The Lost Jules

I've spent a lot of July in the Oxford Bringe Preview Comedy Festival, and it's been great.  My favourite shows were Leo Reich, Glenn Moore, Andrew O'Neill, Jess Foreteskew, and Sophie Duker, though the quality was very high overall.  If you're going to the fringe, check one of these shows out.

JULIA-SOPHIE/ MARIA UZOR/ OCTAVAIA FREUD, Divine Schism, MAO, 1/7/22

Those of us who’ve been following Octavia Freud for a few years will have noticed that something has changed. It’s not the slinky, pulsating collision between banging electronica and post-punk introspection, and it sure as hell isn’t Martin Andrews’s hat which we’ve never seen him without, but it’s the foregrounding of humour in the performances. Tonight, Andrews doesn’t precisely tell jokes, but there’s a wry, sly absurdity, which fits into a particularly Northern comedy continuum. Opener “When I Was A Kid” tosses out laconic, waggish non-sequiturs over a cheeky beat like a Frank Sidebottom reworking of “Thou Shalt Always Kill”, and there are moments when a drawling Andrews embodies the spirits of Alan Vega and Ted Chippington at once, especially in set highlight “Tappin”, a coproduction with Adventures In Noise. Of course, it’s not all sardonic aphorisms and knowing winks, there’s “Hot Nights”, a neon disco sweatbounce which sounds like a back-alley twist on an 80s Diana Ross single.  With a knowing wink. 

Maria Uzor has visited Oxford a few times as part of the excellent duo Sink Ya Teeth, bringing a New York* new wave punk funk spirit. This solo set eschews the SYT minimalism and instead we are swept up by euphoric, insistent danc-pop. If the tempo has been upped a little, so has the reference period: gone are the sparse early 80s bass drums, and in their place are gnarlier loops and rhythms, nodding towards Detroit techno, early Aphex cymbal patterns, and even some big old Prodigy stadium breakbeats. However, there is a little clutch of children at this gig, who presumably aren’t au fait with dance music history, and they seem to be getting into it, running about and headbanging, so we conclude, “fuck cross-referencing, let’s dance”. 

Julia-Sophie, previously known as Juju, Jules and many other variants, says she is “getting close to accepting my name”. This seems fitting, as she also looks more relaxed onstage than we’ve ever seen her, and is making the best music of her life. This set is testament to what one can achieve with interesting synth parts, some good ideas, and a hell of a voice. The music is twitchily busy, yet friendly and hook-laden; dense but spacious; melancholy but uplifting. It’s like a Zen koan that you can nod along to. “Telephone”, the last song before an unexpected solo guitar encore, is simple but heart-wrenching, a teen movie credits theme being sucked slowly into the void, and sadly waving goodbye. But, just possibly, with another knowing wink.

*Actually Norwich

Canon & Fall

The Oxford Fringe Preview Comedy Festival starts on Friday, and runs throughout July.  I urge you to buy a ticket or two, some of the shows are going to be excellent.

THE AUTUMN SAINTS – WIND BURN & BROKEN OAK (Man In The Moon Records)

‘I Am The Gadfly’, the second track on The Autumn Saints' debut album, has a title that looks like it belongs to a 300-year-old folk tune, and a guitar part that bears a strong - though almost certainly coincidental - resemblance to lesser-known Fall song ‘Green Eyed Loco-Man’. It’s a strange contrast, but one which sums up the band’s unique sound, which might best be described as a good-natured tussle between windswept Americana and the mournfully literate end of early-80s indie and post-punk. This is embodied in frontperson Britt Strickland, whose doleful North Carolinian vocal sounds as though it should be hollering a lament from an Appalachian foothill, but whose reverby 8-string bass resembles Adam Clayton auditioning for Bauhaus. 

The twelve tracks of this recording offer some prime examples of their approach, from ‘Up In Rags’, which sounds like something from folk melancholia classic Fables Of The Reconstruction by fellow Southern gothic poets R.E.M. as played by Simple Minds at the world’s biggest stadium, to heavy-set paean to simple traditions ‘Greenhorn’ (though your cloth-eared and somewhat peckish reviewer heard it as “cream horn”).  There are also hints of 50s balladry on tracks like ‘She Wanders Out’ and ‘Too Late Tonight’ which give a dewy-eyed nod to the likes of Dion and Del Shannon, rock ‘n’ roll’s original sadbois. The only track that doesn’t quite gel is ‘The Lieutenant’, an awkward plod which doesn’t seem sure whether it wants to start a hoedown at a barn dance or sport a back-comb at The Batcave, but this is the exception on a very strong album, which doesn’t sound quite like anything previously released in the history of Oxford. Or possibly anywhere.

Split and Run?

Looks as though I neglected to upload this at the time.  Better late than etc.

MELT BANANA/ SHAKE CHAIN, Divine Schism, The Bully, 3/4/22

Depending on where they’re standing in the venue, the time it takes people to notice Kate Mahony varies. The rest of Shake Chain take to the stage and strike up a buzzing hypnotic rhythm, with no frills or fripperies, but enough focus to keep it interesting, but eventually you spot Mahony, scrunched in a coat, writhing agonisingly slowly through the crowd, some rough beast crawling towards The Bullingdon to be born. And, once they take the stage, looking studiedly bemused throughout the set, Mahony’s vocals are the unfiltered wailings of a neonate, primal howls that, if they are forming words, have sheared the edges off most of them in the journey from the hindbrain to the mic so you’d never know. There’s nothing weak and mewling about the performance, though, and Mahony as Id Vicious overlays the band’s raw and elemental rock mantras, so that it all sounds like The Nightingales haunted by a poltergeist. Amongst this glorious skree there’s a surprisingly groovy number, where a garage gogo beat accompanies the repeated cry “You’re running me over!”, like something from the soundtrack to Kill Bill. If Bill were already dead. And so were everyone else.

In contrast, Melt Banana’s show starts with the minimum of fanfare. The Tokyo duo simply take to the stage, quietly set up in front of a bank of amps the size of a Transit van, and then immediately and efficiently commence pummelling. The constituent parts are straightforward – intense beats triggered by a glowing handheld device that looks like a novelty TV remote, Ichiro Agata’s razorwire guitar parts, and Yasuko Onuki’s high-octane yelping – but over an hour they are mixed, merged and shuffled like the deck of steamboat cardsharp. In fact, despite the relentless hammering, the thing one takes away from this set is just how intricate and lithe the performance is, best evidenced in a quickfire parade of seven Napalm Death-length microsongs. Onuki’s vocals, although clearly influenced by hardcore, have an elasticity that places them nearer to funk or rap, and Agata’s guitar-playing, as well as being phenomenal, is not afraid to pull back from the cascades of noise for some classic rocking: we hear a riff AC/DC would be proud to own, and a chug with which Lemmy would gladly share a bottle. As the closer, ‘Infection Defective’, with its rolling Massive Attack bassline and icy crystal shards of guitar attest, Melt Banana shoot for your head, your heart, and your dancing feet at once. And all of them are killing blows.

The Touré Party

I started off thinking I wouldn't have enough to say about this album, and ended up really enjoying the review (though it is partly about how I don't quite have enough to say about it).  Good record, either way.

VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ – LES RACINES (World Circuit)

In the film Best In Show, Parker Posey’s highly strung lawyer character is desperately trying to replace a dog toy shaped like a bee. A hapless pet shop worker tries to suggest a fish, a parrot or a bear in a bee costume, and faces a full on adult tantrum for explaining that, although we know those toys are not bees, “the dog will respond to the stripes”. Often when faced with an album like this, a Western Anglophone might feel like that dog: without a knowledge of the language(s) used and only an imperfect grasp of the musical traditions within which the performers are working, all we have left are responses to the colours and textures. This is a little ironic, as Vieux Farka Touré – son of the late maestro Ali Farka Touré, who did more than anyone to bring the music of Mali to Europe – has named the album Les Racines, or “the roots”, coming closer to his father’s milieu than on previous solo albums, and has noted that, “In Mali many people are illiterate and music is the main way of transmitting information and knowledge. My father fought for peace and as artists we have an obligation to educate about the problems facing our country and to rally people and shepherd them towards reason.”   

But if we’re going to respond to context-hazy colours and textures, then these are some bloody good ones to start with. Interestingly, this is Vieux’s first album on World Circuit, the label that brought his father to the ears of the world, so perhaps it’s a return to roots familial as well as cultural. Roots can’t live without the soil, and Les Racines is certainly earthier than his last album, 2017’s Samba which was strong, but a bit too polished and four-square, with chunky rhythms seemingly aimed at a festival knees-up; you can certainly dance to some of Les Racines, but you’re at least as likely to sit in rapt concentration to the intricate licks and flourishes of these prime examples of songhai desert blues. Vieux has been called “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, but despite sharing with Jimi a naturalness in his phrasing, where solos and runs feel as instinctive as breathing, stylistically he owes more to BB King, alternating mellifluous thoughtfully placed notes with brief panting runs. You can hear this in 'Gabou Ni Tie', which also features a scrabbled chime tone that shares a sonic space to Roger McGuinn’s solo in 'Eight Miles High'.

Although Touré’s playing is gorgeous throughout, this album is an ensemble piece, with special mention for Madou Sidiki Diabaté’s kora which adds extra waterfalls of notes, and Madou Traore’s breathy flute, which adds swirling dimensions behind the call and response of 'Ngala Kaourene', like a more agile and focussed krautrock flute noodler; the album even features guest guitar spots for Amadou Bagayoko, of Amadou & Mariam fame. The stand-out example of ensemble playing may well be 'L'Âme', a tribute to Touré’s father, which begins with some crabbed, jerky guitar scribbles that could have come from an early noughties post-rock act, and proceeds to build the most delicate skein of notes, including a juicy organ. The players keep to the barest bones of the structure, and there’s rarely fewer than three instruments exploring lines at any one time, yet it’s not a cacophony or a shapeless jam, there’s focus and rigour in the playing that might remind some people of vintage Ornette Coleman passages.

There are some strong vocal tracks on the album, particularly the fluent yet grizzled 'Lahidou' which laments the existence of betrayal and false promise in the world, but it’s the instrumentals which really shine. The title track starts with a spaghetti western flourish before glittering cascades of notes begin to tumble, like the most refreshing spring shower in history. The chord progression is simple and melancholy, and could have come from an early R.E.M. track. The track is four minutes long, but frankly it could play all afternoon and you’d be left thinking it was too short. There will be parts of this album’s roots that those outside Mali can never fully comprehend, but regardless of your entry level, you’ll be certain that those roots are still strong and bearing exquisite fruit.

Decelerate & Lyle

This was an intriguing one.  I actually liked Slow Down, Molasses less than comes across in the review - they were fine, it all just felt third-hand - I decided to be generous; however, it was only when thinking about the gig that I realised just how much I'd enjoyed Savage Mansion.  Wish I'd bought a CD now...

SLOW DOWN MOLASSES/ SAVAGE MANSION/ DOGMILK, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 6/5/22

If you go back and watch the first series of Blackadder, it’s quite surprising how much that defines the show is absent: Baldrick is clever, the filming is lush and expensive, and there are extended riffs on Shakespeare instead of cunning plans. There’s a similar pilot-episode pleasure in seeing a decent band early on – whilst you know they’ll improve, witnessing ideas being tested and explored is a privilege. Dogmilk, featuring ex-members of Slate Hearts and Easter Island Statues, have only played a handful of shows, and are standing in tonight at late notice, and they try on a handful of styles during their short set: grunge via 90s teen soundtracks, garage rock, Cure-style lamenting, uptight punk funk, an even a one-minute country-skank through ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’. Most likely their eclectic sound will settle in the coming months, but wherever they land will be a pleasure if it involves a band this sharp and crisp.

If Dogmilk are crisp, Glasgow’s Savage Mansion are Findus Crispy Pancakes cooked in Crisp ‘n’ Dry by Quentin Crisp on St Crispin’s Day. This performance is gloriously tight, and the music infectious, the band generally following a pretty well-defined route, with solid, harmonically straightforward chugging supporting sprechgesang verses and punchily sung short choruses, putting them next door to the wonderful A House. Like The Nightingales, they know how to squeeze a good riff dry, and like Jonathan Richman, they know how to deliver elegant narrative lyrics without being self-consciously arty. You may find yourself thinking of Dylan, Jeffrey Lewis, and Luke Haines. You may find yourself imagining Wet Leg as arranged by Glenn Tilbrook. And you may ask yourself, how come I never heard of this band before?

Saskatchewan’s Slow Down, Molasses are one of a handful of acts to have released music through tonight’s promoter, Divine Schism. Theirs is a more raucous, thrashy and transatlantic sound than what we’ve heard so far tonight, like goth-psych rockers Darker My Love recreated in the minds of Gnasher and Gnipper. Black-clad, and not afraid of a burning avalanche of guitar noise, the band feel pretty exciting in this bright, cosy community centre – we spot an organisor glancing at a decibel count early on – and they bounce between grubby but honed Mission Of Burma rock and the less aggressive end of hardcore, falling somewhere between the rosters of Matador and Dischord. They know precisely how to make ears ring and heads nod, and if they don’t quite make hearts leap, they’re still welcome visitors 4,000 miles from home.

Maniac Çop

At the moment, all I can do is sing "Jubilee-ee-ee-ee" to this tune, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev1aBt-_Zs4.  I'm sure ERII is having the same experience.

POLIÇA – MADNESS (Memphis Industries) 

It’s a little strange that, in our era when most music is experienced online as individually selected tracks or via curated playlists, the album is still the default release model for the music industry. And, what’s more surprising is that so many albums still follow the sorts of tracklisting logic that was applied fifty or more years ago, despite the acknowledged fact that only the most die-hard physical-medium fetishists will always play all the music in the same order. Poliça’s Madness – the Minneapolis act’s sixth or seventh album, depending on which online tally you believe – could be used to teach students classic album structure methodology. 

Lesson one: start with a big tune. Madness opens with 'Alive'’s ominous three-note bassline. It may not be startlingly original but delivers a glorious bad-trip club vibe, and when Channy Leaneagh’s ominous vocals join the submerged drums the track blossoms into the malevolent cousin of a dance-pop banger. The chorus introduces a little more optimism, as the track slowly swells to a sort of paranoid euphoria; in fact, punch up the vocal volume and edit, and this could be one of those arty East European electro tracks that get highly praised in Eurovision (though never win).

Lesson two: follow up with something equally strong, but more ambiguous. 'Violence' somewhat resembles the regret-seeped torch songs of the trip-hop era, but the stately vocal sits upon a shifting backing which sounds like some cellos melting. The bass drum comes in with unexpected vigour, but it still sounds sub-aquatic, the rest of the soundfield being a furling forest of synth tones and Rolodex-flicking percussion. This ever-shifting sonic mutation, typifying the album, may reflect producer Ryan Olson’s use of the “anthropomorphic production tool” AllOvers(c), and it certainly reflects the cover artwork, a blur of body parts and fleshy abstraction that looks like an orgy hasn’t finished downloading.

Lesson three: change the tempo. Madness’s third track, 'Away', is a big-boned ballad which could have been a forgotten Girls Aloud single, except once again the backing is gloopily muffled, giving the emotive vocal a clear focus. It’s pretty great, and features enough smothered whines and burbles to be useful if you wanted to know what a noughties R’n’B lament might sound like from inside Darth Vader’s helmet.   

Lesson four: hide the less good material. Alas, the following three songs don’t live up to these openers. The title track boasts some nice glitchy synths sitting somewhere between Vangelis and Autechre, and the vocal is breathily intimate (a cross between Björk’s 'Headphones' and Frank Sinatra serenading the barflies on 'In The Wee Small Hours'), but beyond this neither the harmonic structure nor the melody are hugely interesting. If this were being performed on a piano in the corner of  a swanky bar, you’d barely notice – especially whilst trying to work out how a bottle of beer costs twelve quid. The track is rescued by the arrival of some mournfully scratchy folk violin, sounding like an arrangement of 'A Lark Ascending' at a banshee funeral. 'Blood' starts with some excellent robo-dub in a Basic Channel style, but this is quickly replaced by a lacklustre mid-tempo tune; if we were back at Eurovision, this is a plodding Luxembourg entry that can’t get beyond the semis. 'Fountain' is a little better, a slow resigned piano creating an undertow that deepens the effect of the reverby FX-laden vocal, under which bassist Chris Bierden adds subtle curlicues. Again, it’s the production rather than the composition that carries the track, but you might prick up your ears in the swanky bar, as you ruefully emptied your £8 ramekin of cashews. 

Lesson five: end on a big emotion. 'Sweet Memz' may have a horribly knowing title, but it’s delightful, frosty dream-pop vocals sharing space with keyboard tones that sound like bugles playing for the fallen dead in a thick mist, over a surprisingly bouncy drum pattern. It’s a strong ending to a perfectly paced album, but despite the elegant sequencing, there are definitely tracks you’ll come back to far more than others.

The New Orthographers

It took bloody ages to make sure all the Polish characters were correct.  I'm not used to spending that much effort researching for a review!

Matmos - Regards/ Ukłony Dla Bogusław Schaeffer (Thrill Jockey)

Baltimore duo Matmos have been creating music from unlikely sources for twenty-five years now. Their discography features tracks built from recordings as unlikely as a liposuction procedure, Bible pages turning, the neural activity of a crayfish, and Adrian Chiles being slapped on the britches with a Caramac...and although we made one of those up, the fact that it still sounds quite plausible tells you a lot. New album Regards is a little different, though, the Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza having invited Matmos to create recordings based on the works of Polish polymath, educator, and member of the radical Cracow Group, Bogusław Schaeffer - as Polish speakers will no doubt have deduced from the album’s subtitle. The track titles are likewise duolingual, with tracks such as 'Anti-Antiphon (Absolute Decomposition)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja Na Całego)' offering the same information in English and Polish; but some other titles are made from anagrams of Schaeffer’s name, resulting in a pair of completely different meanings. This subtle code-shifting sums up the nature of the album: it’s not a straightforward remix project, but neither does it treat the source material in so radical a fashion as Matmos’ most famous work (you’d be hard pressed to extrapolate the grisly recordings underpinning the jolly-face glitchtronica of their most celebrated album, A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure) and it also adds fresh elements from instrumentalists including Irish harpist Úna Monaghan and Max Eilbacher of Horse Lords. It is perhaps best to see Regards as a tribute to the exploratory work of Schaeffer  and other electronic music pioneers of the mid-twentieth century.

The mysterious nature of the album’s genesis, however, does mean that any creative descriptions of the sounds might inadvertently turn out to be accurate. 'On Few, Far Chaos Bugles/ Uff...Bosch Ara Wałęsę', for example, a little motif recalling the melancholic pitched honks of Galleons Of Stone by The Art Of Noise could have been sourced from a vintage synthesiser piece, a treated French horn, or a chair being dragged across the room, as evident in a hundred YouTube covers of Aphex Twin’s 'Alberto Balsalm'. 'Resemblage/ Parasamblaż', on the other hand, boasts fascinating sounds that bring to mind furious fly-swatting on the set of STOMP, and the bubbling test tubes heard in the Ealing classic The Man In The White Suit. It also features some manically sliced and layered recordings of small bells – carillon up the Khyber, anyone? – which are coupled with hammered dulcimer to create the gorgeous ghost of a folk melody, coming off like a highly abstract remix of Orbital’s techno-exotica classic 'The Box'. In fact, there are points at which Regards veers unusually close to conventional dance music, 'Cobra Wages Shuffle/ Off! Schable w Gurę!' toying with the sort of jolly mambo samples beloved of mid-nineties producers, and some warm dubby soundscapes elsewhere calling to mind The Orb circa career apex Orbus Tarrarum. 

True to past Matmos form, for every piece of approachably bouncy electronica, there is more austere and disorienting fare. 'Flashcube Fog Wares/ Głucha Affera Słów' nods towards tape effects and short splice techniques that simultaneously recall the compositions of Milton Babbitt and Pierre Schaeffer - no relation - ending with what sounds like a piccolo pulled through a Sapphire & Steel warphole, and the interplay between mournful harp and spectral voices gives 'If All Things Were Turned to Smoke/ Gdyby Wszystko Atało Się Dymem' a whiff of Stockhausen. Almost inevitably, there are times when the maximalist editing approach becomes wearing, and the soundfield on 'Tonight There Is Something Special About The Moon/ Jaki Księżyc Dziś Wieczór...' is just too cluttered, whilst the tuning-radios-whilst-the-bath-empties vibe of 'Anti-Antiphon (Absolute Decomposition)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja Na Całego)' veers close to ambient cliché. Still Regards as a whole is a rewarding,  absorbing listen, and is liable to instigate an outbreak of searches for Schaeffer originals in obscure corners of the ‘net over the coming weeks.