Omar Souleyman and Group Doueh at the Dome, 29/05/09

Just to clarify: that’ll be the Tufnell Park Dome, not its more illustrious Greenwich cousin. But even this Dome was a bit of a strange choice of venue – I think the last time I visited the Tufnell Park Dome was probably 1997, when I was fresh out of University, and had moved to London seeking new adventures. Suffice to say I did not find them in Tufnell Park. It was an even stranger choice when you consider that they probably could have sold this out at least twice over – judging from the number of people who were asking me about spare tickets alone. Such oversubscription was inevitable given that this was the first ever UK appearance by two heavyweights of the great Sublime Frequencies roster: Group Doueh from Western Sahara, and Omar Souleyman from Syria.

A Broken Consort, Crow Autumn 2; Carousell, Black Swallow And Other Songs (both Sustain-Release)

As you can gather from the interview with Richard Skelton I published yesterday, he is in a particularly fertile period at present. Aside from the reissued Box Of Birch LP, I recently took delivery of two hugely differing new bundles of intoxicating Skelton sound: a new CD under each of his A Broken Consort and Carousell pseudonyms. It took a while before I was able to listen to them though: the first thing I had to do was to delicately unwrap them, separating them from the straw and seeds which enveloped them.

An interview with Richard Skelton

It was around 18 months ago that I first came upon the work of Richard Skelton, via the initial pressing of his Box of Birch album on his own Sustain-Release label.  It is without doubt one of my favourite albums of the last few years, an emotional immersion whose depths have only increased since via some minor-retouching and now a vinyl repressing on the Tompkins Square label.  My enjoyment of this, along with my unwrapping of a couple more absolutely sublime new recordings under his A Broken Consort and Carousell guises (reviews to follow), meant that when the lovely people at The Line Of Best Fit came to me asking for some questions to put to him, I had far too many.  Thanks to them for allowing me to reprint this interview here; and thanks obviously to Richard Skelton. 

Matmos and the London Contemporary Orchestra, Village Underground, 26/05/09

Matmos’s Supreme Balloon is one of those albums which I appear to have treated with levels of avoidance so criminal that they border on terrorist. If I were to be taken to Bangladesh to have the crap beaten out of me by secret services, I could hardly complain. Listening to it recently for the first time, I felt that its mixture of krautrock and Radiophonic synths combined with their playful sense of rhythm deserved a lot better, and it was some anticipation that I, um, anticipated this gig in a weird unmarked tunnel space, wedged under a couple of tube cars, and under the towering new buildings of Bishopsgate.

City Center, City Center (Type)

You can’t typecast Type Records. Just when you think you’ve got them pegged as black-clad mongers of doom after the recent releases by Svarte Greiner and Xela, what do they do? Release a pop record, of course. Well, not exactly; this new self-titled album by City Center takes the same sideways look at the pop song as Panda Bear took on Person Pitch. Like Panda Bear, Fred Thomas is hitherto better known for his work as part of a larger collective; in Thomas’s case Saturday Looks Good To Me. With City Center the album he takes their melodic template and scribbles all over it in dayglo colours until it is barely perceptible beneath the layers of layers. That’s just the type he is.

Scott Tuma and Mike Weis, Taradiddle; Concern, Truth And Distance (both Digitalis)

The Digitalis label is a big favourite of mine, even if keeping up with its prodigious level of limited edition output requires a level of watchfulness and of bank balance both in excess of what I can normally scrape together. Even just dipping in and out of the catalogue as I do, I appear to have acquired more than my fair share of wonderfully heavy cardboard-clad drone goodness; the two picks of their year as far as I am concerned being the new duo LP by Scott Tuma and Mike Weis, and the (very extended) EP by Concern.

Peter Wright, Snowblind (Install)

Sometimes a record comes along that is just so vast in terms of its scope and ambition that it jars up my cogs and completely prevents me from listening to anything else for weeks. Such a record is Peter Wright’s Snowblind. I’ve been a fan of Wright for some time now; both live and on record, but nothing could have prepared me for this, not even someone holding a big sign aloft which read “Peter Wright is about to release a record so vast in scope and ambition that it will jar up your cogs”. Well, maybe that would have helped. But no-one did it, did they?

Philip Jeck and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, Biosphere, Hildur Gudnadottir and BJ Nilsen at the Roundhouse, 16/05/09

I was intending to start this review with something about the golden age of passenger transport, linking the building of the Titanic to the heyday of the steam engine via the Roundhouse’s original function as an engine shed. However I discovered that when the Titanic sank in 1912, the Roundhouse was in fact being used as a gin warehouse. All of these tangled narrative threads were seamlessly joined together when I took the tube to Chalk Farm and imbibed a couple of G&Ts in the pub before attending this magnificent Touch Presents…evening at the Roundhouse, part of the Short Circuit series of events,which featured an unforgettable performance of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking Of The Titanic.

Not Applicable Artists, Appliances #10 at Scooterworks, 14/05/09

So I went to a scooter repair shop to see a man bang out a Beatles cover on the congas while a girl propositioned my friend with poetry scribbled on the back of an envelope. Such a sequence of highly improbable events could only have occurred at the latest in the Not Applicable artists’ series of Appliances events, featuring the combined talents of Sam Britton, Maurizio Ravalico, Dominic Lash and Anna Kaluza. And not forgetting Fifi, who does the food.

Machinefabriek at Cafe Oto, 12/05/09

Mallets and wire wool, kitchen knives and crocodile clips…these are a few of my favourite things.  Thankfully, Machinefabriek was to incorporate all of these in a coruscating set which marked his first ever appearance in London.  Not just first performance, but the first time he has ever set foot in this fine city.  I’m imagining him on the open top bus tour as I write, sampling the tour guide’s voice and the sound of people unwrapping their sandwiches to create a new sound collage.