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?

The Aleatory Cat

I've started writing micro-columns for localish magazine The Ocelot, in exchange for weeny favors.  I shall put them here, if I remember.  Which I probably won't.  here's the first one, anyway.

In December I saw Stornoway play a set of new material to a tiny crowd in a tent on the grounds of a mental health facility.  I even got a free hot dog.  Yes, I’m living the dream.  The intimate surroundings – not to mention the cascade of fresh, intricately beautiful pop - reminded me of the band’s early Oxford gigs.  Unfortunately, as I’m never one to let a pleasant memory go free without a chaperone of foaming, incandescent rage, it also reminded me of one of the most infuriating things about being involved with grass roots music.

If I tell someone I saw Stornoway, or some other popular act, in, say, the Port Mahon, the response is often, “Wow!  How did you manage that?”.  To which I naturally reply, “Well, there’s a special code that they put on the bottom of posters for gigs by bands that will eventually be famous.  It’s in infrared, so you can only see it if you have a special ocular filter fitted, in a midnight ceremony behind the Oxford ice rink.  You cocking idiot”.

Want to say you saw a famous band first?  Then go out and see some unfamous bands now.  Stands to reason.  And, just maybe, some of the unfamous bands that never become famous will turn out to be even better than those that do.  In fact, I declare that the Band of 2013 to be…any you’ve not heard of.  Go and see them.  They’re great.  Except when they’re dire.  But you’ll be supporting local music either way.

IAN STAPLES/ JACK GOLDSTEIN/ MICHAEL THOMPSON/ MAX LEVY/ ROO BHASIN, Port Mahon, 12.1.13

It doesn’t start well.  Jack Goldstein’s introduction to this John Cage centenary concert contains the word “crazy” at least three times.  The composer may have been many things, good and bad, but crazy isn’t one of them, and we’re concerned that nodding to Cage might have become another safely wacky lifestyle choice, like Jaegerbombs or Movember.  Luckily the performances steer clear of unnecessary theatricality, and the players seem to be honestly interested in Cage’s approach.

Ian Staples’ opening guitar improvisations might not be exactly “Derek Bailey craziness” (thanks, Jack), but they do feature some Baileyesque jarring chords and dampened scrabbles, although some of the best moments are when he drops in tiny hints of roadhouse boogie, the ghost of the blues louring from the fog.  His performance of “Water Walk”, a piece that involves ostensibly non-musical activities such as mixing a drink and turning on radios, is fascinating because we can’t see past the throng to the stage, so we have to take all sounds on their own merits, which is about the Cagiest thing going; oh, and because someone brought a bathtub up the Port’s stairs.

A performance of “Inlets” is less interesting, because the sounds of fire and water are more easily assimilated mentally, and exhibit the “sonic nature ramble” side of Buddhist and mycologist Cage that we’ve never been drawn to.  And although it’s not meant to be laughed at, the famed “4’33””, like most conceptual art, has the structure if not intention of a gag, and as such, fades with repeated exposure.   Half the audience go home after having ticked off “that one without any music”, but those who remain hear the evening’s highlight, in which Max “King Of Cats” Levy reads extracts from Cage’s narrative lecture “Indeterminacy”, accompanied – or perhaps infiltrated – by electronic and concrete sounds from Goldstein and his Fixers colleague Roo Bhasin.  The sententious air of the texts, and Levy’s wonderfully stately, wry intonation make it sound like a stand-up set by Woody Allen’s zen cousin in the corner of Delia Derbyshire’s workshop.  Like the best of Cage’s work it’s both thoughtful and almost avuncularly warm, and half the audience are in the bar.  Crazy.

Purgatory Thinktank

Got to be quick today, I have a house full of visitors and need to go to a wedding soon.  So, commence copy and paste.  I'm, a bit embarassed about the last line in this, but I'll leave it in.  That's what happens when you write reviews on Christmas day after a quick sherry.

LIMBO KIDS – WANDERLUST EP (Own label)

Has someone cool got an uncle who went into a coma in about July 1988?  Because, in Oxford especially, the cool kids seem to be making music that is, not so much generically retro, as deliberately mimetic of this precise period: it’s as if the movers, shakers and Tumblrati were preparing a sonic welcoming committee for somebody’s putative return to consciousness.  This EP (not explicitly released under the Oxonian People’s Front moniker of Blessing Force, but with links to Trophy Wife and Rhosyn, so it’s as near as dammit) is almost comically exact in its recreation of the post-synth pre-rave pop of ’88 and ’89, and yet is, unexpectedly, pretty great.

Limbo Kids – no, sorry, LIMBO\\KIDS, as the record artwork would have it; why have designers started approaching their keyboards like drunken schizophrenics from the seventeenth century, and when the hell will new band names stop looking like swearwords from Asterix? – feature James Hitchman from Alphabet Backwards, and continue his recent quest to reduce pop music to one single, all-engulfing vocal hook.  His part on “Heartshots” is so simple it makes “Blink Of An Eye” sound like “Bohemian Rhapsody”, but it’s woven so well over a funky-ish drummer and fruity organ rhythm that the track doesn’t sound simplistic.  There are strong hints of late ‘80s dancefloor monsters like Jellybean Benitez and even Betty Boo in the backing, but the elegant placement of the vocal lines makes this a surprisingly satisfying piece, capable of inspiring multiple listens.  It should be a hollow pastiche, but emerges against all the odds as an enjoyable song.

The track “Wanderlust” runs tearfully from the club to a draughty teenage garret, but is equally spotless in its vintage, sounding a lot like one of the more melancholic tracks from Prefab Sprout’s From Langley Park To Memphis.  Again, there’s not much material here to play with, but it’s so artfully put together that it feels like a weighty statement, not a sonic souffle.  Rose Dagul’s funeral cortege cello is absolutely perfect in its stately sadness, and we love the ghostly, well-kempt goth air of the lightly reverbed drum machine.

Sadly, the final track breaks the spell somewhat.  “Desire” isn’t dire, but the vocals suddenly sound drab and wheedling, and the whole piece sounds like a pretty dull bit of album track studio confectionary: there’s a reason why Climie Fisher have been forgotten, you know.  Still, we’ll forgive this one misstep if it means we can enjoy the gorgeous cultivated misery of “Wanderlust” again.

Oh, welcome back, uncle.  Did you sleep well?  Yes, Dr Who is still on telly, but we’d better have a chat about Jimmy Saville...