The travails of a club curator... (hey, I love that phrase: club curator... rolls off the tongue...) Maybe this game is some kind of addiction – lying in bed at 5 pm Saturday afternoon when you have to be up and doing very soon and you just want to sleep because you had 4 hours the night before and you know that there is no way out: a club curator has to do the gig, whatever... Especially when you are performing as well, opening the show with one person whom you know well as a player – but the other you don't and you get that feeling: am I able to acquit myself well enough given exhaustion etc and this guy is supposed to be good and... in the event it's the old addiction kicking in: the club jones, the muso jones – the improv jones where you have nothing to fall back on if you play honestly – and the best part of the addiction is exactly that you have to play honestly and as fresh as possible to get the hit. And you need the hit – and you get the jolt – when you can sit back finally at 00.23 am which is relatively early for apres-gig back in your own sweet hovel with a can of Budweiser cold out of the fridge. Time to reflect on – well, what made the night so damn good? Apart from meeting and playing with a new musician – Michael – who had to rush off to Leeds but made a significant impression on me and those who heard him play with myself and David Teledu (whom God preserve!). I met and heard a new band to me: Black Carrot from Market Harborough – brothers in the game of provincial music making of the free and improvised and experimental variety. Second gig I've been at this week (third if you count my bizarre encounter with the Basford Variety Club which I still haven't written up – I need a quiet day dedicated to deciphering the records - scraps of paper, scribbles on beer mats - the usual - which has not turned up yet). And as good in a small east midlands club as the Jandek gig in the big city was: a tight, punchy band who play mainly improvised sets and songs. Black Carrot... You can guess by now that I liked them...
Plexus in its incarnation of myself and David Teledu plus guest Michael Canning opened the show and had decided to play as a unit rather than split up into various line-ups – due to time as much as anything else – and space: the Sporadic is a small club and there was a lot of equipment scattered around. We marshalled guitars, bass, synths, laptop and borrowed drums at the end to perform two pieces, one by David, the other by myself. Loose sketches, giving a basic tonality (C and G respectively) for each piece and suggestions on how to move through together. (I have received a cd recording of the set from David subsequently and played it back once – to me it sounds very good, but reviewing your own music is somewhat fraught with danger! I'll leave it at this – ) Michael Canning added some wonderful touches to our improvisation, at the end moving onto drums to give added rhythmic colour. David was prolific, switching instruments and colorations and I mainly thumped away at the lap top although I moved onto guitar at one point when the drums started as I felt the laptop could not respond quickly enough to what I wanted to add to the rhythms.
Black Carrot are a three piece, drums, acoustic bass and keyboards doubling (trebling?) sax, bass recorder (I think) and electric guitar. They started with arco bass and electric keyboard – low sounds and high ringing clusters. The bass went into a pizzicato keening, singing section and the drummer edged in on cymbals – a jazzy 4/4 ching-ching-ker-ching type rhythm with bluesy keyboard. Then vocals added – a loose duet between the bass and keyboard player – words blurred and bent to be fairly incomprehensible (buy their cd – some of the same tracks are on it and you can find the lyrics written here as well!). A unique sound, I think - I have heard them compared to Morphine but personally don't hear it... the acoustic bass gives them a jazzier feel, for a start and Morphine are a bit one-dimensional whereas Black C have several strings to their various bows. They play long stretched-out numbers (like us) which gives plenty of space for improvising. I am a fan of long songs live or otherwise as I'm always curious on what journey I'm going to be taken on – this was a very interesting ride and one that I would like to experience again...
Further numbers brought in sax – punchy, free-jazzish, using what sounded like pedal effects at times to double the line – and the (probable) bass recorder and electric guitar - I had to go and get a drink (well, it had been a long day for little me...)so missed some of this last but came back to hear e-bowed guitar – long, sad singing notes which added another dimension to their varied sound world. A crisp and sharp unit, dedicated to the virtues of improvisation and also incredibly nice people. Hard actually to categorise them easily – which is to the good. This is music that has the rigour of improvisation done well but also is accessible via the jazzy rhythms (at times they reminded me of a New York-style band like Defunct or James Chance and the Contortions, maybe, from the punk jazz/loft side of the no-wave days).
There are things stirring out in the provincial undergrowth beyond the capital city... Loughborough... Market Harborough... tomorrow the world...
You can buy their cd: 'Cluk' – here -
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