Dublodocus

Right, tonight I havce to write a long overdue review of a new LP, I don't have time to talk about old stuff, so you'll have to just find your own way around without any guidance.

RAGGASAURUS/ VIGILANCE BLACK SPECIAL/ THE TALC DEMONS/ JEREMY HUGHES – Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 4/1/08

We’re all justly proud of our music scene, but it’s worth remembering what Oxford is: a small provincial town in a semi-rural county. This means that for every Little Fish bursting into the limelight we have a bunch of market town blues bands dawdling through the classics. It also means we have Klub Kakofanney, a fantastically unglamorous hippy enclave that has been making people happy for as long as anyone can recall, and is about as far from the flick of a cool kid’s haircut as one can get…in fact, half the audience haven’t had a haircut in years. And the other half are bald.

After mightily-bearded Jeremy Hughes has played some intricate little guitar doodles, The Talc Demons take to the stage. Rami’s band are more often found playing interminable jam sets in empty midweek bars, but thankfully they produce a taut, condensed thirty minutes of his own circus freak pop, in which 70s rock clashes with funky reggae. His songs generally boast about 90 words per minute buoyed up by clipped, nasal guitar lines and bouncy rhythms, and they should definitely ditch the dubious covers gigs and concentrate on this quality fare. And change their name, obviously.

Last time we saw Vigilance Black Special they had a trombone and a lonesome Nick Cave swoon to their music; now they have no trombone and sound a bit like a sleepier version of Goldrush, the lyric “too much time kicking around in the half-light” summing the show up nicely. A decent band, with a rich lead vocal, but nothing to get excited about. Vigilance Grey Average.

Raggasaurus are a group who definitely weren’t formed in their stylist’s office: a bunch of stoned looking students playing dub, with a 50 year old Tunisian singing in Arabic over the top, who would have thought it? And who would have thought they would make such excellent music? The horns are acidic and subtly used, the rhythms are spry and infectious, and the bass is simply gigantic, causing glasses to topple to the floor behind the bar. Add some searing vocals, that seem to communicate messages of love and integrity even though nobody understands a blinking word, and the effect is glorious. A wonderful band, likely to enliven many an Oxford weekend, and one unlikely to appear on Skins any time soon.

Redox Bath

It does seem as though I've done a lot of reviews at Klub Kak gigs over the years, doesn't it? This is another 2nd rate review, with a pig awful opening salvo. My editors were clearly very forgiving (or desperate) in those days.

VIGILANCE BLACK SPECIAL/ REDOX/ OPAQUE - Klub Kakofanney, 7/11/03

There's probably a picture of Opaque in the dictionary under "Variable". Except who ever heard of a dictionary with pictures? Maybe an encyclopaedia - although they don't tend to define adjectives...anyway, Opaque's accordion-driven folk-pop is of mixed quality: half slinky Cajun slither (Yay!), and half creaky, crusty drop-in centre dirge (Boo!). Aside from a few rhythm section clunkers, the vocals are the main problem, yowled with the self conscious sincerity you might expect from a singing picket line. Having said that, their penultimate tune is a Madness style rocker, and it's worth remembering that this is their first gig. Why not give them a try?

It's pretty hard to dislike Phil and Sue, the Kakafanneers, because they tirelessly promote music with an infectious enthusiasm. Still, Redox, their occasional hippy-punk-blues-folk band, can easily stand on its own merits, thank you. Tonight the storming phased guitar howls, the psychedelic projections, the skintight drumming (from studio legend Tim Turan, no less) and the sense of barely controlled chaos inspire thoughts of what Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable would have been like if it were invented in a barn in Wantage. They even boast that rarest of beasts, a decent didjeridoo player. Support them, because Redox is a local treasure, and what's more, they aren't surrounded by gawking tourists for five months of the year.

Vigilance Black Special remind me of The Rock Of Travolta. Whoooah, there, post-rockers - it's only because everybody in the county seems to love them, but to me they're terribly workmanlike and unimaginative. VBS are dark noir-country balladeers, something akin to a spooky Goldrush without the swagger or beautiful vocals, or a Nick Cave without the stage presence or tunes. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but there doesn't appear to be much to add. The trombone is a lovely touch, admittedly, but only highlights the lack of imagination in the rest of the music.

If this were thier debut, I'd say that there was plenty of potential, but the fact is that they've been around for yonks, and still sound as tedious as they did when I saw them at The Point over three years ago. Nothing special.