Category Archive

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Newcomers to this place are probably beginning to think it is a London restaurant review site.  Apologies to those who really couldn’t care less about where I fill my belly before gigs (and in particular those who live in the geographically obscure area known as “outside London”).  Anyway, as I was seeing Beirut at the Roundhouse, a trip to a Russian/east European restaurant in the Chalk farm area seemed logical.  And as the Ukrainian beef goulash ladled out at Trojka was probably my highpoint of the evening, it would be wholly wrong of me not to highlight it. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d been having some very mixed feelings about coming to this show, mainly because I knew that on the other side of London Tim Hecker was playing in the ICA.  I already had these tickets when that was announced, and while I could have just ditched them and headed to the West End, I decided to have a little faith in my initial instinct to buy these.  I do find a lot to like in the records of Grouper, and Upset the Rhythm had done a pretty bang-up job in assembling an interesting-sounding line up for the event.  And it was in a gallery, just down the road from Brick Lane, so I could at least amuse myself with curry and art, couldn’t I? Read the rest of this entry »

Just back from a visit to one cold, filthy, hellhole of a place full of people who dress oddly and look a bit vacant, known as the North of England*, and straight to another in the form of The Old Blue Last in Hoxton.   The occasion was a Last FM-sponsored start-of-tour event featuring the hairy Japanese psych-rockers in their current incarnation as Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO. When I entered the venue the band themselves were sitting behind their merchandise stall, and a couple of them behind their massive overgrown barnets.  A quick look through the CDs on offer showed three labelled as “NEW!”, which is testament to the band’s oppressive release schedule. Read the rest of this entry »

I finally lost my Vortex virginity last night with a trip to see the Necks play in this lovely venue, finding it perched incongruously amongst the dozens of ocakbasi restaurants and curious clothes shops which constitute Dalston’s glamorous Kingsland Road.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not entirely up-to-speed on the concept behind this evening, although I’m sure some of the cursory internet research for which this site is rightly lauded would have proved illuminating.  From what I gathered on the night it seems to have started with a film, some sort of Margate-set remake of The Wicker Man, and it spread to an album, and now to this show.  The dreich weather did seem suitably portentuous, however.

The first half of the show featured those original songs from the album, in the original order, although with some new arrangements and new performers – as, lets face it, the chances of getting Scott Walker or Robert Wyatt on stage these days are, sadly, pretty slim.  I wonder how Scott Walker is getting on with that “album he can tour” he has been promising us for about a decade?

Some highlights : King Creosote’s plague of  frogs, “Relate The Tale”, with the choir giving it a churchful of hallelujah in the background; the Wyatt-free yet still buzzy “Flies”; June Tabor (above) tickling the hairs on the back of my neck with her solo “Fifth Plague”; and the standout track from the original album “Hailstones”, which lacked some of the Tiger Lillies’ wracked vocals but was still a marvellously emotional thing.  Oh, and I nearly forgot: until tonight I had never heard Rufus Wainwright sing.  Honestly.  He isn’t bad, is he, this chap?  The fact that he was there performing “Katona” (with Imogen Heap) seemed to have attracted an army of fans, but it did end the first section on a gorgeous swoon of melody.

After a break for a leg-stretch and a loo queue, the second half of the evening comprised a new bunch of plagues, as if the Old Testament didn’t have enough already, or maybe they just weren’t menacing enough.  Doesn’t a slaughter of first borns do it any more?  I don’t know, people have become so desensitised; Halo 3 has so much to answer for.

Again, some good stuff here;  Phil Minton’s great hissy-babbly-whoopy Ligeti-style session with the choir; semi-naked show-off Patrick Wolf rubbing fake blood and paint into his skinny torso; and the finale, a startling knees-up-round-the-old-joanna-while-the-sun-sets-on-humankind from Damon Albarn and a children’s choir.  Just like with life itself, there is no encore, just a slow shuffle towards the exit, accompanied by a bunch of Patrick Wolf fans with brightly coloured shoes and glitter on their faces.

More photos on the flickr.

:: :: ::

I missed the start of this after arriving late back from a work trip somewhere way out West, which meant returning via Paddington’s irritating connections (the twin Paddingtons and twin Edgware Roads are a blight on the top left hand corner of the circle line, in my opinion; I feel Harry Beck’s pain) to the faded grandeur of Shoreditch Town Hall, with its lovely and rather appropriate crest. Plenty of power on display tonight, as well as some lights being whirled around by one of the most enigmatic of frontmen.

Such tardiness meant missing most of Michael Gira’s set.  A real shame – the two songs I heard were fiery, passionate affairs which would have called the bluff of most of the new weird folk movement (or whatever I’m supposed to call it these days).  I’d heard complaints about excessive chatter during his set in previous shows, but not here - check out the young disciple listening intently and reverentially in the picture above. If anyone had broken his concentration, I think he would have kicked the warm Carlsberg out of them.  I must say that I thought Gira’s hat and braces combination was a good look for the older gentleman too; I’m duly noting that one, it’ll come in handy some day.

Boredoms, or V(infinity)redoms, or whatever I’m supposed to call them these days, were playing “in the round”, which was the first time I’ve heard that expression used without the words “Rod Stewart” or “Bon Jovi” also featuring in the sentence.  So everyone had a pretty great view, although the sound probably varied a bit depending on which of the three drummers you were nearest two – “my guy” played with a whipcracking ferocity which was tearing at my ears by the end.

The Boredoms set has evolved over the last couple of years – last time I saw them it was pretty much one continuous flowing set of interlocked rhythms, while this time it was more clearly divided into discrete pieces – very complicated, knotty things which the band needed to work as one to unravel.  Eye marshalled these meticulous arrangements, signalling changes of tempo or rhythm with a yelp, playing – as well as his box of dials and some sort of crackling lightbulb – seven guitar necks arranged like a TV antenna, beating them somewhat dramatically with a big stick to produce reverberating space chords.

Towards the end, I thought a disco record was beginning to play from the speakers.  I quickly realised that this wasn’t a record, this was Boredoms letting their hair down.  Yoshimi swivelled in her seat to play keyboards and sing a melody, the other two drummers switched to a more comprehensible time signature, and everyone – band and audience alike – felt the love.  There was even an outbreak of freaky dancing from the fellow down the front with the luxuriant moustache.  At this stage in what is now a pretty long career, Boredoms retain the ability to surprise as well as delight.

:: :: ::

Where are the songs of Spring?  Ay, where are they?  Autumn didn’t so much roll in this year as drop from the sky like a cold lead weight, smashing the leaves from the trees as it did so.  I don’t care so much for its mists and mellow fruitfulness; however the camera appears to do so – that almost looks like a Touch album cover above, doesn’t it?  Hmmm, maybe Touch photographer (and label boss) Jon Wozencroft doesn’t have anything to worry about just yet. 

Not that I think this last year will have caused him too many worries anyway.  Tonight’s showcase at the Bedford Arms was the left-facing bookend - to go with the right-facing one I collected last year - of their silver jubilee celebrations.   And what a year they have had, with superb releases from Fennesz/Sakamoto, Oren Ambarchi, and Marhaug/Asheim amongst others.  The redbreasts or twittering swallows haven’t begun to gather yet, the label pushes on as strong as ever.

Chris Watson warmed us up (a particularly chilly venue this; fortunately I remembered that fact from last year and wore plenty of layers) with his “remix” of his new 7” Oceanus Pacificus, an aural snapshot of the Galapagos Islands.  The piece was seemingly recorded both above and below the waves simultaneously, with the muffly rumble at the bottom separated from the shingly scrapple at the top.  Dolphins circled, squeaking and clicking, cajoling and chiding me.  The visuals provided as an accompaniment were unnecessary; I closed my eyes, lay back, and floated away.

After some freaky fairground cut and splice from People Like Us, Watson’s collaborator on the Storm record BJ “Benny” Nilsen played a stunning set drawn primarily from his new album The Short Night.  It began with wind gusting up church organ pipes, ascending to the heavens where it coalesced and fell to the sky as rain.  The water began to lap at our ankles, before a biting autumnal gust scared some birds from the trees and into the air to sing, attempting to ward off the black of night.  The last tones had barely died out before I was at the stall buying a copy of the album.

It got a bit bitty for a while after that.  People Like Us showed off a fiftiescentric visual collage entitled “Work Rest and Play”. There was some ill-fitting (albeit brief) crooning from Zerocrop.  Wozencroft himself then wrestled with some malfunctioning equipment to provide a DJ set which included some Joy Division, and a new Fennesz single – the CD player drew the line at Judy Garland.

*Big ranty digression warning.  Rejoin again in a para’s time if you want to skip it*  That new Fennesz track was almost ruined by the swathe of chattering numpties in the crowd.  One photographer, whose name fails me at present, seemed not content with trying to disrupt the show for everyone by flashing his camera in the artists’ faces from about 6” away, just as he did last year – if he needs flash in those conditions I would suggest he probably needs a better camera, as well as perhaps a sense of shame – but stood talking noisily with his friend throughout, until someone sitting next to me pointed out to them that people were actually trying to listen to the music.   If I ever reach the point where I am so jaded or care so little about music that I will talk through a preview play of a new Fennesz recording then, dear reader, I will gladly pay for the gun with which you are to shoot me. *ends ranty digression*

Aaaaaaaaand welcome back to those who skipped that bit, you’re just in time to hear me discuss how Geir Jenssen broke the evening’s remarkable run of bald artists.  With his recorded output, I’ve always felt that the beats were the framework on which the rest of his music hung, but it was different here: the music was so dense, that the rhythms seemed to perch on top like a princess on a hundred mattresses, being distressed by an abstract pea at the bottom.  At times it felt like listening to a radio slowly retuning between stations; through layers of static, instruments and voices would appear and disappear, as the patterns around them shifted almost imperceptibly.  The end of the set was like one of those puzzles in which you have to make a picture by shuffling lots of tiles around, with the tiles in this instance being some skronky honks and parps, with Geir seemingly calculating furiously and just about making sense of it all before he ran out of time.  Everyone was quiet by the end, probably as their jaws were hanging agape at this magnicent performance.

To the last oozings: amongst a cacophonous coda from Autodigest I could just about make out human voices.  I couldn’t work out whether they were screaming in pain or baying for an encore; somehow both would have been appropriate for this harsh piece which laid waste to the immense beauty that had gone before.  Ah, Autumn – thou hast thy music too. 

:: :: ::

I went along to one of the Barbican’s Ramadan Nights events on Tuesday.  Except it wasn’t in the Barbican, it was in LSO St Luke’s, an 18th-century Hawksmoor church reinvented as a rather posh concert hall. 

As is the way with any proper music venue, when it says 7.30 on the ticket, it means 7.30, and a slow amble from the pub further down Old Street with an arrival at 7.35 will mean you will miss the start, and they won’t let you in until the end of the song.  Thankfully, there was no epic half hour oud odyssey from Palestinian Moneim Adwan and his band, and I was in fairly quickly to hear his passionate songs about his homeland, supplemented by some sprightly and big-lunged wooden flute.  A bit samey and overlong, but oppression always is I suppose.

The Bedouin Jerry Can Band brought all manner of traditional Arabic instruments, including ney (a flute), simsimiyya (a lyre), and rababeh (a one-string bowed instrument) as well as some improvised instruments from the Sinai in Egypt. Vocal and dancing duties were swapped freely, although I was disappointed that the big Des Lynam lookalike in the tent at the back didn’t rouse from his sprawl to shake his booty.  One of the percussionists stole the show with an impressive solo which began on the ammo box, before switching to doumbek and then finishing on the clay jug.

Their bejumpered manager – think an Egyptian Louis Walsh, he damn near whipped out a chart with some sales projections on it – came on to give a speech and to join in the song about black coffee; they roasted up some beans (mmmm!  The aroma!) before distributing a mere half dozen cups to the front row.  They should have known not to tease a self-confessed caffeine addict like that.  I’m not sure if it was the fact that I missed out, or a niggling query as to whether this was in fact a slightly gimmicky and cynical venture which left me feeling, despite the band’s best efforts, a bit empty at the end. 

I can’t believe that after the punishment I put my ears through the other night that I would follow that with a performance of Glenn Branca’s Symphony #13.  Hallucination City, that is.  The one for 100 electric guitars.  As it was at the Roundhouse, I could at least dull my pain receptors beforehand with some rum cocktails from Cotton’s Rhum Shack over the road.  Mine’s a Jamaican Mule, thanks.  With a Barbancourt chaser. 

First, some numbers.  100 guitarists (each being paid, I believe £0), divided into 10 rows of 10, with different rows having their guitars tuned to alto, tenor, bass and baritone.  1 drummer at the back.  4 sections, entitled “March”, “Anthem”, “Drive” and “Vengeance”.  And the important one: 130 decibels.  As “March” is counted in by the conductor John Myers, the classicism of the piece is notable – there is sheet music, strict tempo, different rows being brought in and out of the ensemble by a flick of the wrist, and there is counting.  Lots of counting.  The conductor is counting bars to help everyone stay in the right place, and a couple of guitarists down front are mouthing their one-two-three-fours.

It starts to get interesting in “Anthem”, when a section of chiming notes is curtailed by another of furious guitar scrubbing (I’d like to see the transcription of that).  Myers is gesticulating wildly, every wave forwards and backwards of his arm seems to produce a roar of sound, the orchestra is very much his instrument.  “Drive” starts with some discordant notes; before the drummer drives the piece forward into a section of white-out noise, and for the first time the piece breaks free from its anchor, getting faster and faster, and louder and louder.  The volume is upped yet further on “Vengeance” after a period in which Myers exhorts the players to play as quietly as possible. The guitars crash back in like thunder, and the ensuing racket is ferocious.  It sounds like the most incredible hailstorm battering a corrugated iron roof; it is clear why Branca describes the Hallucination City orchestra as being like a nuclear weapon.  They do the shhhhhhh/RAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR thing once more, just to make sure you got it, and then it is finished, the last notes decay to a ringing in my ears.  The floppily-haired Branca lolloped up on stage to give us the briefest of waves (and his guitarists the gratefulest of gratitude), but I was too busy clapping to get a picture of that. 

:: :: ::

Wandering into Conway Hall last night, I found myself surrounded on all sides by menacing looking banks of speakers.  Given the line-up for this event, I was more than a little frightened, and was beginning to have images of me dragging myself out of the Hall by my fingertips with blood streaming out of my ears.   For the first time, I even wished I had brought those orange earplugs the Wire sent me some months back.  When the lights went out, and the room was silent but for the tssssssssssss of a pretty ineffectual smoke machine, my hands went clammy, like I was on a plane, on a runway, with the engines just about to kick in.

Haswell and Hecker’s Xenakis-inspired set (they use his graphic-input “UPIC Music Composing System”) began by testing out the bottom end of the speakers and, by virtue of the fact that I was sitting on the floor, the bottom end of me. They switched to some head-spinning high notes, before bringing it all together in pummelling waves of sound.  Green lasers picked out the glitterballs twirling from the roof, scattering light into every corner of the room that wasn’t already full of noise.  Strobes bleached walls which were already scorched by the abrasive textures emanating from all those speakers (I noticed Russell Haswell had his eyes closed during these moments, obviously like me he isn’t too keen on strobes – ooh they make my brain hurt).  I felt like I was strapped to the undercarriage of a train, rumbling over some very uneven tracks at massive speed, feeling every bump and twist.  It was quite exhilarating.

After H&H had finished with us Pan Sonic reintroduced us to the concept of rhythm, and my ears soaked it up like a dry sponge would do water.  Ilpo Väisänen was picked out in front of a live oscilloscope projection of the waveforms they were creating, with Mika Vainio skulking in shadows at the side.  They played some patterns recognisable from their recent (and much-loved here) album Katodivaihe, including “Virta 1”, but the tracks were stripped of all extraneous material, and the gaps between the beats were refilled with liquid metal and grit.  During “Lahetys” it was easy to imagine that we were in trenches, with a cinstant background buzz of gunfire, and grenades detonating all around.  It was so loud that it became as much a physical experience as an aural one, the shock waves pounding my stomach and chattering my teeth were as vital as those entering my ear canal.  Those waveform projections looked like a dense swarm of fireflies by the end, as if the rules of physics had been shattered and thrown mockingly into the sky, where they could float free of gravity.  As the last grain of sound slipped through, I could just about make out someone shouting “Not loud enough! Rubbish!”, which sent me home with a smile on my face.  When I finally got there, I threw out those earplugs.

:: :: ::

I stood on top of Greenwich Hill for a while, overlooking the park and Royal Naval College below, with the Docklands stack looking withered and puny in the distance. It made me feel like a giant, as if I could just reach out and skittle the towers with the back of my hand and stomp off grumpily like I’d lost a game of chess to a five-year-old.  The green laser beam that marks the meridian was tracing a path into the sky, reaching out towards where, fifty years ago to the day, the satellite Sputnik was tossed into orbit by the Russians.   The importance of this event can easily be gauged by the fact that Google even customised their front page to celebrate it, and let’s face it, Google don’t just do that for any random anniversary/national holiday/saint’s day/dog’s birthday, do they? 

The launch of Sputnik was the ostensible reason for the timing of this event, featuring the Mexican Fernando Corona, better known as Murcof, playing his stunning new album Cosmos inside London’s newly-opened Peter Harrison Planetarium.  The Planetarium itself is a large and ominous-looking shark fin-grey funnel rising from an eerie glowing circle amongst some beautiful old museum buildings.  Inside, there are all manner of lumps of meteor and astrological gadgets to keep you amused in the no-man’s land between work ending and gig beginning.  Head finally full of space-related trivia, I headed for the main room, where I found myself reclining and staring up at the inside of a vast dome.  After a brief speech about how moon dust can rip the inside of your lungs to shreds, which brought on a strange tickling feeling in my chest, the lights went out.

We were strictly forbidden from taking photographs inside, but they wouldn’t have done it justice anyway.  As the opening of “Cuerpo Celeste”  rumbled from the speakers like aircraft engine mixed with air-con, we were soon heading for the stars which were drifting slowly across our “sky”.  The moon drifted into sight, and then in the evening’s first moment of awe-inducing synchronicity, we flew right up to it as the track’s towering keyboard motif leapt from the speakers.  For a couple of minutes we sat studying the moon, with it studying us back.  To the crisp pulsing of “Cielo” we roared back away, and instead observed the farcical patchwork of constellations (scorpions chasing house plants over centaurs) and elliptical paths of planets, all banded by the ragged cummerbund of the Milky Way. 

Our space odyssey reached 2001 with a disorientating middle section which overlaid some vectors over the sky.  We were spun around a motion-sickness inducing red-shifted wall of death, before the stars were stretched to infinity, forming lines pointing back to the big bang, with us swooping through their trails through space-time.  I was gripping my arm rests with my jaw agape bythis point.

The finale blasted us back to the edge of the solar system, where we were picked up by the sun’s gravitational pull.  As the cosmic wind of “Cosmos” howled around us, we shot past Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, the unearthly sounds rising and falling in intensity as we skirted each. We skated over Saturn’s rings, and quickly became embroiled amongst Jupiter’s satellites; the giant planet filling the screen around us, the urge to reach out and touch it was hard to resist – an incredible moment.  We picked up speed, pinned to our seats as we tore past Mars, with the electromagnetic interference by now howling around us; as we reached the monstrous sun itself we were scoured by a looping pink solar flare.  Slingshot onwards, we passed Mercury and the sad, dead Venus, before drawing to a halt in front of a homely-looking blue and green globe. The engines shut themselves down, and the lights were tuned back on.  I sat there for some time, before turning to the milkman, who was sitting next to me, equally stunned.  “I feel very small”, I said.

Coming soon to a planetarium near you.  Keep your eyes on Murcof’s website for more.  Go if you can.  This is very very special.

:: :: ::

There have only been x solo female Wire cover stars, and over the course of this weekend I’ve managed to see (2/x*100)% of them, which isn’t bad going. PJ Harvey made up the second part of this double bill, taking the solo thing to its logical conclusion by playing with no support and no band, and starting at the leisurely-meal-in-a-restaurant-friendly time of 9pm. While I had been expecting a set based largely around her excellent new album White Chalk, instead we were treated to a selection from across her seven albums proper, and although I haven’t done the maths, the set list felt pretty evenly split across them.

She began with the tortured howl of “To Bring You My Love”, and continued on in a nakedly emotional manner for the next 90 minutes. The contrast between Polly’s urge in interviews to keep details of her personal life tightly locked away stands in marked contrast to her seemingly uncontrollable desire to lay her craft bare before her audience as she did tonight. The songs from White Chalk stood out tonight, including the standout first track “The Devil” and the intense illucidity of “When Under Ether”, with Harvey displaying surprising prowess on the piano as well as her unsettling upper vocal register. A little humour permeated the overwhelming catharsism when the drum machine developed a mind of its own and began spouting ridiculously inappropriate disco rhythms (”Play Love Shack!” came one quick-witted response). Ultimately the track, “Electric Light”, benefitted from the machine’s removal to the naughty corner, and he song’s necessary stripping back to bare skeleton.

The set ended with a devastating last pairing of songs - “The Piano”, with its shrieks of “Oh God I miss you!” and “nobody’s listening!” (untrue, clearly we were spellbound), and the quite acoustics of “Desperate Kingdom Of Love”. It was a very different show to the one I saw last night, and I can’t help but think that if I had been much closer to the stage I may even have enjoyed her tremendous performance even more - the sensation of watching this performance with so many others felt more than a little voyeuristic.

:: :: ::

Having missed Ms Newsom last time she played (had tickets, but wasn’t going to be in the country on the date, so a grateful milkman took them off my hands), there was no way I was making the same mistake this time.  At the Royal Albert Hall of all places.  Not being a seasoned flag-waving Prom-going right-wing berk, I haven’t been to the Royal Albert Hall in years.  It has a much smaller diameter than I remembered it, but makes up for it by being vertiginously tall, with sound-damping roof fungus dangling from the roof on long stalks. 

Early doors, a couple of Joanna Newsom’s friends from California, The Moore Brothers did a very brief (15 minute!) and wholly-passable impersonation of Simon and Garfunkel with one guitar and a bagful of harmonies.  They didn’t have a “Bright Eyes” though.  But then again, neither did Simon and Garfunkel.

Manc folk legend Roy Harper was on next.  I’d seen him play before at the 100 Club, an infuriating event which consisted of 60% hippy chuntering (war is bad, kids!) to only about 40% music.  This time, constrained by his 45 minute slot, he dispensed with the majority of these platitudes in favour of a gritty reading of his classic Stormcock.  It was a winning decision, and one which is bound to have won him a bunch of new fans tonight.  On “The Same Old Rock” and “One Man Rock and Roll Band” he elbows aside his colleague on guitar to dispense some thuddering playing of his own, and you can hear why the Zep were fans. The last of the four tracks “”Me And My Woman” is apparently one of Joanna’s favourites; with its seemingly unrelated sections and unannounced changes in tempo and key, Harper’s upper register swinging from those mushrooms on the ceiling, its influence on her style of song construction couldn’t be more obvious.

The moment the first note escaped Joanna’s lips was a magical one for me, confirmation of the hitherto-unreconcilable notion that that incredible voice really does belong to that person.  From that moment, the hall was a bowl of hush, punctuated by huge ovations after each song.  The band were a four-piece (including violin, banjo/tamboura and percussion), rendering those songs from The Milk-Eyed Mender less of a challenge – “Bridges and Balloons”, “The Book Of Right-On” and the spare, traditional sounding “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie” were amongst the evening’s many peaks. 

The fact that there was no orchestra immediately stripped some of the Ys songs of perhaps my favourite component, Van Dyke Parks’ inspired off-kilter arrangements.  However, despite a couple of clumsy moments when some overly-loud tamboura would threaten to overwhelm the other instruments, for the most part the reworkings worked well.  The tempo of “Emily” was tinkered with, some sections slower and some faster than on record, while “Monkey and Bear” benefited from a big kettle-drum finale.  The transcription of “Cosmia” did not divest it of any its sense of drama; building perfectly to the squeaky emotions of the “and miss! and miss! and miss!” climax (I must add that it was at this point that I noticed that two members of the band looked – from my vantage point – like the Miliband brothers, seemingly unfazed by all the speculation about whether or not a general election is imminent).  The solo “Sawdust and Diamonds” was unaffected, and was utterly scintillating, Newsom’s hands grabbing skilfully and speedily at bunches of strings like she was in a flower picking contest.

The set ended with a new one – slow and sparse, with lyrics about “a beautiful town with rain coming down” suggesting that it could have been written in London at any point over the last six sodden months.  After an extended standing ovation, we were treated to an encore of extensive and extensively-rejigged epic “Only Skin” before, a Springsteen-esque (well, they are the Ys Street Band after all) two hours after she first appeared on stage, Joanna finally took her bow to some unrestrained adoration and well-deserved applause the likes of which aren’t observed all that often in the RAH’s stuffier events. 

:: :: ::

Ashley Wales’ Back In Your Town night continues to provide us with some of the most exciting improvisation to be found anywhere in clubland.  And I mean clubland; the Red Rose, situated on a most unappealing stretch of the Seven Sisters Road to the South West of Finsbury Park has the charm of a decades-old working men’s club.  But look between the multiple TVs tuned to Sky Sports and the chalkboards showing such endearingly precise prices as “Bitter £2.12″, and you will see the walls are festooned with pictures of performers - the room through the back is what you are looking for if you need a bit of free jazz or live comedy to lift your spirits in this part of North London.

As a prelude to the main act, Steve Beresford and Neil Metcalfe performed an excellent piano/flute duet.  The level of listening and the speed of the reactions to each other was extraordinary - whether Beresford would stumble upon a phrase, or Metcalfe chanced upon a melody, the other would take it, bash it around for a bit, and hand it back for further work.  It was probably inevitable given their respective choice of instruments that Beresford would excite most, leaping as he did from the thunderous rumble on the left to the flashes of lightning on the right, nearly falling off his stool as he did so.

Mark Sanders had barely managed to finish his thanks to those involved with the organisation of this tour (you can read a brilliant review over wordsandmusic of the Liverpool gig) when the impatient and cross-looking Gayle burst in with his white alto, leaving Sanders and William Parker tearing after him in chase.  Immediately, intensity levels were extremely high; at times all three musicians had their eyes closed in concentration, as they tried to align their respective cog with the revolutions of this great engine.

Parker was the first to be given a solo, a long (picture the impatient Gayle glowering stage right), fast (I had to check that he in fact has only five fingers on each hand) thing which seemed to be constantly fighting against an urge to develop some funk.  He took a glorious - and much shorter - arco solo later, deft as they come, and bursting with melody.  These were moments to savour - during the ensemble pieces the muscular Parker’s work became at times surprisingly buried amidst the hullabaloo beinig created around him.

Sanders’s moments in the spotlight were disappointingly brief: as I write, I’m listening to his solo record Swallow Chase on Wales’ Treader label, and he is clearly capable of creating sublime extended percussion pieces.  By some distance the youngest man on stage, he played a mostly subservient role, but played it with the utmost quality and consistency - marvellously responsive, switching between the sticks, brushes, and mallets, and using every square centimetre of every surface available to him to produce the fullest array of sounds, but in the most unshowy fashion.   Towards the end of a piece which had kicked off as an Ayler-esque march, Gayle and Parker lured him into a drums versus sax and bass showdown; Sanders fought his corner with aplomb, matching their knotty phrases with is own intricate shapes. 

Gayle’s sax playing was, as you would have expected, incendiary throughout the evening, featuring coruscating Coltrane-like runs into upper registers, all played with a huge, chewy vibrato.  However the quality of his piano playing was an unexpected surprise to me - he would feel his way in before playing with Bley-ish style, humming and singing as he went.  When, at the start of the second piano trio piece, Parker and Sanders led off at brisk pace, a grin broke out for the first time on Gayle’s face, appreciating the challenge he was being set, and responding with relish.  This image was in contrast to the stern, forceful leader we had seen throughout the evening, calling players in, before shutting them out with a blast from his horn.  After the evening faded out with Gayle playing a snatch of Tyner on piano (”Naima”, if I remember correctly, which would be a first), this stony facade was finally shattered by his humble and heartfelt thankyou speech.  As he signed off with “There may be three of us, but we’re a quartet - you are the fourth person”, suddenly he was once more just a thin, gaunt looking old man, and the fourth person showed their appreciation with a huge and massively deserved ovation.

There are more photos at the flickr.

I nearly forgot to mention that I saw the Mercury Music Prize-nominated (I know, like that means anything..doesn’t even the titular Mercury relate to a now-defunct telecoms company sponsor?) at the National Portrait Gallery the other night.  I do enjoy seeing music in less-than-usual settings, hence I was more interested in checking out the NPG as a venue than seeing the band themselves.

I was a little disappointed with the space.  The concert took place in a sterile white conduit, a transient place filled with a constant stream of people shuffling through between other parts of the gallery (although the bemused faces passing up the sleek escalator did amuse me).  It was a bit busy, which I suppose could have been expected what with Basquiat Strings being the country’s designated flag-bearers for all music that isn’t indie rock, but this meant I was sitting on the floor, which was cold and hard.  An hour of that probably didn’t contribute to my appreciation of the venue.

Having said all that, I enjoyed the group more than I expected, particularly given that the big-haired clumsily-booked drummer Seb Rochford had managed to get his diary in a knot and wasn’t present.  Although they were coming from a more staid classical tradition, with only the (rather good, actually) substitute drummer allowed to veer from sheet music, I did appreciate their arrangements of some familiar jazz tracks.  In particular, their reading of the one-day-gone Joe Zawinul’s “In A Silent Way” had an obvious poignancy.

Cargo is one of my favourite venues (the memories of last year’s Supersilent performance still linger on in my singed synapses), although I can never find the place, resulting in me spending an unnecessary amount of time tramping about through London’s trendy Shoreditch in the very-much-du-jour pissing rain.  The warm glow induced by this ATP-promoted avant-folk event soon dried me out though.

Hush Arbors is the trading name of sometime Six Organ Keith Wood. “Matt Groening!”, was Mandrew’s customary looky-likey contribution, although the helium-guzzling vocals brought to my mind Geddy Lee, and in particular Pavement’s curiosity as to the pitch of his speaking voice.  Accompanied by Leon J. Dufficy who swathed the songs in a blanket of feedback, Hush Arbors were pretty fine, although suffered a little from being in the same two-guitar format (one traditional, one troublemaker) as the headliner, who did it with a bit of added excitement.

Anyone pining for a return to Six Organs Of Admittance’s Fahey-esque phase which peaked with the wonderful School Of The Flower should look away now: last year’s scuzzy The Sun Awakens appears to have been a signpost, not an outpost.  Ben Chasny has now recruited Magik Markers’ Elisa Ambrogio to the band; Chasny is thus freed to concentrate on playing his electric quasi folk while someone else does the electric what-the-fuck? 

Ambrogio spent half of the show on her knees, giving her guitar some real tough love (overhead, underfoot, upside down), creating a malevolent cacophony. By the end of the gig she was down to four strings, the other two lashing around like whip tails, but she continued to riff and slash and scrub, pausing occasionally to whisper surprisingly soft harmonies. As Chasny and Ambrogio eyed and circled and pushed each other, one couldn’t help but pick up on real frisson in the chemistry between them.

The new album Shelter From the Ash comes out in a couple of months on Drag City; I’m guessing most of the setlist came from this.  A cut-to-ribbons “Home” from School of The Flower did feature towards the end, as did – or did I imagine this – a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “That’s Alright”.  Just after I’d said to Mandrew that I was hoping for “The Chain” too…

More photos on the flickr

All a bit queue-y, wasn’t it, that Field day thing?  I mean, to be fair, it was their first attempt, but a bit of cursory research into recent events occurring in Victoria Park could have given them a good idea of the bar staff/attendees and toilets/attendees golden ratios.  Lovebox the other week was a model of organisation and mathematical rigour in comparison - it didn’t feel all that special at the time, but I suppose with these things you don’t notice them if they are done well…if they are done badly, as they were here, you miss several of your favourite bands as you were stuck in queues (one hour and forty minutes to get a beer, for fucks sake), emerging tired, sunburnt and grumpy and with little inclination to get down the front to dash betwen stages and enjoy the bands (and take some decent photos…yeah, sorry about that).   I spoke to some people who queued for half an hour in what they thought was a queue for the toilet, only to find they were in fact in the queue for the wine bar.  They had the far-away look in their eyes you see in the eyes of Gulf War veterans…the horror, the horror.

I saw - or heard, from my grumpy space at the side of the Homefires stage - Caribou, Fridge, The Fence Collective, Adem, Archie Bronson Outfit, Bat For Lashes and Four Tet.  I enjoyed Caribou very much indeed, especially the two drummer action (check out the appreciative security guard in the pic above, uh-huh, he felt it big time).  The Fence Collective, highlighting their “lowliest, unsigned member” Johnny Pictish were just fine, particularly at their less raucous moments.  Their spiritual leader King Creosote danced like a drunken Scottish fool (I of all people should know how one of those dances) to the Archie Bronson Outfit; I’d never heard them before, and found myself enjoying them greatly - although that may have been due to the fact on my way back from the Hieronymous Bosch-esque bar carnage I’d managed to sink a couple of ales and was feeling a bit giddy.  Bat For Lashes…now she is a talent. Not entirely convinced by the stage show (despite the Arkestra outfits), or the music, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Natasha Khan.  Part of me wants her to make a solo piano record, although I worry it would sound like Tori Amos or something and I’d lose interest.  Stayed for the start of Kieran Hebden’s show as Four Tet, which was all a bit crowd pleasing, really - I thought he was starting to consciously get away from just playing “She Moves She” and the like, towards much more interesting and improvisational live performance.  Maybe not.

At that point, I joined the queue for the exit.  Will Field Day return next year?  If it does, it will need to work bloody hard to convince me that it has learned from this year’s failures before I’d return.

Come back!  There are no real spoilers for Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows herein, I promise.  Although the next time someone bumps into me in a tube station because they have their head down and aren’t looking where they are going, being far too engrossed in the wizardly antics of Hermione, Thorin, Gandalf and whoever else is in the bloody thing, I’m quite tempted to let slip some wicked disinformation (”Didn’t you feel cheated when you found out that the whole thing is just a dream?”, that kind of thing).  Before the gig yesterday I met Mandrew at Kings Cross station, as he had to take some photos of Platform 9.75 to show to his excitable students back in Japan.  Nothing more to it than that, honest.

So, two James Blackshaw reviews in one day?  Is he worth it?  (Ha ha ha, I’ve just reminded myself of something I saw at the Great British Beer Festival the other day: rotund man with a “L’Real Ale - because I’m worth it t-shirt”, ugh.  Mind you, one thing that I can say for it: being in the same room as a load of fat men is rather slimming).  Back on topic now - yes he is.  He played two long twelve string pieces tonight, one brand new one, and one older one  - nothing off the wonderful new record then.  While much of the set induced blissful reverie (indeed, a very tired Monkeyman nearly drifted off to sleep on the sofa next to me), the latter picked up speed with some sections of very lively fingering on a couple of occasions.  It was far too short, I could listen to this man play guitar for hours.

PG Six had half as many strings, was about half as good, and played for twice as long.  No, that’s not fair at all; although anyone’s guitar playing would suffer in comparison to Blackshaw’s, I was really getting into his  tales of small-town Americana by the end.  I particularly enjoyed “Bless These Blues”, which by his own admission would have sounded better with Al Green singing it (but then again, wouldn’t most things?). 

This was the first In The Pines promotion I can remember having been too.  It is definitely a site worth bookmarking, especially if they do any more gigs in this cute little venue next to what, with the pending opening of St Pancras for hot Eurostar on track action, is likely to no longer be the holder of the title of “Europe’s biggest building site”.

And so to the second instalment of My Life Inside A Beer Advert (first part is back here; note that by the time of this second instalment the price of said beverage had risen to an outrageous £3.90 for 330mls; approaching £7 a pint…I thought this was a celebration of Brazilian not Norwegian culture).  I arrived to near-Brazilian sunshine, and in plenty of time, so much so in fact that I was able to indulge in a quick game of Mornington Crescent (tipping my hat deferentially to Willie Rushton’s blue plaque on the station), and to have a cheeky non-sponsored pint in the pub next door to Koko; the entire King Creosote entourage appeared to have had a similar idea by the look of the place.

This did mean that I missed the solo set of Tony Da Gatorra - more of him later - and another capoeira demonstration.  The first act I saw was Sao Paolo’s Romulo Froes, who did an interesting job of blending classic tropicalia’s wistful bossanova with more modern influences.  The band were a bit mid-period Radiohead in parts, with particularly squalling and proggish guitar, but Froes’ vocals fitted perfectly into that gorgeous Gil/Veloso/Gilberto lineage.  Most interesting.

I’m not even a fan of the Super Furry Animals, but I appear to have accidentally seen Gruff Rhys twice now in just over a week.  He appeared helmeted, as is his wont, and accompanied by the aforementioned Tony The Guitar, who looked fresh from playing at some small venue somewhere in, um, the late 1960s, and who was jabbing at some sort of home made electronic gui