Always four corners…

Well.

For once, I do have something of an excuse reason for another lengthy absence, 

I’m currently fulfilling a long-held dream of staying in a foreign city for an extended period. I’m currently in Madrid, living life like the Spanish people, doing what the Spanish people do, so to speak… I’ve been here nearly a month and will stay another month.

To be honest, it’s weird, stranger than I imagined. I’m having fun, don’t get me wrong, seeing loads of beautiful stuff (impossible not to in an elegant city like Madrid) and getting lots of practice with my Spanish (half time report: still pretty poor). But still it’s weird and at times tricky to get used to.

Obviously, there’s been some record shopping – Madrid is a city where they still have record shops, loads of them – and I’ve been to a couple of gigs.

Fruko

The first gig I went to was a band called Jenny and the Mexicats who looked good on YouTube and the venue was pretty close to where we are. It was … OK. At their best they sounded quite like Calexico without the vast, expansive vision but never quite got hold of the audience. In fact, the audience will be my abiding memory of the night.

Now, I’ve been around Spanish and Latin people enough to know that they do like to talk, and quite loudly. But my previous gig experience, up in the VIP area for Weyes Blood had not prepared me for quite how much and quite how loudly they will talk through a gig. Right through it. Beginning to end. To be fair the ratio of excited young things to curmudgeonly old gits was quite a bit higher than normal, but it was still something of an education.

Not to worry, my second outing was likely to be a different affair with the ratio a little more in my favour, the main protagonist being genuine living-legend and classic star of Colombian salsa and cumbia, Fruko.

At this point, I’ll pretend I have always been intimately acquainted with a back catalogue that goes back to the seventies and give you a chance to catch up:

All good?

Much as I’d like to live my life on the set of seventies variety show, the actual set up was not quite like this on the night, Fruko’s “Tesos” are, I believe a thing of the past and the current series of performances (plus an album) are the result of a collaboration with a group of classically trained musicians called Classico Latino, led by Colombian pianist Ivan Guevara and British cellist Graham Walker. They have a webpage and a number of records, the last of which is a tribute to and collaboration with Julio Ernesto Estrada Rincón, better known as King of the Salsa, Fruko.

The venue itself, Sala Villanos, was pretty special too, apparently quite an old one with bars down both sides and unusually quite a set of tables and easy chairs in the front of the stage, with space for dancing in the back. The seats were generally taken by an older set of punters for whom Fruko must have been the sound of their roaring years. I sat at the bar.

The man himself rationed his appearances pretty carefully with walk on parts in both halves of the evening. A little fragile he may have looked, swathed in wraparound sunglasses, glittering jacket and a James Brown-style wig, his lively fingers, however, gave a real swing to the evening as soon as he picked up the bass.

Having been pretty quiet for much of the evening, rather sweetly, at a number of points, the noise level increased as the seated folk at the front joined in the songs in spirited fashion – clearly the sound of years were rolling gently back. It was not a little moving. And for once even this flinty-hearted old git put aside performative eye-rolling and passive-aggressive tutting and smiled indulgently.

A lovely evening

There’s no use having second thoughts or thirds…

So… working back on a Simple Things weekend that already seems a very long time ago, (and which included noteworthy sets by Bug Club, Warmduscher and local band Foot Foot, all of which were deserving of a few lines at the very least…), we end up back at the beginning…

Gruff Rhys, Strange Brew

Gruff Rhys is probably the artist I’ve seen most over the years, probably six or seven times one way or another – soggy festivals, dimly lit stages, as part of SFA – but I can honestly say I’ve never been disappointed, on the contrary I do remember being re-won over at Sea Change one year, having felt a bit lukewarm at the prospect of another set (until he ambled onstage, I should say).

On each occasion, I’ve ended up buying the latest offering, some of which have fallen by the wayside over the following years. This time, however, he has a genuinely good set of songs behind him in the shape of Sadness Sets Me Free, an album full of tracks that are both new and familiar at the same time.

The evening opened with a very nice set from yet another young Welsh language band, Pys Melyn, who as Coleser pointed out couldn’t be from anywhere else but the Principality – shaggy, disarming, polite. I enjoyed their set enormously as it jangled along in charmingly haphazard fashion and needed little persuasion to buy their CD and a lovely t-shirt with a Warhol-y cob of sweetcorn across the chest. The singer, Ceri Humphrys was ridiculously pleased that I was buying and patiently explained to me that “pys melyn” means “yellow peas” – sweetcorn. I was ridiculously pleased in turn to hear this little nugget and I felt we both went away satisfied.

There’s a slightly old video of a session they did for S4C that’s well worth a watch:

I doubt if “business-like” is a phrase that has been applied to Gruff Rhys too often, but I definitely detected a more direct approach to the start of the set at least. Maybe it’s the result of having a really strong record to promote but he seemed keen to get on with it – there was less rambling charm than previous times (the “Applaud!!” signs only appeared fairly late in the set) and more of a desire to plough on.

True, there was a lengthy section in the middle of “Negative Vibes” where the drummer (a busy, no nonsense presence behind the kit) brought out a shredder and gleefully disposed of anxiety notes audience members had posted in a box by the merch stall, before the song continued. That aside, a business-like affair.

To be honest it was all pretty well-balanced and provided an excellent evening’s entertainment, particular highlights for me were “I tendered my resignation” (one of those new but old favourites, with its particularly poignant sense of powerlessness and formality) and a boisterous version of “Pang!” with (PP-sanctioned) audience participation. 

There’s a really nice video filmed in Glasgow earlier in the week which captures how the Strange Brew evening went:

All in all it was a pretty much just what the doctor ordered there was even a guest appearance from Stephen “Sweet Baboo” Black towards the end of the set (of course there was!) and it pretty much ticked all of the boxes as another version of my afore-mentioned Happy Place: beer, music, merch and Gruff. 

Silver Lining Lead Balloon

Pang!

I’m a simple man, it’ll keep me going until the next time.

I’m an arrogant fuck…

So in my mind-sketch of how the Simple Things posts were going to pan out, I toyed with the idea of some sort of clever, post-modern conceit of working from the middle outwards, referring backwards and forwards in a way that both puzzled and intrigued the reader.

But bugger that, I’m two weeks late and I can’t be bothered with all that toot, I’m just going to dip in wherever and however I feel, like some feckless ne’er-do-well whose narrative is far from reliable and who will fuck about with your affections as if they have no meaning.

So anyway, the Knives.

The Knives, Sportsmans, Simple Things

Sportsmans is a decent little bar where in festival days you can both watch the Calcutta Cup and walk to the other end of a packed room and see a local band, crammed onto a tiny stage, thrash their way through a (very) loud set. I like the Six Nations (to a point) but faced with the choice, I’ll always be drawn by the hum of a cheap amp and the thump of a bass drum.

I’m not that fussed about England Rugby but even if I was a die-hard Swing Low fan, decked out in full crusader get-up, I’d have quickly conceded that that glorious racket out the back was going to be a whole lot more fun.

Watch this:

Knives are thrusting young six-piece with two vocalists and a desire to make a lot of noise that will not be denied. One of the vocalists, Jay Schottlander, is a big lad with quite a presence, even when neither he nor his saxophone-toting co-vocalist, Maddy Hill, could fit on the tiny stage at Sportsmans. At ground level, mixed in with the punters and a rapidly forming mosh pit, he still managed to stand out from the rest of us – he had proper charisma…

The rest of the band were pretty exciting too, including an bare-chested, orange-afroed bass player called Ben Marshall who looked both menacing and camp at the same time. From the very start, he played his bass behind his head, Hendrix-style, and I was won over straight away. One of the twin guitarists was at first glance just another long-haired grebo until taking vocals for one song (a bored-looking Schottlander sat on the edge of the stage picking at his nails), he also stood out as another big, big personality keen to assert himself. 

They hammered their way through a set that was a crude listen at times but never anything other than exhilarating, exuberant and cheerfully arrogant. At one point, to add to the general mayhem, the fire alarm went off – some metaphors just write themself… I can’t imagine I’ll ever buy a Knives record but I’d happily see them again and again. The official video above is great but doesn’t really do the whole live experience any sort of justice. But fortunately, you can get a taster with this recording of a whole set at Thekla. (If you can’t manage the whole 30 minutes, I’d recommend comparing the official vid with the live performance of “Doppelganger” at about 9:00 mins, preceded by an almost charming Schottlander coaxing a nervous group of punters to come a little nearer to the stage):

(I don’t think they did their version of “Baboushka”, which I regret…)

And then all too quickly it was over, Schottlander thanking a high-spirited crowd and dashing off to continue his shift at work – apparently having knocked out the show in his lunch break.

So much dreadful energy busting out in every direction made me wonder how long such a bunch of waspish, disparate characters can possibly stay together – widening gyre, centre cannot hold and all that. It’d be a terrible shame but all the more reason why you should probably get along soon…

A breeze and an absolute blast.

I felt the waves hitting my face…

A week has passed by – another week of work stuff – marking, going to meetings, writing lesson plans and… well… more … stuff. And it occurs to me that scarcely seven days ago I was stood cheeks glowing, eyes glimmering in my Happiest of Places… beer in hand, merch in pocket, before a small stage, watching a bunch of shambling musicians plugging their instruments, checking levels and asking for more bass in their monitor.

Heady times.

The stage was Strange Brew, the musicians Gruff Rhys and chums, the event a serendipitously placed gig, the evening before Bristol’s Simple Things city-festival. For the second time in recent months, I was the grateful beneficiary of a guest-list pass and I don’t mind admitting I was feeling pretty damn good.

Starting at the beginning is rather passé these days, so I’ll start from the middle and dodge backwards and forwards as fancy takes me. I’ll come back to Gruff, I promise, but I think I’ll jump forward to Saturday tea-time. I’m eagerly stood in front of a stage at… well… Strange Brew, beer in hand etc…

L’Rain, Simple Things

One of the chief pleasures of any sort of festival event (apart from the whole do-what-you-will vibe of escapism and half-arsed irresponsibility) is that of tagging along to see an act that someone else said they’d heard was supposed to be good. No expectations, no Mojo reviews, no nothing really… 

Accordingly, I knew not the slightest thing about L’Rain up to that point, but I see now they’re Brooklyn-based, that there are, I think, three albums out, the last of which was favourably reviewed by Pitchfork, and they’ve just completed a European tour, one of the last legs of which was here in the West Country.

L’Rain is I think the name of the band but also the singer and it was her, exotically bespectacled who introduced herself with a faintly passive/aggressive declaration that the only thing she asked of us is that we should all “truly be here”. If this is North American for “stop fookin’ chatting at the back!”, I’m completely on board, but otherwise, hmmm…

Actually, on reflection, it was an auspicious introduction to a set of immersive, jazz-tinged compositions that alternately set the nerves jangling and the pulses racing. Backed by a saxophonist/moog player, a quickening, industrious drummer, another guy on bass and fiddly bits and an impressively fidgety guitarist who appeared to be working double-time (at one point he was playing with his guitar upside down, neck on the floor, strings towards us). In the photos I took, L’Rain herself plays guitar and sings, although I think she played bass too.

She opened with the title song from her most recent album, I Killed Your Dog, which at the time I don’t think I really appreciated. Opening with a long wave of dogs howling and closing with another long improvisational surge, it was … challenging. But it’s quite a remarkable song with an unusual progression of chords. I’ve not a clue what she’s done with it, but even I can hear what an ambitious composition it is. In fact the more I hear it since, the weirder and more compelling it becomes:

“It’s OK,” she said afterwards, “I’m an artist, I’m trained in the use of metaphor”.

The rest of the set was similarly atmospheric with swashes of awkward sound making their ungainly way across the stage and out across the floor. It was really impressive and at times beautiful stuff and as a set it’s grown in stature in my mind during these seven days.

There are a couple of decent recordings that I’m happy to share here, but there’s a lot of stuff on YouTube which captures the intricacies of L’Rain just as nicely.

Take a bit of time, this is worth hearing a couple of times…

I Killed Your Dog

New Year’s Unresolution (I think… someone will tell me)

Chrysler! Chrysler rose!

Took most of January recuperating after that beast of a flu over Christmas – no squash, no standing around in cold, draughty rugby stadiums, by order of the management – a bit of music could do nothing but restore a feller’s spirits, right?

Amongst an unexpected flurry of gigs before Christmas, I went to investigate the latest incarnation of Gong, alighting woozily in the Shires. This is Kavus Torabi’s version of the venerable old machine and it was … OK… I mean I knew there’d be nothing of the old line up, and that Torabi very much received the blessing of Daevid Allen to carry on with Gong. But, well… it was all a bit Ozric Tentacles. Maybe not such a surprise given that the Ozrics were also on the bill. As an evening’s entertainment, it was absolutely far out, and never having actually taken acid myself, it was certainly the most psychedelic thing I’m ever likely to do.

But in the end, it was all a little bit meh…

It reminded me, though, of something I bought for a friend, an old-school Gong fan …

Dashiell Hedayat

The world being as it is, I would’ve preferred to have bought this on vinyl but ended up downloading it and burning it, which, as luck would have it, meant I had it for myself as well. And very grateful, I am too.

So, a bit of history…

Dashiel Hedayat was the pseudonym of writer Jack-Alain Léger who had previously released an album under another pseudonym, Melmoth, and went onto write a number of books under 3^rd and 4^th pseudonyms (or 4^th and 5^th if Léger wasn’t in fact his real name, I’m losing the will to care…). The Melmoth album involved him reading his poetry over some sort of sonic backdrop and apparently gained some “acclaim”, but I’m probably never going to go there…

For his second record, he got himself another stage name and tooled himself up with a proper counter-culture band, somehow managing to recruit all the members of Gong to back him on it:

Quite the “look”, this video, isn’t it? It’s like a Fast Show version of the Seventies (but without the weather forecast) …

It’s a shame there’s no footage of his backing band but you’ll have to take it from me – it’s the actual Gong … erm gang – Allen, Gilli Smyth, Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle et al. As such it is in fact peak era 1971-style Gong, recorded just after Pyle joined and somewhere before Camembert Electrique appeared – smack in the middle of the whole Radio Gnome period.

And it’s all the things, 21^st Century Gong are not – gallic, spacey, replete with Gilli Smyth’s breathy, vaguely ridiculous backing vocals, Allen’s guitars wandering all over it and even with some sparkling glissando. 

Back before Christmas, I chatted with an old fan who said he’d seen Allen play a solo gig in Wolverhampton which consisted of the man himself armed only with a didgeridoo, leading the audience in the Om chant. Frankly, I’d settle for that…

Much as I’d love to be able to share footage of that evening (and avoiding any BBC-style notions of “balance” by showing one of the Torabi-Gong videos) here’s the latest clip I could find of the old Pixie himself (mercifully, not a didgeridoo in sight).

You’ve got to love a man who makes an effort… 

It’s all living proof that no matter how far out most of us can go, there are some who can go furthur…

Shiny eyes lined up like cherries…

Well… I can only apologise for another prolonged absence from these pages, but for once I feel there may be some mitigating circumstances.

Recently not a big end-of-season poster, this year I did actually have a few things to write about – I bought a few new records this year, I saw a few bands – but in the event I was laid low with a really horrible flu. I spent the best part of three weeks in bed, missed the last two weeks of term (usually quite fun), missed three Christmas parties and two trips to Kingsholm…

I guess shouldn’t complain too loudly, I did have a fabulous New Year’s Eve / Birthday party with family and friends. 

So all in all … a mixed bag, a strange Christmas.

Here’s something from before all that though…

Dead Anyway, Guildhall

After the Big Special/Sleaford Mods VIP shindig, for the second post running I should probably reveal a bit of a family link here – Dead Anyway are a band I’ve followed for a while on Bandcamp for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that they are the vehicle of singer/poet, Kate Arnold, ahem…my sister…

To my lasting shame, I never got round to seeing her in any of her previous bands, back in the day. So, this time, I was glad to get the chance to see her first hometown gig for many years with cohort Marc Symonds on bips & booms plus a full band. And I’m glad I finally did this, they were great.

Kate and Marc seem to have links in the Netherlands, having done a few dates there, and on this occasion brought a couple of Dutch bands over here as part of the evening. This laudable attempt at cross-border solidarity wasn’t entirely successful…

I didn’t get to see the second band, I’m afraid, and can’t say I was very impressed with the first. Rick & Rudi are a sort of hip hop “novelty” band, who apparently have a Mark E Smith-style cult status in their homeland. I’ll have to take a pass on the Fall comparisons because I couldn’t get past the zany stylings of the singer particularly, a sort of post-hip hop Freddy Garrity… Very odd (although they did do a good line in beanies).

Dead Anyway couldn’t have been much more different to all this continental quirkiness. Kate does a particularly acid line in spoken-word stuff over the top of Marc’s beats and loops, which I’ve got to say is pretty impressive. Have a listen to this:

It’s quite the potty-mouthed broadside, isn’t it? She’s my little sister and I’m a little nervous…

On the night, they had a full band with drums, keys, bass and, for his first gig, a guitarist who’d apparently learnt the songs in three weeks. And it all worked pretty well, hustling through a string of similarly jagged little pills. I could tell Kate was nervous (no great sibling insight on my part – she told me in the bar beforehand) but it didn’t stop her carrying herself with a fair old dash of spleen, more than a little poise and a sense of spectacle.

Listening to the recording, I firstly realise that I have somehow managed to cut the whole thing off after 15 short minutes, again (I like to think this cack-handedness conveys a certain guileless charm…) and secondly, although I don’t remember noticing this at the time, Kate’s voice was a little too low down in the mix and got lost at times. It was a shame – I would like you to have got a better feel of the evening.

Here’s one decent recording:

Cats and Dogs

The whole thing went down well and various friends I’d dragged along were suitably impressed. Well done all, shall we do it again?