The Necks, Townsville (ReR)

How long would I need to listen to The Necks to get them to perch happily at the top of my Last FM most listened to artists chart?  Let’s see.  Up there currently we’ve got Tim Hecker with around 200 plays.   So that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?  Or it wouldn’t be if the Necks didn’t have a penchant for releasing one-track hour-long albums. I figure that at my average listening rate per day it would probably take me over a month.  However it would be a month of the most sublime improvising piano/bass/drums trio on the planet, so it might be worth a go.

Stars Of The Lid, The Luminaire, 26/11/07

Ah, the Luminaire – that most peculiar of venues, designed so that if an event sells out only about 25% of the people attending will see anything at all.  Armed in advance with this knowledge, particularly in light of the fact that this was Stars of the Lid’s first London show in around 6 (six) years, you would of course decide to get there pretty sharpish and park your bum on the steps down the front.

Efterklang, Bush Hall, 23/11/07

Bush Hall is a chandelier-lit oasis in an area lined only with fast-food emporiums, ticket touts (Mos Def at the Empire, the rather forbidding building next door to which is pictured above) and at least one too many identically-named tube stations, so visiting it twice in just over a week was a bit of a treat.  Doors on time tonight, and no free-for-all for seats either, so all was to my liking.  And the opportunity to further attempt to digest the rich pudding of songs that was Efterklang’s Parades album was to be welcomed too, assuming there was room after the bigos and golobki I’d been washing down with vodka at Patio on Goldhawk Road.  (Took my mind off the then impending house move too, which is currently rendering my internet access somewhat intermittent – apologies if blogging is somewhat lighter than usual).

Harmonia, Live 1974 (Groenland)

Newcomers to this place may, as well as wondering what the funny smell is and who that mad-haired chap in the corner is talking to, be thinking that this is some sort of 1970s-themed blog.  There were all those krautrock references peppered throughout the White Rainbow review, there was the Miles Davis box set, umm, “review”, and now this, which couldn’t be more 1970s if it had the date “1974” in the title, which in fact it does.

Various Artists, Airport Symphony (Room 40)

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, in particular those kind people who send me, quite unbidden, all manner of shiny round things to use as coasters, I’m only reviewing things that have more than one disc and come housed in metal boxes.  A much smaller and more minimalist case this one, both in terms of the packaging (I wouldn’t advise storing your sandwiches in this) and the music. 

WXXV: Jackie O Motherfucker and others, Cargo, 18/11/07

In which The Wire’s series of 25th anniversary gigs rumbled to a close – that would be rumbled in the noisy sense but also, perhaps more surprisingly, in the fighty sense of the word.  More on that later.  I suppose the omens were there – walking down a dark and rain-lashed Great Eastern Road, while once again (again!) getting lost and managing not to find Cargo.

Trapist, Rafael Toral and Roger Turner, and Klangstaub, Bush Hall, 17/11/07

I’m sure it said on my tickets that doors opened at 7pm for this Wire XXV / No-Signal night of avant-jazz.  So I was surprised to get there at 7.15 to see some closed doors and a queue.  A queue with the luxuriantly moustachiod Boredoms dancer at the front, looking rather restless and  impatient.  Rather than standing around in the freezing cold, we went for a drink somewhere warm only to find upon our return to the venue that not only were the doors now open, but that we had missed Archeti and Wigeti; further the venue was laid out with rows of seats, and there appeared to be a top-heavy bums/seats ratio.  Bugger that, we thought, we’ll sit down the front; after certain events earlier in the day I was both ill-tempered and very much in the mood to lie on the floor and mong.

Miles Davis, The Complete On The Corner Sessions (Sony)

Ten uses for the Miles Davis Complete On The Corner box set:

White Rainbow, Prism Of Eternal Now (Kranky)

To those of us who are too young to remember them, it kinda feels like the 70s didn’t actually happen, like they were something that Rick Wakeman invented while he was in the pub nursing a pint of John Smith’s and absent-mindedly writing rude words in the Sun’s two-speed crossword.  But, apparently, top scientists have proved that they did in fact happen, probably by carbon dating Damo Suzuki or something, and, after the verdict in ELP v mapsadaisical (2005 SLT 499 per Lord Clarke: “I am bound…to find that the absence of the particulars in question from the very detailed Note, 6/9 of process, rendered it ineffective as preventing the adjudicator’s decision becoming final and binding in terms of Clause 66”.  Ouch, that stung) I’m not allowed to question that fact in print any more.

Spring Heel Jack, Sunny Murray, John Tchicai, Han Bennink and friends, Conway Hall, 12/11/07,

Tonight’s Wire XXV show marked the end of an exhausting run of 5 gigs in 8 days for me, and as good as they have mostly been – in fact, tonight’s was up there with the very best – I’m actually quite glad to see the back of them.  It might give me time to tackle what is probably a mounting backlog of CDs I should be reviewing (I’ve totally lost track).  So, for old times’ sake, one last restaurant recommendation for the week: if you find yourself in the Holborn area, perhaps needing to kill some time before a gig, you could do worse than trying out the bulgogi and kimchi at Korean restaurant Asadal – age old recipes served freshly and with fire and spice; much like tonight’s performances in fact.