like stylised animal skulls adorned with black feathers, as if they’re the Summerisle choral society.

The vocals are fascinatingly fragmented, each of the three singers often delivering single words, or even dissected phonemes or disconnected mouth effects, rather than fluid melodic lines. This creates a mysterious pointillist effect, a haze of individual vocal moments hanging in the air, or overlapping, more like a Cubist version of a single singer than any traditional chamber choir.  This method fleetingly brings to mind many varied reference points, from the Stockhausen of Hymnen, to early Laurie Anderson, to Funkstörung’s Björk remixes, to an undead Swingle Singers trudging into a dessicated wassail. Sometimes, however, the voices come together to deliver a melody in close harmony, and the effect is shocking, like a blurred and jumbled image snapping briefly into focus: the line “you left too soon, I lost my soul” feels especially chilling. The bass tends to keep in the background, generally adding little clusters of harmonics behind the skein of voices, but there are stretches of solo work, which can sound like a wall of NYC loft guitar, or snippets of cues from a 70s spy movie, or even a first wave grunge bassist trying to play like Ornette Coleman.

The monster Scylla is most famous when paired with Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool, and to be “between Scylla and Charybdis” means you’re treading a dangerous path. In a way Goller is doing just this, presenting what is effectively a solid 75-minute piece which often feels more like the floating space debris from an exploded song than a cohesive whole, but ultimately Goller and her supremely talented vocal trio navigate this tricky route, doubtless to continue their musical odyssey elsewhere.

Vampire, Weak End

Here's a review.  And here's another Ocelot article to go with it.  Presumably the new one is now on the corners of bars, as from yesterday.  I seem to have got a month out of sync.  I'll have to write an extra review to catch up with myself.

Audioscope deal in vintage stereo equipment.  Audioscope also manufacture hearing aids.  And furthermore it’s a Welch Allyn model of audiometer.  But ignore all that Google noise, because so far as we’re concerned, Audioscope is a charity festival in Oxford, that since 2001 has raised over £22,000 for homeless charity Shelter.  The principle is simple: get some of the best acts from rock music’s leftfield into a room all day, ensure the volume is loud and the bar is fully stocked, and get people to pay a very reasonable amount to get in and see top acts like Can’s Damo Suzuki, Wire and Four Tet, and well as lesser known experimental noiseniks from Oxfordshire and beyond.  And they sell cupcakes, which is something akin to nirvana after 4 solid hours of beer, doom metal and breakcore.

On 23^rd November at The Jericho you can see America’s wonderful avant-Morricone types Califone topping the bill, but our personal tips would be Ghostbox’s hauntological heroes Pye Corner Audio, spooking you royally like the ghost of the Children’s Film Foundation in a cave  made of synth, and Tomaga, who twine effects around live drums and twist them into a fascinating sonic skein.  In short, you should attend because Audioscope is good value, raises money for a superb cause, and features loads of funny noises.  In fact, go back to that Welch Allyn website; there’s a mysterious clinician sticking a little machine in a boy’s ear, which pumps out randomly selected tones.  Perhaps those two Audioscopes aren’t so different after all.

ALEXANDER SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO/ NOSZFERATU, Oxford Contemporary Music, North Wall, 17/11/13

The Alexander Schlippenbach Trio have been touring for 43 years, and judging by Paul Lovens, you’d think they’d never had a night off.  With his three day stubble and tired, loose black tie, he looks for all the world like The Simpson’s ill-starred salesman, Ol’ Gil Gunderson.  When he hunches over his low drumkit, the clattering avalanche he creates makes us think of some lovably unfortunate rom com loser trying to wash dishes in a speeding caravan.  The trio’s improvisation is a masterclass, and, at twenty minutes, far too short.  Over Lovens’ astonishing percussive barrage, Schlippenbach lays down roving piano chords that, much like a David Lynch plot, seem to very nearly make perfect sense, and Evan Parker is a huge, unflappable presence in the centre of it all – although he does eventually reach his trademark sax skirls, for much of the set he interjects slow, sad lines as if he were trying to find a Broadway ballad somewhere in the fracas.

Before that, Noszferatu played three new compositions, that skirted the edge of jazz.  In fact, good though it was, sometimes, you wished they’d skirt a little further; take Finn Peters “43”, a piece that starts with mournfully zenlike flute, bowed vibraphone and single piano notes, like individual pixels in some wintry scene, but develops into a cocktail Debussy miasma that was a little overly pretty.  The best piece is Dave Price’s “Twitcher”, scored for piccolo and various bird calls, a huffing, squeaking concoction sounding joyously like a rubber-clad gimp doing calisthenics. 

After the interval both acts come together to play three further compositions, but despite some interesting elements, and inevitably fantastic performances, the soundfield feels a little crowded.  Hanna Kulenty turns this to her advantage in “Smokey Eyes”, sounding like all the cues from an episode of Columbo happening at once, tense woodblocks rubbing against eerie flute and love theme piano, but generally we wish both acts could have played separately for longer instead.  They end with Joe Cutler’s “Flexible Music”.  It’s enjoyable, but the trios sounded a damn sight more flexible in the first half.

Appeering So

Here's a review from Nightshift and an article from The Ocelot, nice and simple.  And a big hello to any Americans or Canadians - apparently a bunch of you spent a long time on this site on the 25th.  I'm sure you're just little web program thingies, but welcome all the same.

It’s a little sad that, although ostensibly removed from the external editorial pressures of bullying record companies and advertisers’ grubby expectations, writing about Oxfordshire music continually covers the same acts.  But how can I balance this?  If you’ve searched out this tiny fragment of the magazine, you doubtless already know Spring Offensive are fantastic.  You’ll already have danced drunkenly to a Rabbit Foot Spasm Band gig.  You’ll already have investigated The Cellar Family.  You’ll already be uncertain about that new Foals LP.  So, let’s talk about a band from the past. 

The Evenings were a noughties collective built around drummer Mark Wilden.   On record they made clean, often melancholic techno-pop tracks; live, in contrast, they tended to chuck varying constellations of performers at the same backing tracks in a defiant act of euphoric stadium dada cabaret (all the musicians were part of a local enclave who continually guested in each other’s projects, so that going to gigs in that era felt like a sweatier version of Cloud Atlas).  If you enjoyed The Evenings at the time, you’ll have a favourite moment (toast at Truck, anyone?).  If you missed them, go to www.markwilden.co.uk to see what you could have won: all the recordings are there to be downloaded for a small price.  Of course, although ex-members are now in great Oxford acts as diverse as Space Heroes Of The People, Flights Of Helios, Komrad and The Brickwork Lizards, The Evenings never officially disbanded.  If every Ocelot reader got in touch...

SEAMING TO/ KIRA KIRA, OCM, The North Wall, 15/3/13

There’s a lot to like about Kira Kira’s tribute to Sigridur Nielsdottir, dubbed Grandma Lo-fi, who made 59 albums in her Icelandic living room in her 70s.  Unfortunately, they all happen on the top of each other, and last about 30 seconds each.  Over the sort of library glitchtronica typical of her label Morr, Kira Kira throws abstractedly dramatic whispers and indulges in close-miked abuse of a music box whilst tweaking hisses and hums from eviscerated circuitry. Somewhere in the flurry of electric crackles, breathy vocals and fragmented beats is some fantastic music, but it feels as though we’re thumbing through the tesserae, rather than admiring the mosaic.

Seaming To and her mother, concert pianist Enloc Wu, perform a song-cycle dedicated to their (grand)mother.  Any fears that this will be a sincere but sugary affair, like a Race For Life blog set to synth pop backing, are smashed as the eerie opening vocal collage leads into mysterious Debussy piano.  Judy Kendall’s subtly allusive lyrics dodge the saccharine too, perhaps addressing cultural changes in three generations of a Chinese family: “I only look the part in photographs/ this hand me down that doesn’t fit” probably isn’t a line St Winifred’s School Choir ever sung.  To’s vocals are superb, edging from a steely operatic imperative to a bittersweet jazzy intimacy – “Through” sounds like “Je Ne Regrette Rien” rewritten by Erik Satie – but it’s Wu’s piano playing that’s the real revelation.  Every keystroke has its own distinct character, whether she’s whipping up a blizzard of icy high notes, laying down some stately chords or expertly mimicking the rhythms of speech like a classically controlled Cecil Taylor.  The downside of this varied programme is that whenever Wu’s not playing it feels like a wasted opportunity, although sections like the excellent Caretaker haze of a Guangdong folk tune lost in electronic mist and e-bowed zither can hold their own.  Good to find that artists can approach the theme of grandparenthood at a level higher than Clive Dunn and Peter Kay.

Anda One, Anda Two...

Yet again, no time to do anything except paste some stuff.  Too busy.  I can't remember a point in which my life was in any way pleasant or relaxed, to be honest. 

Here's the text from this month's Ocelot, if you're interested.

My gran said, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.  A philosophy that got her sacked as a British Rail announcer.  Still, even she would baulk at the current trend, whereby reviewers aren’t allowed to hear the tracks they must judge until they have “liked” them on Facebook.  Is this relationship not farcically inverted?  Has there come a time when judging something positively is pretty much the same as noticing it?  Once, my editor had to set up a Twitter account to laud a record before we could even get a copy of it, which is putting the cart so far before the horse that the horse can’t see the cart and doesn’t remember the cart and suspects that the cart was a rumour put about by equine pranksters.

So, in this spirit, I am championing a band who have never send me stupid emails or begged for me to vote for them on some spurious gig-grabbing contest, but have quietly got on with being noisy.  Junkie Brush are playing some gigs in March, and you can expect a violent clash between the grubby ire of classic British punk and the taut, clinical disgust of DC hardcore.  Not only is their music a headlong flurry of rage and spittle, but they have two tracks with “monkey” in the title.  And one called “Exhume His Corpse (And Make Him Dance For Money)”.  And lots with rude words in.  If you can’t say anything nice, say it as loud as possible, that’s our credo.

By the way, in the printed version, the review below misses out two very important words (my fault, not the editor's), see if you can guess which ones...

ANDA UNION, St John the Evangelist, Iffley, OCM & SJE Arts, 7/2/13

World Music reviews are often taken up with descriptions of the instruments, techniques, and even outfits.  Education is all very well, perhaps, but nobody starts a dubstep review with an Ableton tutorial, and such lecturing seems to be evidence of publicists and journalists – and sometimes the artists – playing up the “otherness” of foreign cultures, as if we’re only supposed to understand them as some diverting National Geographic slideshow.  We can’t confidently confirm whether the two-string fiddles Anda Union play are morin khuurs, but neither can we tell a Stratocaster from a Jaguar, and that never hurt us (in fact, we secretly think it makes us better than tedious musos who can); what we can tell you is that this band is phenomenal, hiding glorious melodies in a dark swathe of harmonised throaty vocals and relentlessly abraded strings, capable of forlorn beauty even as they whisk you up in a rollocking gallop.  The range of vocal techniques is astonishing, from a lambent wistfulness that reminds us of Celtic folk, to tingling overtone singing, sending eerie motives across the music like damned Debussian flutes.

Much of the music is clearly influenced by the environment, with imitations of rushing wind and clanking stirrups, but there’s enough melodic sensibility and suppleness on display to make it more than mere sonic metonymy: the opening of the last piece was clearly supposed to recall whinnying horses, but the cloud of wraithlike glissandi was more akin to Ligeti than a rodeo.  Oddly, the one thing Anda Union repeatedly remind us of is The Velvet Underground.  They have the same knack of bringing complexity and depth to material of heartbeat simplicity, and smuggling gorgeous tunes into relentlessly thumping mantras.  When the strings leap from aggressive pizzicato to swooping arco plummets it’s like “Venus In Furs” fuelled by fermented mares’ milk instead of heroin.  No, we don’t learn much about Mongolian culture from this gig, but we go home buzzing from complex harmonies and stampeding rhythms.  Which would you rather have?