Eliza Carthy and the Ratcatchers at The Phoenix

Another excellent gig at The Phoenix last night. I hadn't seen Eliza Carthy for seven years (it was the Wadebridge Folk Festival, with her dad) and she's really relaxed into her role as a performer. Incredibly entertaining. She and her band reminded me of The Muppet Show in a funny sort of way. Four awkward-looking, lovable blokes, and Eliza with her surreal sense of humour (rather akin to Eddie Izzard's) comically shuffling around the stage, playing virtuosic fiddle whilst simultaneoulsy laughing her head off - not what one might expect from the sultry promotional photos... The music, of course, was top-ranking - wild Yorkshire fiddle tunes, eerie ballads, a Billy Bragg song (one I didn't recognised) and lots more. Great use of a tuba, too.


Support came from a multi-talented Swedish individual named Rosa Rebecka who sang a remarkable song in praise of the colour purple. She also sang some unaccompanied Swedish folk songs, played the flute, and sang a (Sephardic?) Jewish song accompanied by a Tibetan prayer bowl. Her singing reminded me of Melanie - lyrically she was perhaps adjacent to Patti Smith or Jane Siberry (but very much herself, despite any such feeble comparisons).

Dubblehead and Love Grocer

An enjoyable dub night at The Phoenix yesterday, put on by Future Sound of Exeter.

Dubblehead is the latest project from Nigel Shaw who's been part of Global and other such projects with his partner, the artist Carolyn Hillyer (The Dongas stayed on their land when travelling across Dartmoor in 1997, shortly before I joined up with them in Cornwall). This time he's teamed up with Tom Brooks, formerly of Ozric Tentacles, and Brian "Zero" Abbott.

I've met Brian before, as he used to be part of The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet with my friends Tim and Jim. He's an incredibly versatile guitarist. At first I didn't recogise who it was. Their set started off rather nervously and I really thought it wasn't going to come together - just a guitarist struggling alongside a couple of people fiddling with electronic devices...

But it didn't take him long to loosen up, and then they were away. He can convincingly do the whole UK countercultural guitar spectrum, stylistically, from Steve Hillage to Joe Strummer, with funky bits and glissando bits. It was meshing beautifully with the various dub styles the other two were conjuring up, really very satisfying to the ear.

Once I'd realised it was he, I recalled a conversation with him about his role in Global...I'd asked how much Nigel Shaw was really doing when they played live. I'd seen him "getting into it" behind his console, keeping very busy - but I wasn't entirely sure the same thing couldn't have been achieved by pressing a "start" button and letting the equipment get on with it. But Brian had assured me that it's actually all very spontaneous, with Nigel bringing most of the sounds in manually. So I took that to be the case, and got fully into it. They had the place filled up, skanking and ecstatic, almost screaming out for more after there set finished. Not bad at all.


Love Grocer on stage on a previous occasion
Love Grocer are basically a very good horn section playing over a dub sound system. They seem to have emerged from the Crispy Horns, Zion Train's horn section. After Dubblehead, I'd been rather hoping for a fully "live" dub band, but this was not to be. The drums and bass were again machine-generated, but Ben(?) operating the machines in question was so completely into it, grooving out unselfconsciously behind his module with his skinhead and huge contagious smile - reminded me of the best aspects of the Hare Krishna vibe. He perhaps overused that ascending siren-like tone so beloved of dub sound systems towards the end of the set, but generally it all seemed to work very well. Once I'd adjusted my head so that I was witnessing "a really good dub sound system plus incredible horn section" rather than "dub band lacking live drums and bass", then I was able to fully appreciate what I was hearing.

One of the other highlights of the evening was DJ Bush Telegraph (Keith Drone's mate Gordon) playing a classic reggae selection - Peter Tosh, Mikey Dread, numerous classics I've been listening to a lot lately, but through a BIG system (as opposed to the hideous little bass-free plastic speakers in my office). Best of all was a dub version of The Clash's "Armagideon Time", which I've never heard before - an awesome record if I've ever heard one. Must track that down...

amusing Oblique House Drone

A very funny, atypical Drone session last night. Keith pulled out at the last minute due to lower back problems, leaving only:

Henry - percussion
Melski - flute, clarinet, voice, accordion, percussion
me - saz, balalaika

Much chatting and silliness, but some great music too. There was some discussion of a song on the new Kate Bush album Aerial wherein she sings the first 150 digits of pi (but gets several of them wrong). This led to a ridiculous Kate Bush-inspired jam, and Melski singing excerpts from G. Sierra's new paper "The Riemann zeros and the Cyclic Renormalization Group" with which I provided her. At one point she was even attempting to vocalise a graph based on the zeros of the Riemann zeta function.


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Pulse progress

Another incarnation of 'Pulse' got together at the Crediton Rainbow Studio last night to run through a possible set a couple of times. This is in preparation for a little community event at Shobrooke Village Hall on 11/12/05, which I'll almost certainly have to miss, but Henry asked me along anyway, since Pulse is a continually varying entity, and the music is mostly improvised anyway. On this occasion:

Henry - percussion
Richard - electric bass guitar
Keith - electric guitar and percussion
John - acoustic guitar, voice and percussion (possibly other strings?)
Mark - percussion
me - saz, percussively-triggered radio device, percussion

Henry's idea was to try and get us all to relax into it to the point where the sound 'thins out' a bit. The last gig was good, we all felt, but a little too dense and 'frantic'. The first attempt was fairly successful, and the second was considerably more laid back, arguably more appropriate for a chill-out space than a dancefloor. We agreed that it was good to be able to react to the situation and produce a musical energy attuned to the prevailing vibe.

first run        second run

Otis Taylor on Radio 3

Vicky and I were listening to Andy Kershaw on Radio 3 last night. I used to listen to him a lot in the early 90's (the golden age of Zimbabwean guitar music, as I remember), but have since lapsed. He had a progressive bluesman in session - Otis Taylor. This was quite exciting, as I'd seen Otis Taylor play, in fairly random circumstances, a couple of years ago. My friend Mark and I were flying into Chicago, and he'd wanted to have the "Chicago experience", going to a blues club, etc. So I'd quickly scanned some web-listings and found that someone called Otis Taylor was playing at Buddy Guy's Blues Legends that night. The reviews for his then recent album White African were fairly ecstatic, so we went along to check him out. Unfortunately we were badly jetlagged and struggled to stay awake, but I recall thinking at one point "Wow! This isn't just your average blues band..." There was no drummer, allowing a wonderful fluidity, and at times it sounded particularly African.


His new material which he played in session was extraordinary, what he describes as "trance blues". Modal, groove-based, spaced-out, having very little in common with the pedestrian electric blues bands which are so common these days. Kershaw interviewed him, and he explained that the earliest blues (he named some names which ought to be familiar to me but weren't), like its African roots, involved very few chord changes. This is very interesting to me, as I've often found myself having to defend the Children of the Drone approach as "musically-valid" in a musical culture obsessed with harmonic movement (as in this article).

AK: It's a very unusual blues style that you have...and the use of drones too - it's very unusual to see a cello in a blues band, but there we have one.

OT: A drone is a very African thing, isn't it, so I just use a cello as a drone instrument, like an organ or harmonica, y'know?

AK: You call it "trance-blues", why?

OT: Yeah, becos there's no chord changes, we just get into the groove, y'know.

AK: How did you develop that style, where did you...

OT: Well that's just typical...delta blues, y'know, there's not a lot of chord changes in early delta blues. Heavy chord changes is more of a Chicago, or maybe a Piedmont style, y'know...

AK: (The Carolinas)

OT: ...but the delta thing is really heavy, like Fat Possum, like R.L. Burnside, T-Model Ford they don't have too many chord changes, it's more...African-esque, y'know, it's deeper...

He was also talking about the banjo's forgotten role in African-American music. The first piece he and his band played involved a banjo and a delay-based style of playing which reminded me of Gong's Floating Anarchy album or David Gilmour's playing on tracks like "Run Like Hell". Curiously, the style of the guitarist I saw him with in Chicago also reminded me of Gilmour, but in an entirely different way (the big Gilmour stadium-guitar sound, not wholly appropriate for a small blues club, but welcome for its novelty nonetheless).

Having just read a few interviews, I've discovered that Otis used to ride to school in Denver, Colorado on a unicycle playing a 5-string banjo, that he jammed with the Jimi Hendrix Experience (on harmonica) at The Family Dog in San Francisco, and that he supported Fairport Convention at The Roundhouse in 1969 (the sort of thing which makes me wish I had a TARDIS).

The Bays at The Phoenix

Saw The Bays at the Phoenix last night. This is the band who don't release records, just tour, playing live improvised dance-oriented music. Drums, bass, keyboards and other electronic gadgets. Great stuff. A while ago I'd downloaded some of their free MP3's (a set they played in Haifa last year), and wasn't wildly excited by what I heard, but they made sense when I saw them live.


The Bays live at the Big Chill festival, 2002
The deep/minimal house stuff they played worked really well for me. If it had been a DJ set, I would have made a note of the DJ's name and looked out for it in future. Interestingly, though, had it been a DJ (playing exactly the same kind of set) it would have been much less exciting, and would probably not have been received with so much exuberant dancing.

A very nice vibe in the audience, good range and distribution of ages.

They veered into gentle psychedelic trance (that's what I'd call it, I'm sure other classifications could be applied) on several occasions, and finished off with a short drum 'n' bass set. The latter was a bit of a mess, as it happened, but I've been told they generally do some excellent D'n'B stuff. I've also discovered that they've worked with Brixton's finest MC, Ty, something I'd really like to hear.

another Crediton Rainbow Drone

A fine session last night, the moon just past full. Worth missing Jelly Jazz for this one. Very stringy, felt noticeably more 'telepathic' than usual. The first set was just one 45 minute jam - took a while to get into, but once it was going...

Vaughan was playing out more than usual, we got a very satisfying saz/mandolin duet thing going on at one point. He and John got right into their freeform vocal harmonising. Richard kept simple, but solid basslines together, and Henry was displaying a huge grin throughout.

  
John and Keith, during the teabreak, plus some artwork found on the studio wall
Keith - electric guitar, mandola, melodica, melodica, percussion
Henry - percussion
John - mandolin, acoustic guitar, bouzouki, voice
Richard - electric bass guitar, percussion
me - saz, balalaika, percussion, melodica
Vaughan - acoustic guitar, mandolin, voice

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Philip Clemo Band at the Phoenix

I saw the Philip Clemo Band at the Phoenix Arts Centre last night. Keith and Henry Drone were also in the audience - Keith and I rather enjoyed it, whereas Henry wasn't that impressed.

   
Nice visuals - a specially-made film featuring geysers in Iceland, rainforest waterfalls, lots of clouds, steam and similar organic forms which I'm rather fond of.

The band featured the excellent percussionist Pete Lockett, Clive Bell playing a variety of intriguing Asian flutes and reed instruments, a soprano sax player who also played some very nice bass clarinet, a drummer (who was arguably mixed too loud) and a double bass player (certainly mixed not loud enough). Clemo spent the gig behind his electronic console, adding some suprisingly thrashy guitar sections. The heaviest sections reminded me a bit of 70's spacerock, Can, that sort of thing - trancey and primal, but at the same time gentler and more organic. "Hawkwind with a smaller ecological footprint" came to mind. Some of it could arguably be classified as post-rock (almost defining a sub-genre of "ethno-post-rock", if one really feels the need to classify).

There were some distinctly wobbly moments, but I suspect they originated with mix problems. Clemo seemed to be struggling to hear the others at times, and the electronic loops he was controlling seemed somewhat lost in the overall sound, so some of the endings were quite tenuous as a result.

Henry's criticism was that it was too formulaic, with not enough communication between the players. And as Keith pointed out, it wasn't musically as "free" as one was initially led to believe. Still, well worth checking out in my opinion.

"Right on Scales Radio"

I've discovered what must be the best streaming reggae radio on the Web. "Right on Scales Reggae Radio" is, rather amusingly, a promotional device for a Californian company selling digital scales ("for legal uses only"). The occasional advertising voiceovers aren't overly intrusive (although they're in totally inappropriate American radio promo voices...) It's unfortunately only a 64kbps stream, so the sound quality isn't brilliant, but it's (in my opinion) the perfect blend of heavy dub, 70's roots, and a little bit of relatively intelligent dancehall. Roots and culture!


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I've had this on rather a lot lately! Some tunes get a bit overplayed, but one can hardly complain. I could do with a bit less Eek-a-Mouse and Yellowman, but on the other hand, I've discovered that both Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs have both made numerous wonderful records (much to my surprise, as I'd written them off as irrelevant "lovers rock" singers).

Favourites at the moment: "Such is Life" by Lord Creator, "Let Jah be Praised" (live) by Peter Tosh, "Lift Up Your Conscience" by Israel Vibration, and the entire works of King Tubby and Scientist.

Jelly Jazz Thursdays

One of my favourite sound systems ever, Plymouth's Jelly Jazz, now have a weekly slot at the "Amber Rooms" on Sidwell Street here in Exeter.


I was down there this Thursday - haven't been to one of their sessions for a few years (at the Dance Academy in Plymouth). It's quite a luxury to be able to wander over there, pay three quid, and hear some of the grooviest tunes committed to vinyl...

curious Oblique House Drone

An interesting COTD session last night - not like any we've done for quite a while. Henry arrived late, and with only small percussion items, so things were rhythmically a lot looser than usual. At times it felt terribly disjointed and incoherent, but at others it seemed really fresh and creative. We seemed to be (mostly) playing in a five (or was it seven?) rhythm at one point.

Listening back to the MiniDiscs the session comes across as fairly weak, at least by recent standards. A lot more than usual got cut in my editting process, but there's still a pretty listenable 48 minutes in there, so not a bad use of a Wednesday evening.

I was thinking recently about how COTD feels a bit like a football team sometimes. The line-up gradually shifts through time, some combinations of players work better than others (but it's hard to say why), we always stop for half-time, sometimes we have 'winning streaks', sometimes 'losing streaks'. This session we would have lost 3-1, I'd say.


James and John, Droning in the Orange Room
me - saz, balalaika, percussion, percussively-triggered radio device
James T - keyboard, percussion, water
Keith - acoustic bass guitar, acoustic guitar, bouzouki
John - acoustic guitar, bouzouki, acoustic bass guitar, mandolin, voice
Henry - percussion

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All Souls/Samhain dark moon Drone, St. Stephens

Our monthly session at St. Stephens church last night, howling gales outside with the veil between the worlds supposedly at its thinnest...

Keith - electric guitar, fretless electric bass, mandola, mandolin, piano
Henry - percussion
John - mandolin, acoustic guitar, bouzouki, tablas, low whistle, voice
James T - piano, poetry, percussion
Rupert - percussion
me - saz, balalaika, percussion
Vaughan - acoustic guitar, mandolin, voice

plus
Jo, Andi - voices
Jonathan - percussion


a curious feature of the north wall of St. Stephens church
Three long pieces, very full-sounding, quite intense a lot of the time, and quite funny in places. It descended into operatic parody at one point...

James did a new poem he was commissioned to write in celebration of Exeter Central Library's 40th birthday (complete text here). The City Council's ever-busy works vehicles provided some interesting droning noises at the end of the first piece.

It was the first time John had brought his tablas along for a while.

Jonathan works it the same bookshop as Keith and came along to take some photos and video. He's also a percussionist, and added some subtle djembe beats, eventually having a go on Henry's kit during the last piece.

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