Bluetoneberries

The Art Bar is the new name for The Bully.  As yet the internal art count is low, and I fear this tally will not improve.  It looks hideous - no more hideous than the hideous Bully, of course, but this hideous was at the cost of money and half-baked conceptual brainstroming, I suspect; I wonder whether it will mean an increase in turnover?  I wonder, but I don't predict.   At what point, precisely, did clumsy, blanket rebranding replace thinking about how to servce customers or supply a product calculated to be liable to turn a profit?  Anyway, here's the October Ocelot thingummy.

In October, Klub Kakofanney celebrates its 22^nd anniversary.  Just think about that for a moment.  22 years of monthly events.  In a culture where nights like My Friends Stopped Coming After Three Events Productions, This Is Harder Than It Looks Promotions, and What Does “Budget” Mean Again? Incorporated come and go, the idea of a promoter lasting more than 6 months is barely conceivable, and yet Phil Freizinger and Sue Smith, two bedraggled punk hippy renegades, have managed to put on events for over two decades that are surprising, engaging and welcoming.  And sometimes rubbish, granted, but often one of the best nights out in Oxford.  Join them at The Wheatsheaf for 3 days on the first weekend in October, and on the first Friday of every month thereafter.  You’ll find an eclectic range of performances, a quirkily friendly atmosphere, and dancing so clunky it looks like it was choreographed by George Romero.

Phil and Sue can also be caught most weekends in some benighted Oxfordshire pub or other plying their trade with The Mighty Redox.  It’s a presumptuous adjective to have in the name, but their woozy syrup of psychedelia, funk, blues and Gong-scented silliness really is a powerful pick-me-up.  There aren’t many bands who can throw squealing guitar workouts, harrowing banshee howls and even bass solos at rural bar-proppers and not only get away unscathed, but actually make them frug like fools by the end of mammoth sets.  If you’ve been doing something for 22 years, you’re either doing it right, or are oblivious to what you’re doing wrong; either way, we’ll be there to do it too.

SUPERFOOD/ ARTCLASSSINK/ GUS ROGERS, DHP, Art Bar, 14/10/13

Kill Murray are unable to perform because of illness, so vocalist Gus Rogers fills in solo, strumming a fuzzy guitar over what could be A-Ha backing tracks, and singing in a high, delicate slur, like the ghost of a tramp.  Gig cancellation is pandemic in this town, so we applaud Gus’ decision to perform under straitened circumstances.  It’s impressive that one track even sounds quite spell-binding, even as it’s depressing that there are trendy types all over the shop offering essentially the same half-baked fare and garnering plaudits from every angle.

Never trust a restaurant where the main menu is more than two pages.   Chefs should be celebrating what they do best, not offering everything in a desperate attempt to please the world.  Artclasssink approach music like a beered-up posse at such an establishment, ordering willy-nilly, and suggesting “just put it all in the middle, mate, and we’ll mix and match”.  And so Joy Division portentousness scratches against glistening Cocteaus guitar, whilst Mansun choruses straddle mall-rock thumping.  That it makes no sense is its charm, but when the band lose their rhythm or let their composure slip – worryingly regularly – it’s as if that dining party were passing out one by one.

Birmingham’s Superfood are an up-and-coming band.  You can tell because the tracks on their Soundcloud have so many celebratory comments that listening to them creates a pop-up strobe effect that burns the word “sick” onto your retinas.  Sadly, this online fever has not translated to a large turnout, which is a shame, as it feels as though the band would thrive on a vibrant crowd.  Their rhythms are insistent, but lithe and bouncy, and the vocals are approachable and warm, and they look as though they’re just waiting for the next good time to catalyse.  The songs sound like Ride without the pedals mixed with first album Blur, which is fine, even if they also resemble The Bluetones with alarming regularity.  It would be supercilious to claim that a young band can’t find inspiration from the music of the mid-90s, but it would be nice to see these decent musicians stretching themselves.   After all, look at the back page of this magazine: Britpop clearly hasn’t yet finished eating itself. 

I Iz Womanz, Hearz Me...

I think I have officially had my fill of pop-up gigs.  Perhaps some day the trendy kids will realise that sightlines, stages, properly installed PAs, seating and suitable bar and toilet facilities are what makes established vensuesd better than 19th century embroidery workshops and health food stores as a place to see musicians performs.  Here's the latest Ocelot thingy:

Of course, the sudden discovery of a previously cloistered genius would be lovely, but it’s more likely watching local musicians that you’ll see talent slowly bloom: when I first saw them even Stornoway were promising and intriguing rather than, err, that good.  And so we come to Tamara Parsons-Baker.  The first time I came across her, I was struck by a clear voice and some decent tunes, but the only thing that really stuck in the memory was her name, that couldmake Ray Winstone sound like Noel Coward just by enunciating the syllables.  A year or so later, she was releasing some stronger music, although it was hard to truly love because of the keening stridency of her vocals and with the general pet-boiling air of a bitter jilted lover.  (Dear sub-editor: there is almost certainly a Bunny Wailer joke in here, if you can be bothered).

But then she teamed up with The Martyrs, a rhythm section with a serious background in Sextodecimo (one of the best and most brutal bands in Oxford’s musical history) and Smilex, and started producing some truly excellent wired blues rants and moans.  Her latest single, “Get Him Out” is a wonderful piece, expanding from breathy intimacy to galvanising emotional outburst, with a surreally barbed attack on millinery along the way.  The backing is controlled and expansive, a sort of blues-rock spaghetti western muscle-flex featuring members of the Brasenose Chapel Choir, which is inventive yet subtle enough to make all the woebegone strummers of Oxford’s acoustic scene disgusted at their own lack of originality. This is exciting, individual music – seek it out. 

RAWZ & NEMROT – LIVE FROM THE PANTHEON (Bandcamp)

Bandcamp tells us that Rawz is sponsored by the Oxford Duplication Centre.  For a great number of urban artists, this would be fuel for an easy joke about unoriginal identikit tunes and hastily xeroxed hip hop generica.  Fortunately this duo, with connections to Flooded Hallways and roots in East oxford’s G Block, have more than enough ideas to make that jibe redundant; the only downside is that this record is more exciting lyrically than musically.  Our favourite hip hop productions pull off the paradox of sounding raw yet lush, whereas most of these cuts are the opposite – thin but busy.  Perhaps it makes sense over smartphone speakers on the nightbus.  “Game Of You” is the only track to give us a proper headnodding heavy beat, and the dirty trumpet smeared over the rinky-dink Spanish twiddles of “Always There” is an all too rare bit of grit in the sound. 

The words, though, edge towards excellence.  With the exception of one trouble/bubble platitude and flagrant use of the word “badness” (it’s sounds clumsy no matter how handily it might rhyme with “madness”, people), there are some excellent bars here, all delivered with evident verbal relish: some lines are chewed over like Tangfastics, and some are rattled out like sticks across corrugated tin, and all in natural, unaffected tones.  Not only do the lines flow, but they are intriguing: we spotted references to 70s sitcom The Good Life and celluloid classic Citizen Kane, and there are doubtless further depths.  The cultural riffing has an MF Doom air, but the delivery is more melancholically thoughtful, as encapsulated on the album’s bleak, mortality-themed closer, which is more Godot than ghetto.  At the moment, the synthesised loops lag behind the lyrics in invention, and their pen is mightier than their Korg, but get these boys in with a killer producer and something very special could happen.

 

Gubernator Ramble

 I wrote a pub quiz last night.  It mentioned Mark E Smith and Fighting Fantasy.  None of yer longest rivers and FA cup winners shite for me.  Anyway, here's the last Ocelot waffle.

Technical musical ability is a wonderful thing. Mastery of an instrument gives an artist such a wide tonal palette, and allows a performer to translate inspiration into music reality instantaneously.  But whilst I welcome the maestros and the divas, and shake the virtuosi by their delicate tapered hands, I cannot abide Proper Musicians.  PMs think that the ability to play a flat generic blues riff outweighs coming up with anything new; PMs spend more time buying equipment than thinking of things to do with it; PMs imagine they’re the gatekeepers of musical acceptability and the esoteric order keeping a holy flame alive, when really they’re more like sonic carpet layers.  Same safe thing, every time.  Union rates apply.

Recently, I slumbered through some sub-Zep PM porridge, which shall remain nameless.  Later, Walt Frisbee took to the stage.  Half the audience started to go mental, because what they did was actually fun, whilst the other PM-friendly half left...presumably for the same reason.  Walt Frisbee don’t care if you find their partydown hip hop collages, sequenced Gameboy bleeps and one-gear live drumming is stupuid, or that they’re committing the cardinal PM crime of pre-recording stuff, because they’re too busy leaping round the venue like loons, enjoying the experience alongside the audience.  Dumbass, maybe.  Copyright infringing,  doubtless.  But fun?  Damn right.  Go see them; but if you suspect that 8-bit tapestries and borrowed rap verses will enrage your PM sensibilities, best have some soothing camomile tea and a Stevie Ray Vaughan LP ready for when you get home.

MAYORS OF MIYAZAGI/ PUNCHING SWANS/ MASIRO/ JUMPSTART THE JUNGLE, Sheaf, 16/8/13

Punching Swans are good at endings.  Does that sound snide?  It’s not meant to.  They have a knack of knowing precisely when enough of their tannoy-blaring repetitive pop scuzz is enough, never dragging a riff beyond its use-by date, and often stopping with precision just when you think the music is running hotfoot down a giddy hill of disco hi-hats, beyond control.   Their sound adds an elastic twang to thick, grungy ratchetting, like Duane Eddy pitching in with The Jesus Lizard, and if it can occasionally fall back on easy sloganeering yelps, the effect is powerful.

Earlier we saw the debut set from Jumpstart The Jungle, a bass and drums duo who transcend the clichés of the lineup, and at their best are deeply intriguing, playing heavily distorted chintzy basslines that repeat headlong like the music from some trigger-happy Megadrive game, and throwing big, simple vocal lines over the top, like bullet point summaries of full songs.  By the end of the set, however, they drift into meandering, wistful melodies that don’t suit the vocalist, and leave the drummer with little to do.

Promoters Masiro are next up, and whilst they might be  intricate math-rockers, they never forget how great it sounds when rock bands make a noise like machine guns.  No matter how complex their writing gets, they always bring the music back to the sound of heavy field artillery, which is fine by us.  There are odd melancholic guitar moments, that aren’t too far from Metheny territory, but soon pummel any poncy thoughts of false harmonics or modal declensions out of your mind with jackhammer intensity.  This may be math rock, but it’s likely to beat you round the face with Fermat’s last theorem and stick an abacus up your rectum.

Mayors Of Miyazagi have made friends in Oxford, and it’s easy to see the fit: they play sprightly Johnny Foreigner songs, with just enough twists to avoid begin called “indie chug”, and they have that blasted romantic vibe that seems to go down a treat in the town.  Trouble is, although the music is an enjoyably tuneful clatter, the vocals have a geeky chortling tone that drags the songs down: be honest, “we drank sunshine through the haze of your cigarette” is not a line that gets any more profound by sounding like it’s sung by Moss from The IT Crowd.  Sometimes, there’s a fizzing boy-girl exchange that reminds us of Secret Rivals but the Mayors don’t quite capture the sneering vitriol, although they’re a better act.  And yet, the set is enjoyable, the band are suffused with energy, and there are hooks enough to snare the ears.  Mayors Of Miyazagi are a decent little live band.  Does that sounds snide?  Well, you know…  

Truck 2013 Saturday Pt 2

Luke Smith can be found in our record collection between Jimmy Smith and Mark E. Smith, which seems pretty fair as a) he’s pretty useful on the old keys, and b) he’s resolutely English, a deeply acquired taste, and has changed a band member every time we see him.  His lovable Stillgoe meets Betjeman schtick is much as it always was, even after a few Trucks away from the bill, although the addition of young female vocalist has turned set stalwart “Please Be My Girlfriend” into a sort of tea room version of The Smiths’ “Girl Afraid”.

Crash Of Rhinos are epic and wired and excited, but like lots of angular emotional rock there doesn’t seem to be much underneath it all worth being epic, wired or excited about.  They’re like getting Gielgud all dressed up in his Richard III costume, then making him recite excerpts from Teen Wolf.

Now, LA duo The Bots on the other hand are properly gigantic, a vicious mess of feral guitar and pummelled drums that takes in Sabbath riffs, Hendrix via Last Exit solos, punk vocals and more pummelled drums.  It’s irreverently witty, too, and our favourite moment is when one of them breaks off from caustic guitar screeches to stop and play three notes on a farty synth repeatedly for about two minutes.  The other one, in case you’re wondering, was pummelling the drums at the time.

And So I Watch You From Afar are on the main stage.  It’s almost too easy.  They might as well be called, And So I Nip Off To The Bar.  Which isn’t to say they’re rubbish, but their twiddly posty-rocky thingy is not as interesting as watching kids climb over the giant CD sculpture, or trying to explain cryptic crosswords to a Swede (partial success).  Fight Like Apes are better, not least because their singer is dressed like Siouxsie and if they are overly fond of a repeated singalong vocal line, they know when to kick in enough energy to take a song home.

The timetable says the Jamalot stage should host The Fridge & Bungle Experience now, but it looks a lot like Ilodica to us.  You have to love the way that he just plays his relaxed roots whilst members of the organisation set up the stage around him, laying down airy melodic lines and singing in a style equidistant between Max Romeo and Horace Andy as if he is lost in his own musical world.  He’s a proper ragamuffin too – we mean that in the original sense, his scruffy martial jacket makes him look like a disciple of The Libertines gone dread.  He jams out a track with Pieman, who is next on the bill, which is rather a sweet way to treat set changeovers.  Pieman is not, as you might expect, a Headcount tribute act, but a beatboxer of some frightening ability, who is incredibly adept at replicating dubstep wubs and scratchadelic curlicues as well as the traditional drum sounds.  And he can rap, it turns out.  The bastard.  Our only criticism is that his show is a crowd-pleasing diversion, we’d like to see him doing something more substantial one day, or perhaps a set of collaborations.

When The Subways run onstage, fists aloft, like second rate telethon presenters, or clueless youth workers, we fear for our teeth, which can only take so much grinding of a weekend.  But they’re actually  - whisper it – good fun.  They know their way from one end of a tune to another, they look as though they are sincerely having a ball onstage, and their set does actually make us a smile, even whilst we fail to recall any of their music mere seconds after it has finished.  Plus, it’s endearing that their stage moves are a vindication for clumsy wedding dad dancing the world over.

The only thing that annoys us about Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip is the “Vs”.  Considering they’re a laptop twiddler with a taste for 8 bit squiggles and late 90s breakbeat wrangling, and a beardy spoken word artist with a love for classic hip hop and Detroit hardcore, their music is a surprisingly cohesive collaboration.  We can, on the other hand, talk at great length about why we admire them, from the impossibly infectious music to the erudite lyrics to the fact that they’re politically engaged musicians who don’t resort to rabble-rousing simplifications.  This 45 minute show is inevitably a bit of a greatest hits workout, and we would have liked more time to explore their more esoteric work – not to mention a clearer vocal mix – but seeing a packed tent leap manically to a track we first saw Scroobius play solo to fewer than 20 people in The Zodiac, before the P.I.P. was a V.I.P., is pleasing.  In fact, whilst this set is going on, other stages were being headlined by ShaoDow and Rolo Tomassi, two more acts Nightshift first discovered playing blinding gigs  to q tiny smattering of listeners, and it’s truly heartwarming.  Or depressing, of course, depending on how you look at it.

After that endorphin blast, The Horrors can’t compete.  We think they’re fairly good on record, but the show is an anonymous parade of plodding drums and synth washes, like karaoke backing for a mid-80s Simple Minds song everyone’s forgotten.  There are hints of an atmospheric tune here and there, but after seeing Toy this is cruelly thin broth to serve as the final course.

It has been a thoroughly enjoyable festival, with the Saturday especially rich in treats.  On one of our visits to see the ever-helpful Rapture Records stall, one of the staff announces, “It’s OK!  Truck is complete, the Thomas Truax records have arrived!”.  New York’s Meccano music maestro made a welcome return to the Veterans stage this year, and our only concern for coming events is how mavericks like him find a place on the bill, and get a chance to earn their place as future veterans.  Once you felt the curatorial sway over Truck, from the Bennetts themselves to Trailerpark’s PC, to Alan Day, and if this resulted in some mystifying decisions, it also gave the festival a stamp of identity that nowadays doesn’t seem to quite remain.  We saw some truly outstanding acts this weekend, but if you want to, you can go and see most of them sharing bills at other festivals all the way through the summer.  As we said at the outset, mix up the stages, and throw in some more adventurous act choices, and Truck could easily be better now than it ever has been, but if it becomes just one more identikit summer stop for the floral welly crew, then we’ll lose a vital part of what always made it special, and all the volleyball nets in the world will never buy that back.