gLASSsHRIMP radio show 26/10/10, including Rune Grammofon feature

In case you missed it on Tuesday night, this week’s gLASSsHRIMP show is now available to stream. It includes an interview with Appliance, and a good thirty-odd minutes of me playing Rune Grammofon records. I should also add that this coming Tuesday (2 Nov) we have none other than Irmin Schmidt of Can coming into the studio for a chat. Do tune in.

Oren Ambarchi and Holy Family at Cafe Oto, 28/10/10

At 7.45pm, John Chantler was playing drums to accompany Richard Skelton and his score for a Charles Linehan dance piece in Greenwich (I saw it on the Wednesday; very lovely indeed. Quite stripped back for Skelton, but with a huge, chaotic finale. I don’t really “do” contemporary dance, but Linehan’s interpretation of the piece seemed suitably dark, even violent perhaps). After an hour of scraping and rumbling, and a cab ride across the city, he was playing modular synth with Lawrence English in Dalston as Holy Family, in support of their fellow Australian Oren Ambarchi. That is quite a night, by anyone’s standards.

Supersonic Festival 2010

Cave

I covered this year’s Supersonic Festival for the online home of all things metal, er, FACT magazine. I had a great time, thanks for asking. You can read all about my weekend here. The photos are all on Flickr too, but here are some of the highlights:

Various Artists, Imaginational Anthem Vol.4 (Tompkins Square)

There has been a lot of talk in recent years, a lot of it on this site admittedly, about solo guitarists who borrow from some of the more forward-thinking folk guitarists from the late 1960s onwards. New adjectives have been fashioned, some by me admittedly, words like Fahey-esque and Kottke-ish and Basho-vian. Actually I probably made at least one of those up right now, and another may in fact be a Dr Who monster, but you know what I mean. The Tompkins Square label have taken it upon themselves to be the curators of this scene, arranging works by some of the old masters alongside the newer artists on the walls of the Imaginational Anthem gallery. Volume 1 juxtaposed Sandy Bull with Jack Rose, Volume 2 was bookended by James Blackshaw and Robbie Basho, and Volume 3 found space for both Richard Crandell and Greg Davis. The links having been drawn, Volume 4 sticks to the new breed, with some less familiar names; digging a little deeper in the attic to uncover some relatively recent masterpieces.

Supersilent, 10 (Rune Grammofon)

Given that they are a band famous for not even communicating with each other before or after their improvised performances, no-one, not even their members, can say that Supersilent are a predictable band. Having said that, the departure of drummer Jarle Vespestad seems to have knocked them into an entirely irregular orbit. Supersilent 9, their first as a trio, featured remaining members Arve Henriksen, Ståle Storløkken and Deathprod (I like to think that even Henrik Sten’s mum calls him Deathprod) restricting themselves to Hammond organs, producing an album of wholly unfamiliar and entirely unearthly drones. As fascinating as this was, I was as confident as I could be in the circumstances that the three keyboard attack wouldn’t be sustained for long; the instrumental lineup they have settled on for 10 is as unexpected as I er, expected.

The Ex and Nisennenmondai, Tufnell Park Dome, 19/10/10

Dutch anarcho-punk band The Ex formed in 1979; I can only assume that disgust at the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK spread as far as the Netherlands, and that their return to the UK is partly to express their anger at her progeny laying waste to the UK public sector. That aside, the band returned on a bit of a high; new album Catch My Shoe having been particularly well received, as was the collaboration of their guitarists Andy Moor and Terrie Hessels with Scandinavian jazz bomb The Thing. Listening to the sheer energy contained within this recent work, it is quite astonishing to think that the Ex have been around for 30 years. It is even more astonishing to think that The Ex have been around for 30 years and I’ve never seen them until now.

Emeralds, Dean McPhee and Neon Pulse at CAMP Basement, 17/10/10

The entrance to London’s newest venue wasn’t entirely what I expected. It looks like any other office building in EC1, walnut-panelled walls, and a little brass name plate at the side showing the names of each floor’s occupants. Househam Henderson, Architects, 2nd floor. Cadogan Hall this wasn’t. There was a functional little plastic table and chairs blocking the way, just where you’d imagine a bored security guard would sit, asking to see staff passes. When I was a space-obsessed child, I often dreamt of what it would be like to visit NASA, imagining huge rows of glowing lights and acres of humming supercomputers. In reality, the way in is probably through a mundane brown room with a security guard snoozing at the desk. Tonight, with Emeralds playing in the Basement at CAMP (City Arts And Music Project to its mum), the way down was indeed to be the route to the cosmos.

Carla Bozulich at Cafe Oto, 14/10/10

“Swing to me…you…and you….and you”. We’re one song into Carla Bozulich’s set, and already she is amongst the crowd, howling in our faces. The intensity of her recent albums was playing out in front of us, lyrics about desperate and dangerous obsession tossed amongst fractured soundscapes which themselves seemed to evoke mental anguish. Midway through “Evangelista I” she threw herself into one of very few empty chairs in Cafe Oto and clung onto a young man in the front row, holding onto him as if he was the only thing keeping her head above the building waves. He looked absolutely terrified.

OTObahn cryptic crossword No.1, 15/10/10

No-one thought I was being serious, but I actually did it. I set a cryptic crossword to keep people amused at last night’s OTObahn event. Not enough gigs or club nights involve any form of crossword, in my opinion. Two people managed to finish it, and one of them told me that cryptic crosswords were “in some way, a bit like modular synths”, which vindicated the whole thing as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had a few requests for the crossword from people who weren’t there last night (shame on them!), so here it is….

Preview: OTObahn at Cafe Oto, 15/10/10

On Friday 15 October I’m playing records at Cafe Oto with @MandrewB, @MikeWinship and @grohs at an event we are calling OTObahn (HA HA, er, ha). We’ve got live sets from Regolith and John Chantler (I can’t wait to hear him do some live synth again after Tuesday night’s radio performance), and a pretty flyer. Entry is FREE, it all starts at 8pm. Expect jazz, ambient, dub, kosmische, hypnagogia and more. On the Otobahn there are no limits. Except their 1am license, obviously. And the fact you can’t smoke inside. And probably some rules around public indecency. OK, at the OTObahn, there are some limits, but these have little or no bearing on the music policy. HAPPY NOW? See you there.