Continuing: Josh Abrams Natural Information Society (+ Evan Parker) and The Third Negative

Trying to get a fix on what's happening anywhere on the ground of the imagination is a vertiginous, off-balancing business (and perversely a frequent pleasure: for those who want to embrace the complexities of contemporary life). Music, for example. Deluged by issues, re-issues in all the formats analog and digital. How to select? Not having any great inclination to over-categorise, a failing, no doubt, but that’s the way it shakes out in my world, I tend to encounter music in bursts, sometimes seeking, sometimes randomly tripping over work which grabs me. Resurrecting this blog for a variety of purposes, the main one, perhaps, being the promotion of a book I’ve been working on for some time, ‘The Avatars of Paradise,’ a novel, in the time leading up to its self-publication I figured that the old platform may still have some energy left for promotion and future new work. That flexing the somewhat atrophied blogging muscles by launching a couple of pieces pre-publication may stimulate my creative intentions moving forward. If I’m spared, as my late drinking buddy and friend Mervin G used to say. Ironically, with hindsight… Didn’t He Ramble… The Asinine Plague hovers at my back, of course, accompanied by its bigger pal, our old friend the wingèd chariot. But onwards… 

Two musical encounters gave me the spur to commence: how about a critical foray? Unable to attend the Tusk Festival last year because of the AP (see above), journeying and physical event both nixed, ironically I saw more of it than I would have by actually being there, some small consolation. Sitting at home watching the various daily vidcasts enabled me to enjoy most of it virtually, rather than experience the usual festival conflicts of timetable, geography, energy levels, hangovers etc. Swings and roundabouts writ large. The variety of musics was superb, as was observing the disparate methods of performance under the strictures of the AP. One band I really enjoyed was Triple Negative. So I bought their latest release. I was playing it a couple of weeks ago and synchronistically had noticed a Wire review of a Joshua Abrams  album which I hadn’t read at the time, ‘descension (Out of our Constrictions),’ by his band the Natural Information Society plus Evan Parker . Played some of it afterwards via their Bandcamp site link. Here…Immediately grabbed. So that afternoon existed in a heightened sonic space. Fuel for the reboot. I sat down and played the musics again today. Scribbled a few notes. And proceeded to pummel this blog post into some shape… trying not to freight the content with over-interpretation and fancy, always a tricky balance. And possibly failed. As the late Thomas Waller used to say: ‘One never knows, do one?’

Hey Ho.

 

So: Live recording. (This section under review is part one of a 75 minute work). Music that consolidates without being reactionary. Recapitulation and extending the tradition. With ‘the anxiety of influence’ doing a ghost dance… A loping, staggering vamp introduces, Evan Parker enters on soprano saxophone with simple figures. Soon he extends his line looping outwards via circular breathing patterns, his signature technique, arguably his main route out of the influence of John Coltrane, en route to becoming a virtuoso/innovator. Interestingly, given the modal vamp structure and the keening use of soprano saxophone alongside a bass clarinet with echoes of Eric Dolphy, the work offers a channel back to Coltrane structurally with Parker embedded in an earthier environment than some of his more abstract forays. He holds a long e flat to change up. Change up again with a few notes decorating the e flat then longer patterns laden with riffs and variations, falling back to let the band come through, the vamp continuing, the ground of this work. There is a lot of space on offer: the vamp holds it together in a loose embrace, the instrumentation: drums, guimbri, harmonium, bass clarinet offer a fascinating textural scenario which, apart from the Coltrane resonations, hints at musics and traditions beyond ‘jazz’ with plenty of room to breathe and no hints of clumsy world music pastiche. A remarkable achievement. Parker takes off towards the end with long flurries of notes cutting between registers in an extended blast of exhilaration, the triumph of breath, will and imagination. Audience respond with appreciative applause as he falls out, ensemble taking it on with a slapping backbeat, harmonium and bass clarinet weaving in midrange sonority to the end of the section. A music that comes from the tradition, partakes of other traditions, expands the tradition with the additions, always moving, always looping back and, more importantly, forward. John Coltrane died in 1967, after all: one assumes the title ‘descension’ is a glancing reference to his recording ‘Ascension’  ( Further on in this long piece, Parker essays a sly quote from ‘A Love Supreme’ to no doubt drop in a bit of hommage… ). Music of wonder.

The Triple Negative as mentioned above, are a band I caught on the Tusk virtual festival. A few tracks considered from their album ‘God Bless The Death Drive.’ Tagged: rock, experimental, rebetiko, London, on Bandcamp. Possibly the word ‘rebetiko’ is the key to understanding this wild sonic mélange. A good overall definition of this outlaw music is here… 

Side One - Crane. The opener: ‘Bad Grace.’ A female transgressor, supping ouzo, ha ha? Or negative spiritual quality. Which seems more in keeping with the overall tone of the record. Lot of mystery here. The cover and inner sleeve have fragments of textual enigma such as ‘give me the Bad Grace never to accept what I can never change,’ a ‘triple negative’ riff on Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, famous for its use in A.A. /twelve step programs. Cheeky. Sharp clapping clicking that holds a sturdy, sprightly rhythm, voices gargling whatever, a scrawny riff repeating underneath, several layers, occasional electric guitar note/chord. It’s not an abstract music, although an initially alien sound world. Visceral, certainly, voices ‘singing’ in a take it or leave it fashion, instruments and implements seemingly grabbed at will. I stress the ‘seemingly’ - these people aren’t naives . Next track, ‘Bad Emotional Investments.’ Some rumbling around a tonic, scrapey guitar. Occasional fragments of song form appear sporadically. Participating sounds/voice/instruments jammed together in a metallic yet syrupy mix, a nice sonic paradox, a keening melody, Balkan/Greco/Turkish? in implication. ‘The Ingrate.’ The clicking clacking rhythm again, a two bar melody with those rebetiko hints repeating as the voices swirl in the distance. Cuts off. ‘Fine Cargo Of Lacquer.’ Harmonium vamp up in the mix and blurry vocal, Nico singing in the bathroom next door ha ha. Small interjections ticking over a deep counter melody moving in and out. Side Two - Lacquer. ‘Low moon (all passports are dirty).’ Sounds assembling, burly voice ruminations. A sharp metallic rhythm building as effect flanges across. Someone with a phone walking in and out of a noisy engine room on a steamy ghost boat. Fancy prodded into being by the visuals on the album cover. Rhythms clapped together as if using whatever was lying about. No obvious electronic mutated synth sounds.  ‘Nags Head Spools.’ Banging rhythm and sharp clacks herding the ‘instruments’ and voices into a form of its occasion. Processed voice/noise welded to a drone tied to a screech… yadda yadda…this is enough rambling…

I reread the above fragments and thought that they were too fanciful, a Coleridgean downer, and clumsy attempts to force meanings. Of course. Like most criticism of musics outside the norm. Self indulgence in the main. Like most criticism. Rather than scrap them, I’ll let them stand as heuristic shipwrecks, so segue more yadda yadda and overview: 

mentions of the Baltic Sea on the album cover, the maritime imagery, quasi-mystical statements: ‘He is too great for infinity, too small for a grain of sand,’ a spatial twist on Blake, it would seem? And/or a fragment of lyric? The sound, sourced according to the sleeve from 1, 4, 8 track cassette recordings and a two track audio editor, blends everything somewhat muddily but not into a sludge of dialectical synthesis, rather the components, voices, instruments, percussion, from whatever sources, hold their spaces and tensions. It’s a rough muddy democracy but one that respects its parts. There is a scouring, kinetic sensibility at work here. It defies easy analysis - or maybe encourages the listener to LISTEN and forget the analysis. On repeated hearings, memory at work, cues emerge for embracing it relatively more formally. 

The vinyl has a satisfying heft to it. The cryptic statements on the cover, the nautical imagery, references to immigration/colonisation, allied to the song titles which yield little in the way of lateral ‘meaning’ and the glorious sonic abrasions and free-falling trajectories between the lp grooves, laced with oblique humour - demand work from the listener. Amply rewarded, for this participant in the fandango… the music is part of the package in a smart artistic statement. It’s not puny sonic wobbling with apologias or facile sloganeering and refreshing because of this… 

As a comparison: the Glaxo Babies, a band described in one of those clunky genre placements as ‘post punk.’  Because I pulled an album at random from the stack and out came this…  Something about the balls to the wall splatter chimes, but in the case of the Glaxos, underpinned by snappy funky bass beloved of bands of the time, using tropes from black music to undergird the sonics. The Third Negative eschew this approach completely. Initially, few aural cues to go on, which is their value, for me. By placing their individual offerings where sonic/formal antagonisms stand adjacent rather than in a safe expression leading to resolution a space is created and a listening experience emerges where if the gambit is accepted a novel audio experience can exist, bereft of conventional musical cues. Making it new… 

Some explanatory sentences from the Bandcamp site:

‘ Literally taking off where the acclaimed Precious Waste in our Wake LP finished off, London based outfit Triple Negative return with another exemplary amplified jigsaw puzzle. The playback of this reality is garnished with humour, bedlam, beauty and a robust fear of the predictable. As payback for your acknowledgment our international line-up deliver a disparate mix of genres and histographies rendered into a devious dish of rhythm, song, balladry and nerve. 

This is Not This Heat. A.Kostis/Kostas Bezos’ ‘Stin Ypoga’ (1930) is the template for Bad emotional investments whilst the haunting Fine Cargo Lacquer takes flight from the morbidly on point novel The Death Ship by B. Traven. 

God Bless the Death Drive could be construed as a compass to navigate the wayward wonder we inhabit or it can just be enjoyed. This second full length steers into scathed realms of everyday junk and poignant punk, all pressed down on the lowest quality ethylene and chlorine. 

Triple Negative return with another stamped digest of hope as joke, noise and song, rollicking rhythm and seasick soul. 

Edition of 500 copies in high gloss sleeve with printed comic book inner sleeve.

‘…rollicking rhythm and seasick soul.’ Of these we dig…

And this is the set from the Tusk Festival. 

Conclusions. None really. Except to demonstrate the richness and depth of the contemporary field. Two bands snatched at random, one with a large weight of history flowing freely back and forwards, with the techniques and heart to handle it fluidly, the other: despite the Bandcamp tags, ‘rock,’ ‘rebetika’ etc, come back in five years if the desire is that strong to ‘place’ them critically. Enjoy. I certainly did. Often one reads that one ‘should’ listen to a piece of music, one ‘ought’ to, one ‘needs’ this etc. Words that flag imperatives I tend to resist. Recommendations will maybe or not be examined. As in all things. Whether anyone needs these musics referenced above? Who knows? Give them a listen if you want. Or not… 

Personnel: The Natural Information Society

                  Joshua Abrams-Guimbri

                  Lisa Alvarado-Harmonium and effects

                  Mikel Patrick Avery-Drums

                  Evan Parker-Soprano Saxophone

                  Jason Stein-Bass Clarinet

                 Triple Negative

                 Anja Buchele 

                 Dennis Debitsev

                 Matthew Hyland

Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society live playing ‘declension’ (without Evan Parker). here...

Evan Parker with Alexander Hawkins here… interesting to compare his playing with an intensely chromatic partner…

Some rembetika…for historical context. Here … 

Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton:      Didn’t He Ramble here…

And his New Orleans Jazzmen      Sidney De Paris tpt; Claude Jones tbn; Sidney Bechet ss

                                                       Happy Caudwell ts; Ferdinand Morton p; Lawrence Lucie gtr;

                                                       Wellman Braud b; Zutty Singleton dr.

 

New music... Figure Of Outward: Blue Machine on Bandcamp here

 ... with one bound I was free... and back on the blog. A few years have passed, then the damned virus, the asinine lockdowns, the possibility of emerging back into the world. Some more grey hair, wear and tear. Sense of humour more or less intact. But still here, having been busy the last few months on finishing and editing my novel ‘The Avatars of Paradise,’ moving from my Lulu platform to trying out Amazon. Some new music under my Figure of Outward moniker due any day. As to what direction the blog will go in? I started out with no real plan, just a desire to write in what was then a new medium. This mutated into a lot of music reviews and putting up mp3 tracks for download with attempts at commentaries. An eclectic mix, deliberately. My musical tastes have hopefully stayed in tune with the times, broadened and deepened perhaps when I started buying vinyl again with the intention of never buying anything I previously possessed but exploring backwards across the territories. Now I have a lot of vinyl alongside all the other media, shunning genre labels as much as possible. (There are some areas I don’t explore but I enjoy discovering stuff I never really listened to previously). Lockdowns have kept me confined to the immediate area of home and God’s Little Acre so no art galleries, gigs and travel. What comes next then will remain to be seen... a toe back in the water, where will the ripples go this time?

Review: Alexander Hawkins/Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Studio, Derby, Sunday 16th November, 2014...

Fire music on a grey day...

The Studio is a small venue, part of The Derby Theatre, which the audience amusingly approach in a straggly line led by an usher, out the foyer and round the back via a carpark.  A Ballardian vista before entering - attending a gig there has a certain surreal charm... But the space is intimate, with good acoustics, perfect for an improvising duo whose collective sonic range will cover a large area. The players:  Louis Moholo-Moholo, a very spry, lithe 74 year old master drummer, well known as the keeper of the Blue Notes flame, sadly lone survivor of that seminal band.  In tandem with Alexander Hawkins, a rising star, improviser, composer, organist and pianist, here playing the latter.  Delivering two sets that delighted the audience who witnessed some mighty music this drab November Sunday afternoon.  Moholo-Moholo can whack it out when the spirit moves, in mighty reverberations from deep kick to high ride/crash, an awesome sight with right hand held high for several seconds before smashing his stick onto the surface of choice.  Hawkins has an impressive technical range that includes a tough two handed style so when they lock together in loud sequences the individual particles in the soundstream don't get blurred mushily but ring clean. Similarly, the almost microscopic details in the quieter passages have a wonderful clarity, faint trickles of high register notes, internal piano plucks and barely audible faintly struck/scrape finessing of cymbal and drum surface.  Benefitting the drummer especially, when he moves to delicate, filigree stick work that would be inaudible even in a club, perhaps, unless you were perched next to his kit...
     Louis M-M is, of course, a longtime, well-known musician with an illustrious pedigree, both in the UK and internationally.  What impresses here is his youthful energy and questing imagination, someone who still relishes the challenge of naked improvisation, no falling back on past glories.  His younger cohort, Alexander Hawkins, displays a similar joy to his playing, knows his traditions well but is not bound by them - he has developed a contemporary technique that accommodates the history and folds it into the ongoing moment without jarring transitions that can veer into pastiche in the wrong hands.  This is a major accomplishment for this listener, an organic movement of the music that consolidates what has gone before without being shackled to old and/or new orthodoxies.  His music contains plenty of dissonant fire but is intriguingly buttressed by a love of melody, rhapsodic lyricism laced with jagged stabs, delivered in long waves that ebb and flow within the ample spaces that his technique and conception provide.  Hawkins has achieved a confident maturity within a few years and with a drummer such as his venerable companion to free up the lines so that they can breathe easily, this means the performance can move between abstraction, dense chromaticism, sudden longer notestreams that spring out and hymn-like slow rocking evocations of South African tunes that reflect back on Louis Moholo-Moholo's musical heritage, with occasional humorous vocal interjections to mix it up - such as Hawkins wordlessly singing a phrase echoed by the drummer in one sequence.  Plus what might called the 'Yes Baby/No Baby' interlude.  (You had to be there... see below).  And a couple of bits of Monk chucked in, why not?  
     Music expands, contracts, changes to fit the ground of its performance, I suppose.  In concerts, finer details can get lost but are compensated for by broader gestures.  For me, improvisation is usually best heard up close and literally personal, where the audience are grouped together in a dynamic relationship with performers, their energies and attentions hopefully contributing in some small part to the creation unfolding and the Studio provided the perfect environment for another inspiring afternoon.  My second visit (first one a few weeks back to witness another cross-generational meet-up with Evan Parker and Seymour Wright blowing some mighty saxophones solo and duo).  A big shout out to the compere, Corey Mwamba, whom I sat behind and whose enjoyment of the music was obvious and Derby Jazz for organising.  More, please...

   Here's a vid of the duo from The Sage, Gateshead... Catch the No Baby/Yes Baby routine as referred to above about 13.30 minutes in...

Corey Mwamba compering...

Slight return...

Been a year or so... But feeling the urge to launch out onto the owld blog again.  Review of Alexander Hawkins and Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Studio, Derby, on its way...

Review: Keith Tippett at the Cafe Oto, April 30th, 2013...

Filling up pretty quickly, there was an expectant buzz in the room – whatever the reason(s), Keith Tippett rarely plays in town so this was a special occasion. For myself, I'd made the haul from God's Little Acre to City Road Travelodge (grab the bus over the road to Dalston and back at last knockings, an easy move) and was looking forward to seeing one of my alltime favourite musicians up close in a sympatico joint like the Cafe Oto.  Especially one equipped with a good piano. (My favourite club in the UK, anyway, puts on the stuff I like, wish I could get there more often).

Tippett, 66 years old and looking in good nick, a stocky man with a fine head of hair and still flaunting mutton-chop sidewhiskers that give him the air of a country squire, took his seat at the piano. Commenced with short bass runs, probing opening gambits, the piano lid raised and illuminated to mirror the interior, the objects he uses to augment/distort the acoustics clearly seen, bouncing and vibrating on/off the strings, offering a fascinating visual counterpoint to the music for those with a good sight line. A couple of high treble splashes for accent, some scampers through the middle, a wodge of thickly voiced chords, muffled as if emerging from a dense fog. Already, a wide variety of colours being laid out.

The performance unfolds... using various objects to damp and mess with the strings, he sets up repeating figures that slowly evolve, informed by strong rhythms, one moment a flickering pattern high up, like a stick rattled across a bicycle wheel, then a roaring low register storm. The pounding bass he is famous for is oddly reminiscent of Erroll Garner's left hand take on strumming guitar chording, cranked up high, savage treatments that fire off long resonating waves of overtones to overwhelm the air under the low ceiling. At one point this became a mournful lament that seemed to dip into 'Danny Boy' but maybe I misheard – although there is a waggish side to Mr Tippett. Who gave one unbroken piece in the first half (as he did in the second) that unfolded and spun out into many areas of sonics and genres, quietly coming to rest – to rapturous applause. The pianist looked pleasantly surprised at this affectionate response, a man with no side to him, as the old saying goes.

Second half started out with rattles and clunks, a toy being flicked across the open strings to give odd, dry little notes. Speculations at the high end of the joanna. Four square march rhythms, a thump thump to flick syncopations across, melodies refracted through the mechanical interference to give strange timbres, hints of East-European (or further East) folk melodies almost, Balkans to Gamelan and back. A couple of sudden left turns with sharp funky soul jazz phrases that would not have been out of place in a Bobby Timmons solo circa 1960. Longer cascades of notes that refer back to the complex linearities of the modern jazz traditions but keep on going through the remapped territory to spaces beyond. Tippett has evolved a seamless integration of classic and extended techniques, conventional keyboard yoked to internal disruptions. Added to the inclusive nature of his musical vision, this helps to create a new opened field where ghosts of boogie woogie in some of those loping bass figures tread towards complex note clusters and shifting timbres, spinning off into simple triadic movements, evolving and folding into denser complications. The scrapings, pluckings and distortions offering a ground on which he can pivot at will, where melodic/harmonic/rhythmic developments, however abrupt in their sudden occurrence, can occur without too clunky a transition, offering a dynamic, flexible but subtle binding of the whole. He creates an improvisational area where historical genre time is collapsed into the now, each discrete unit resolving quickly into that wider, deeper flow where foreground is background and the reverse and the distinctions probably irrelevant anyway.
Towards the end he produced a music box, tinkling out what sounded like 'The Godfather' theme - something he used on his Purcell Room concert a couple of years back, a fragile, almost plaintive counterpoint to the slowly ebbing close.  And funny, too...

Over the years, he has built up his techniques to offer a staggering diversity of sounds and surprises (to riff obliquely off Whitney Balliett ). He has always been musically ambitious and open-eared: on the train back I wrote and underlined, somewhat cryptically, 'Generosity' and that may well have been the word to describe the night. The audience, generous in their enthusiasm for a unique talent gave up a long and warm burst of applause, the artist having displayed his generosity of imagination and technique for that audience to savour. A superb gig. Hopefully he will return soon... (And a request to the Oto: what about Mike Westbrook, another great musician, spotted rarely these days?).

Here's a very brief vid of him in solo action a few years ago...  And a couple of reviews, here and here, Financial Times and London Jazz News, respectively.

Keith takes a bow through the murk of a crap photo from my phone...

Been a while...

They say that blogs have a natural lifespan... certainly I have neglected mine, due to being involved with other stuff, excuses, excuses.  But reluctant to nix it yet - So:

I was in London a few days ago for Keith Tippett's gig at the Cafe Oto and have more or less finished a review.  Based on the Wordsworthian definition of poetry, except at a lower aesthetic level (!) - 'emotion recollected in tranquility' - as took no notes and just scribbled down some reactions/observations the following day on the reasonably tranquil train back to God's Little Acre.  Tippett is one of my favourite musicians of all down the years so it was a great joy to see him up close - the last time I was in such proximity being a gig in Nottingham years ago, the gig at the Purcell Rooms with his wife Julie a more formal concert affair.  And was mind-sizzlingly brilliant, it has to be said.  But the combo of the Oto - my favourite venue - and their new grand piano offered a night of Tippettian solo splendour.  More later...

'Buskers - from the streets to the Royal Albert Hall 1968-9' - out at last!

It's been a slog, for a variety of reasons, but finally it's here.  Happy to announce that Pat Keene's photobook 'Buskers - from the streets to the Royal Albert Hall 1968-9' has been published.  An A4 glossy remix of the black and white photos Pat took years ago of old and young buskers on the streets of London's West End and at Don Partridge's Albert Hall Buskers' Concert in early 1969.  New material included: colour photos from the Albert Hall gig that Pat only found recently!  A couple of which I will preview soon...
More info: here...

Too long...

I could offer excuses... but it has been too long since I blogged here... busy with a book/music/ and ping-ponging off illness/fatigue (there go the excuses).  But it's 2013, I have a new music label to promote very soon, plus a book - the sequel, as it were to 'Don Partridge And Company,' 'Buskers' - a glossy photobook featuring Pat Keene's material from the aforesaid tome plus some added colour photos that he only found recently (!) - and I have to decide what to do with this blog.  I think I'll keep it rolling for a while.
Happy New Year... Back very soon...

John Ware R.I.P.

You get older and by the nature of the game, people fall around you, go before. It doesn't mitigate the shock and the loss, of course. Given my rackety health (no doubt mainly a consequence of: 'Drinking and gambling, night-sporting and rambling,' to quote the words of one of my favourite songs, 'The Banks of the Bann,'), it is an ongoing source of amazement that I have out-lived so many friends, bloodbrothers and sisters. But it still hits hard when another close one goes, very close, almost the same age and as far as I knew a damn site fitter than this old boy. But we are taken... this is the nature of things and we deal with it according to our various beliefs. I was in Liverpool a few days ago, having booked a very cheap hotel deal way back when I saw that the Tate were putting on their triple wham: 'Turner, Monet and Twombly.'  Late paintings by these three, the latter of whom is a big favourite so I had decided to go up north for a gander. Liverpool is a place I don't know very well but had good times in on a previous trek to see the mighty fire jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle a couple of years back. The exhibition was very good and I could see how they yoked it all together to grab late works by these three painters into the frame, as it were. But another story. 

Later, I was in a pub checking my emails and flicked onto Facebook, saw some odd posts about my old friend John, caught a message from his eldest son to put up my phone number. Rang my daughter for her to check what I suspected. Which was that he had died the day before. Later I spoke to his youngest son and then his wife who was obviously distraught. The rest is private stuff. But it was a fucking shock.

John Ware and I go back, as they say. I met him over forty years ago, early 70s, when I was ensconced busking in London and he arrived in town.  We met and got talking - he was stuck for a kip so Barbara and I put him up. Oddly, we hit it off straight away, as it has to be said that in those days John could rile people, because of his speed of thought, his intensity and his manner. Interesting people have grit which can rub the wrong way for the unwary (no pun intended). We started playing together and at this distance of years, after all the many musicians I have worked with, I can still say that there was something very special between us. I loved playing with him, really enjoyed his music and we managed to pull together an act very quickly. By that time, the London busking scene was getting overcrowded and many of us had already developed other circuits. So we played in the declining years of that phase – which I would measure from Don Partridge's Busker's Concert in 1969 as the high watermark – everything started to fall off after that. A few months after the Albert Hall gig, for example, I was travelling around Europe, in 1970 I went to Dublin for the first time and subsequently visited it frequently, at some point taking John over with me, a year or so after we met. He moved there eventually and even though he travelled extensively on the continent as all buskers did, Dublin became his base. Mine too for a few years but when I moved on at the end of the 70s John was happy to stay, especially as he had met his wife to be by then. They stayed together through all the vicissitudes and craziness that will come down on relationships with musicians and buskers especially. The road can be merciless and John had his demons, as did many of us. His courage in facing them down a long time ago now and choosing a life with a family - three boys, now men, a strong and beautiful wife - over cheap and easy thrills, has always impressed not just me but all who had the fortune to know him.

In later years, after finely honing his musical craft, he took a sudden turn and started painting. This was a man with talent and an urge for expression that now came out in exquisite and unusual watercolours. Some people have a special gift. He was one of them, whether playing and writing music (he was an underrated songwriter), or exploring this latest passion, art. He even founded his own gallery to flog his work – ever a busker!

The last time I saw him was at our mutual friend Don Partridge's funeral a couple of years back. I had been planning on visits over to Dublin to see him and Anne but never made it due to illness and circumstance. That's the way of it. I am still coming to terms with the fact that this brilliant, annoying, sparky and sparkling man is not around on this plane of existence anymore. He was always vibrant, alive. Now he has moved on.

And in writing this: I cannot alleviate any of the grief his family will be feeling. But I can bear witness to someone whom I knew very well and a friendship that lasted from the first day we met and is still strong in my heart. A small remembrance is the least I can offer up... My daughter Amelia and I offer our condolences to Annie and the boys, to all the family.

New Design etc...

Started playing around with the template and knackered all the links so these may take a day or so to re-up...

Rising...

Blimey - this blog has really been neglected. Part of the problem being that I have been buried working on a new book plus not been going out much hence nothing to review. This might be rectified tomorrow when I will be in London. Hoping to catch the evening sesh of the annual Freedom of the Festival eisteddfod at Cecil Sharp House if I can get across town in time... more later... maybe...

Review: Pete Morton (with Gren Bartley support), Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough, Friday, February 3d, 2012...

Minus five here when I got back... but warmed by the musics that I almost avoided through inertia and the onset of a cold. And a surprisingly good turnout for the TappedButSettling gig at the Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough (God's Little Acre), given the weather. But PeteMorton will usually pull a crowd and with support from Gren Bartley it was always going to be never less than a good night. I knew I would have regretted it if I had stayed at home – because both these musicians are always moving relentlessly forwards and it would be a shame to miss bearing witness to their latest endeavours. Gren started the gig with mainly new material, abetted at the end by his friend on harmonies. Reining back slightly on his complex guitar playing and leaning more on the songs gave a different balance to a fascinating set. Then Pete came out of the blocks at terrible speed – his new material, jamming massive clusters of words into his lines like a rap artist, then whipping round to bring in a chorus on the old warhorse 'To be a farmer's boy,' his tirade against the falseness of so much contemporary life cutting a furrow back to simpler days, linking family and wider community. Blew me away, it has to be said. I don't entirely subscribe to his ideas but he certainly makes me think and Pete gets away with it because he isn't some ideologue, rather a deeply thoughtful musician with a line back to the English radical/Romantic tradition that is buttressed with much humour. His tack over the last couple of years seems to be word-crammed songs plus his new variants on the talking blues that roll out in fast streams (the rap adoption) then land suddenly on an apposite 'folk' chorus to provide a link backwards and also to bring in the audience, wrap them in the surge of his muse. A lot of resonations here – the cheekiest being that dreadful old McColl song 'Manchester Rambler' in the only version I've ever heard that I could take seriously. (My opinion – so, shoot me... ).You have to admire the chutzpah... saying 'Back at ya!' to the 'Revival/Tradition!'

Second half gave an opportunity for requests – 'Seven Billion Eccentrics,' 'Shepherd's Song,' 'Battle of Trafalgar,' 'Further,' and of course 'Another Train.' All of them celebrate people in the raw – one of the lines from 'Battle of Trafalgar,' written about a lock-in at a Leicester pub mentions the punters: 'You couldn't clone people like this in a million years,' and that is the common humanity in the best sense that he stands up for. Also rooted deep in an almost mystical 'England,' yet Pete is far from being a petty nationalist. 'Shepherd's Song,' his homage to John Clare reaches to a point where rural England was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and the coming modern age, eyed with trepidation by the poet who achieved brief fame in London before his collapse into madness, but who was also a musician skilled in the folk musics of his time. This double link with musical and literary traditions goes further with his recent forays as a stand up artist in the character of 'Geoff Chaucer' and Pete skilfully plays off the literary heritage with the folk music tradition that he comes out of at a diagonal, (via the initial energies of punk rock and street busking) and helps to transform and continue. The sharp vignettes of people in crowded day to day settings yet each unique goes back to the bustle and vibrancy of Chaucer's time and work. But far from any maddening academic stiflings and ignobled strifes, Pete is a man drunk on words and their permutations and resonances, jammed into the grittiness and possibilities of NOW. He just gets better... 

Grab a taste here...

All hail to Mr Marmion via TappedButSettling for setting up the gig... More, please...

Into the new year... Pete Morton/Gren Bartley gig...

It's been a while... but I have been buried away working on a new project in between the usual annoying illness/fatigue.  I have not been to any gigs recently either - but that changes on Friday incoming - 3d February - when I'll be down at the Swan in the Rushes, in God's Little Acre, for a gig headlined by one of my favourite musicians/writers etc.  Pete Morton.  Who will be supported by Gren Bartley, in what should prove to be a fascinating mix of acoustic styles.  Couple of vids on the TappedButSettling site to give a flavour of both...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Sunday, 13th February, 2011

Woke up after not much sleep with an appalling hangover but realised that staggering into the hotel breakfast was going to be a good idea... Somewhat refreshed - we talk in relative terms - I scanned the program for the day – and went back to bed. But come 1 pm I was down at the Sallis Benney, determined to bear witness to as much as my knackered-up body could stand. Cat Hawed were first off the blocks – three musicians from Helhesten and Towering Breaker – and played a stunning set, I thought. Starting in chamber music mode, accentuated by the use of clarinet, perhaps, although it was played on the extremes of register, poised and balanced as they tested the day, building to a roar as the form spread to encompass wilder sounds, loosely corralled, as it were, by intelligence. Bad Orb (Sarah Albury's solo vehicle) – standing stage left to the side of the projections on screen at the ubiquitous rummage sale table holding her electronics, voicing: ur ur ur repeated/recorded into the mike (Ur-Sounds?) to be bounced back and manipulated as source material, backdrop to a film, triangular motif and bird image recurring – superb in the marriage of sight and sound here. My day was off to a good start (no sight of Hugh Metcalfe-ian strategies so far). Martin Klapper's take on home movies was fascinating, old footage transformed by his bespoke techniques, dragged down slightly by the music which was a trifle cartoony, but the general flow pulled it along beyond annoyance. Other films that grabbed me: Stuart Pound's 'Breath Dance,' a cool hokey cokey in which the film stops, jumps back, moves on to create a stylised dance of pedestrians in Trafalgar Square. 'I'll raise you like a mother,' by Violaine Bergoin was a disturbing meditation on the trial and execution of the Ceasescu's, live horrific soundtrack placed over images of family life. With Gaddafi's recent televised demise fresh in the mind, it's worth quoting Violaine's remarks about her film:

'This piece is a reconstitution of a precise moment of my life, as a 8 year old, during an everyday family dinner and the broadcasting of the Ceauescu couple being trialled and executed. When Elena Ceauescu cried for her life, screaming to the guards taking her "I'll raise you all like a mother", which was then dubbed in French, my heart stopped and these words have been haunting me ever since and has been bringing impressions of déjà- vu until now. Today it has become a banality to watch upheavals, wars, famines, executions, genocides at 8 o'clock news within a familial structure. Yet the conflicts in this world may reflect our disabilities to communicate which results in decaying relationships. Maybe wars start within families first and expand to massive proportions.'

Back down to the Old Market for the last leg of the festival. Just in time to catch Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel, great wild guitar and howled vocals, processed and chopped about. Abruptly moving into a hard thumping beat as they rocked out – one that got some of the audience idiot dancing. I missed the beginning of Maja Jantar's set. A slight, slim figure on the side stage who displayed a wide range of vocal techniques – singing in tongues avant scat which segued at one point into a cool version of 'Cry me a river.' And back again. Noticeable for being able to hold a large crowd with nothing but voice . Vom Grill was loud, vocal contortions put through the electronic shredder, turning his vocals inside out. (YouTube vid here of a performance in Paris a couple of years back).

Then on to Vinyl Terror and Horror, Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen's duo who upturn turntablism as they use records as source material for their manipulations. Breaking open the straight box of DJing to reveal many other worlds inside, which were then explored intensively, their collective intelligence produced some of the best music of the weekend for this old boy. Cracks, crashes, pops, scratches, sudden bursts of trombones, choirs, voices wrenched out of the grooves into new configurations. Superb!

Unfortunately for me, the last act of the weekend. Dog Lady. Mike Collino is from Detroit and I fancifully thought I could hear the ghosts of old machines from the auto assembly plants in the subterranean chunks of sound grinding against each other. Across which he lashes some fragments of violin to be tossed and processed through his electronics rig.  Great set - after which reluctantly I had to go...

Final thoughts: a fantastic weekend. Large emphasis this year on sound poetry, hardly any jazz, lots of interesting films and multi-media, Colour out of Space back and firing on all cylinders. The new main venue at the Old Market looks like a winner, the crowds who turned up throughout must surely signal a success. Thanks to all who made it happen. And hopefully it will be on again next year

Another viewpoint here...
complete with ten minute snapshot overview.
 

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Saturday, 12th November, 2011

Saturday: strolled somewhat painfully from the hotel to the Sallis Benney (where the whole festival used to be held) for the afternoon sesh of film and sonics. Too much walking over the previous couple of days had left me somewhat hors de combat. I didn't stay for the whole event but caught Blue Yodel (Fiona Kennedy's solo gig) which cleansed my synapses suitably. Slew of good films: one that impressed me by its unsettling weirdness was 'Trypps#6 Malobil' by American Ben Russell. Catch a glimpse here...http://vimeo.com/6975261 A group of presumably white people in strange costumes come out of a building in a tropical village, soundtracked by drumming, walk through the assembled locals as off-camera sharp reports like gunfire occur sporadically. Some simulated sex. Some collision of cultures going on. If the A Band ever go on tour to South America, it could be like this. Ho ho. Apparently shot in the Maroon village of Malobe in Suriname. One of those films that lodge in your brain and will rerun over and over. Disturbing in a way it is difficult to describe.

Jeff Keen's movie was a psychedelic blast, fast moving streams of collage/images. But one bummer: never having seen Hugh Metcalfe live, I will never make the mistake of doing so in the future. The movie of his trip to an Austrian festival was embarrassing, to say the least. He used to team up with the late Bob Cobbing but his wanky repeating of phrases along the lines of: 'I fucking don't give a shit/Shit I fucking don't give/Give I fucking don't a shit' etc ad nauseam came across as some bad attempt at sound poetry/was just plain stupid. The barriers were broken a long way back, old cock. He looked like a middle-aged geography teacher trying to get down with the kidz.  How trangressive it all was. Called his ad hoc group: 'Turd Class.' Says it all, really. Maybe he should start a 'Feral Choir' (one of my other pet hates). Or as Bruce Sterling once said: 'If you want a sustained, independent and transgressive community that can’t be co-opted by society at large, you need to get out of the boho art scene, and right into organized crime.'

On a weekend bursting with creativities of all kinds, this was pathetic. But thanks for the warning...

Evening and back at the Old Market. Festivals are always over-loaded – it's difficult to get to every act, even when back to back in one place. Economies of thirst, urination etc, plus in my case, juggling with fatigue. So the night became truncated – more by accident in the end, it has to be said, when I ended up watching the boxing on Sky down the Conqueror, then became engrossed in conversations/new meetings with interesting people. But I caught Martin Klapper and Martin Jezek's set: video backdrop with electronics which were loud and crunchy but always moving forward, falling almost into conventional rhythms at times which kept them on track. Again, the performance filled the time with a logic that manifested through its form. Good stuff – and a Saturday feel now, hall crowded and buzzing early. This was going to be a sweaty, uncomfortable night... yet even the mob would fall silent when impressed, which is the hallmark of this festival. Where I was standing by the merch stalls, I thought I had taken a good vantage point for PeterFengler's segment, but more and more people pressed in – yet settled down quickly enough to enjoy the 'show.' Entitled 'Baroque/Non Baroque, I think. Which was as if Samuel Beckett had scripted a surreal cabaret for Tommy Cooper. Completely deadpan, based on repetitions of actions, stances and speech that seemed to inject obscure meanings into banal gestures, Fengler held this audience, slowly overcoming puzzlement and random chatter. And he was very funny. Suddenly jumping onto a low table, bending forward on hands and knees, lifting a leg and holding the pose. Bouncing a ball on the stage – my OCD took over and I found myself counting the number of repetitive acts until I stopped myself – tapping bits of wood. Scrunching a plastic cup while wrenching his head around in both hands to simulate colliding vertabrae. Again – difficult to describe why this was entertaining. He stretched patience to breaking point, then you realised that he was skilfully and dryly hilarious.

YouTube to the rescue again gives a flavour of the man...

The next section I caught was PC Fencott (aided by Robin Fencott), veteran of sound/word experimentation for many years, another link to the late Bob Cobbing, one of the dominant spirits in the air this weekend, it seemed.

Playing with some computer graphics that manipulated words, he presented 'Paradiddle Rox,' his voice processed into loops and echoes, creating a wild choir from his solo readings. But his best piece for me was a poem about the experience of sea-diving off the coast somewhere oop north. Foregrounding literally the poetics of breath, he simulated the gulps of air in a diver's mouthpiece in between the lines that described the experience of submergence and movement under water. Catching the paradox: freedom and the claustrophobia of being trapped in the body's need for oxygen, the element of danger in navigating under the sea. He held the audience rapt – then brought them in to join in on the last piece which involved singing out lines that echoed across the hall in overlapping waves. Like folk music almost, but more interesting... How this generates its own order is ultimately fascinating and just using the most basic flexible units available – human voices. Superb.

Catch some of his Colour out of Space performance here http://www.youtube.com/user/CliveFencott

I moved forward and found a space by a door.  The crowd was filling the hall now, with more and more pressing in.  Leather jacket off as the heat was rising from the proximity of so many - upon which someone managed to spill beer.  An accident, a jogged arm.  I realised as more people were struggling to get in that this venue must be approaching some danger limit for occupancy. We were waiting for Rainonbashi and Dylan Nyoukis: someone in a blindfold slipped by and crouched briefly as disembodied noises and voices came through the sound system. Setting an eery atmosphere... The figure disappeared into the crowd, tracked by flashes that came from his seemingly randomly taking of digital photographs. An experiment in unease? I decided to go and left for the Conqueror and the boxing. A fascinating and potentially disturbing experience but I don't like crowds when they are jammed so close and figured with some incipient paranoia that it would just take one psychedelic voyager in the crush to flip into bad vibesville and a stampede could have been on.

Not so much seen and heard, then, but most of it satisfyingly hitting the right spots.

For now - before the other reviews go up - collage from Colour out of Space Festival, 2011

Lots of distractions this week but the remaining two reviews will go up by the weekend (honest). But just stumbled over this via Anthony Donovan out of Dylan Nyoukis.  A reminder not so much of all the great stuff I caught but all the good shit I missed...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Friday night, 11th November, 2011...

I got down to this new main venue for the first evening of 'Colour out of Space,' The Old Market, picked up my ticket and wristband, checked the schedules, had a drink in the bar and realised that: a) I don't really like Peroni and b) I would probably spend more time between acts in the Conqueror just round the corner, a great old-school boozer with a friendly welcome, which I had scoped out on psychogeographic reconnaissance the previous evening.  (Butcombe bitter, yum. Double Jack D – cheap. More yum).

The venue itself, a converted market hall, is high-ceilinged, a larg-ish space with a few chairs scattered which geriatrics/the knackered like myself would eagerly pounce on over the next few days. A bit like that kid's game, except you grab a seat when the music starts... The running order looked as tight as ever with quick turnarounds – everything was going to happen in the one space but rotating from the main stage to a small stage situated near the back, to the side, plus various performances that would take place out in the open, as it were. Gave a bazaar-like quality to the listening experience, wandering round from each set. Tonight this would not be too much of a problem – good crowd but not too oppressive.

First up: the Eisteddfod kicked off with Tobias Kirsten and John Lunds, a sax/drum duo from Copenhagen. Short repeated phrases on baritone sax, hammered out in tandem with the crashing drums. Free jazz meets Steve Reich, if that makes sense – improvised but hurled into repeating patterns that subtly shift, driven along by relentless drums. Lunds switches saxes, moving up to tenor, the lines get longer, freer. An exhilarating start...

Next, Infinite Gaah, Tom Roberts, a Northampton denizen transplanted to Brighton. I missed most of this short segment and came in to see the small side stage surrounded. Didn't have much idea what was going on – seemed like a good time as the crowd were enjoying it. And there was a lot of fun over the three days – Colour out of Space has always provides a large variety of musics but is never too po-faced, unlike, say, Freedom of the City, which has become somewhat, shall we say, ponderous. The young crowd help – this is not a congregation of old gits like myself, sat around scratching their beards in solemn witness, thank fuck. (Although I wasn't the oldest here).

Anthony Donovan and Clive Graham followed, on the main stage. I managed to get a good spot down front, stage left – not that position mattered much in this hall as the sound was superb throughout.  Duo  electronics, sat at the table looking quite serious, they produced an orchestral, busy movement that did not falter. Which is the test of all these improvising artists/bands – to fill the time without noodling and to hold the audience. I know Anthony's work from other areas but this was very impressive. They fitted together well, not getting in each other's way.

Back to the bear pit – getting crowded now. I hovered on the edge of the crowd, got a few glimpses of Aki Onda in action, who has a wonderful sense of the theatric/visual to frame his music. Which comes from manipulating cassette tapes. With minimal resources he produced amazing sounds, warm and organic, etched with harsher sounds further in. Starting in pastoral mode, a cuckoo calling, a bell sounding, tapes looped and crossed. Very calm, meditative, the ritualistic feeling extended when he proceeded to walk round the edge of the crowd, some sitting, some standing, all in rapt attention, a small amplifier with Walkman attached, gently swinging like a censer, wafting sound. Ok, fanciful – but there seemed a spiritual aspect somewhere. Bringing in drones now and sharper fragments of song, things shifted into an edgier area. Nearing the end, he suddenly grabbed hold of a lightbulb which hung down from the ceiling on a wire and swung it in a long looping arc just over the heads of the assembled, some ducking instinctively as it described its swirling movements. Wonder what Elf and Safety would have said. The light spun round giving an eery finish to a superb performance. In a weekend when it was difficult to pick favourites – this came near.

Couple of short observations:

Wreck and Drool and Smack Music 7 – three piece ensemble. In my notebook I scrawled 'Brilliant! A BAND!' Vocalised sounds sprung across electronic movements, the whole being loose in its expansive possibilities and yet tight because of the artists' concentrations.

Lichen starts walking round playing his sax, moving over to electronics and loops that produce LOUD throbbing music. Punchy.

The last act I caught ( I didn't stay right to the end) was a brilliant flourish: Crank Sturgeon and 

id m theftable. A duo who truly tests one's abilities to describe them. Vaudeville on acid? was one scrawled note. They were extremely funny while producing a continuous barrage of intelligent sound, showcased by their intensely wacky visual éclat and their ability to engage the audience – such as crazed, bemused chants repeated over and over by id, echoed back by the crowd in wild call and response mode as Crank used thick cellotape with a contact mike attached to produce a battery of sounds as he ran backwards and forwards across the stage, securing the tape to either side, producing several rows, on which he hung himself at one point, arms akimbo in an almost parody of the Crucifixion. Jesus on a washing line... Later, producing a number of cut-out phalluses which were attached – cocks pegged out in a row. Some smutty interplay with these of course. Bizarre – and hilarious.

Loud, raucous, rude. Loved it. Some weird area where performance art crashes into standup comedy, noise and home made electronics (Crank had a merch stall throughout and was flogging his own custom built contact mikes. Nearly bought one but I've a drawer full already and a boy's gotta economise.  But check out his web page - they look really good).  Crank is a whispy bearded thin prankster, id, big, burly full-bearded with an air of outraged bewilderment at the world.  The chemistry between them is superb.  Of course, I share religious beliefs with Crank – also being an ordained minister. (Available for weddings etc). A side thought: American acts, in the main, always seem to make an effort to engage. A big difference usually between them and the Europeans...

I was tired, run out of steam, left for a brief one in the Conqueror and walked back down the sea-front, which left me even more tired when I got to the hotel! Further than I had figured... 

But a great opening night.