East Kent open mic sessions

The lack of musical interaction in my life has motivated me to get out a bit more.

In the last couple of weeks I've played open mic sessions (solo saz) at The Carpenters Arms (bit of a weird location, a sports pub, where the local clientele awkwardly coexist with the musical crowd one night a month) in St. Dunstans, The Smack (friendly little pub near Whitstable seafront) and Orange Street (Canterbury). I've played a mix of folktunes and my own stuff (I managed to slip in "She Moved Through the Fair" -> "Master of the Universe" into the OSMC set, though I don't think anyone noticed...it's a heavily student-ified crowd, which, despite applauding enthusiastically for everything that gets played, talks loudly through it first).

I haven't yet met anyone who I'm likely to collaborate with yet, but there was someone playing some fantastic, wild modal 12 string guitar jams at Orange Street - Chris Banks - he's very keen on oud music, switched me on to Khaled ben Yahia and Hassan Erraji. Check out the former:


Also, Alex from Whistable's The Psychøtic Reactiøn came over to chat after my set at the Carpenters - gave me a copy of their album Rumble (excellent stuff, complete with answer-phone message from local hero Luke Smith).

Mostly these sessions are dominated by the singer-songwriters...or just people with guitars singing songs. Nothing wrong with that. A lot of it's done really well. Everyone who bothers to react seems to express an appreciation that I'm doing something that isn't that, but I keep coming up against this subtle background assumption that the saz is some kind of "novelty" instrument. It's "exoticness" seems to blind (deafen?) people to what i'm actually playing on it.

It's the same kind of skewed headspace that led to the ridiculous concept of 'world music'

As John Peel once said, "If anyone's got anything that isn't 'world music', please send it to me - I'd really like to hear it". I did find something once (in a junk shop in New Zealand - a CD which claimed to contain 'channeled' music from the Pleiades.) And there was this in the news recently, too.

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I played for a couple of hours last Sunday up in the Good Food Cafe (above Canterbury Wholefoods) for their last Sunday afternoon chill-out session. People eating local organic food, making origami peace cranes, and politely tolerating my psych-folk noodlingz. Thanks to Adam and Liz for having me - would be nice to do it again with percussion and/or harmonium. Things are slowly coming together.

Sharron Kraus

Orange Street, Canterbury, last Friday.

Sharron was great, she started with "Bruton Town" (that definitely won me over), mixed some old murder ballads, a Robbie Burns song, etc. with songs she's written herself. In the second set she played some banjo.


Unfortunately the experience was ruined for me by the Friday night mass of drunk people (students mostly) who, despite having paid £5 to get in, talked loudly through both sets. This is really fragile, delicate music and it was just so disrespectful. She'd come from Oxford to sing to us, and had to fight through a wall of inane chatter. I had one particularly inane conversation right next to one ear, which inspired a mild rage which overshadowed my enjoyment of the gig.

Pearls before swine.

Oh well.

I've only just noticed via her MySpace page that she is partly (or has been?) based in Philadelphia, and collaborating with various members of Espers. Makes sense. They were what immediately came to mind when I first heard her stuff.

"Twisted Folk" (the organisation responsible) has The Owl Service coming soon...I've heard a bit, like what I hear. Not sure where they're from (East Anglia, I seem to think - no idea why). But that one's on a Saturday night, which means a louder, drunker crowd, annoyingly.

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[follow-up:] I sent Sharron K a message to thank her for coming down, and to apologise on behalf of the people of Canterbury for the audience. She got back to me to say thanks, and express appreciation for what she was hearing on my "A Tiny Window" profile page. Then, a couple of days later, I got this:

Hi Matthew,

It's a small world: I was just talking to my friend Andy Letcher about mathematics, and he started talking about a person he knew who plays saz and who's writing a book on maths (he said something about explaining mathematical concepts to people who don't understand numbers..?). Turned out to be you! Well I hope we get to meet properly some time as your work sounds really interesting to me - my first degree was maths/philosophy, and my sister (near Canterbury) is a mathematician.

Take care,
Sharron

I thought Andy might know her (being another Oxford-based 'dark folk' merchant). It was I who switched him onto Espers a couple of years ago, too.

On her MySpace profile, I noticed some mention of an improv trio with Helena from Espers and Alec K. Redfearn and asked about this - little has been recorded, but Sharron directed me to this session on wonderful WFMU (Irene Trudell's show, also featuring "White Bird" by the Incredible String Band, which I have somehow managed to overlook for all these years). It streams in RealAudio - the gorgeous modal improv piece (wouldn't be out of place at a COTD session) starts a bit after 1:43:00. That really ought to be released in some form or other.

superb Drone session (which I missed)

A couple of Wednesdays ago at St. Mary Arches church in Exeter. A strong contender for Best Drone Ever. My attempts to edit this down to a single CD were doomed to failure (there's almost two hours here). Henry's adoption of a Samplepad seems to have evolved the COTD sound considerably.

Henry - percussive samplepad
Keith - electric guitar, etc.
James T - poetry, percussion, keyboard, water, etc.
Lucy - alto saxophone (first session)
Tim - electric guitar, bowed electric guitar, etc.
Brian - percussion, etc.
Mick - electric guitar, etc.
Richard - electric bass guitar

Listen Here
Many thanks to Henry for recording this one, and making the files available to me for processing.

Orchestra Baobab!

At the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, last Monday, part of the current Canterbury Festival.

I honestly think that was the best band I've ever seen. Ranking things of a musical nature according to linear orderings doesn't make a lot of sense, but even so...

The small, bestpectacled lead guitarist (and unlikely band leader) Barthélemy Attisso was like all of my favourite guitarists at the same time, producing an endless sort of quicksilver flow of Hawaiian/Django/Fripp/Garcia inventiveness.


Barthélemy Attisso in action (Den Haag, Netherlands)
Two guitars, two saxes, two singers, two superb Afro-Cuban style percussionists and a super-fat, fluid bass - no dodgy keyboard sounds, no gimmicks, no "In my country..." WOMAD-esque spiel, just two hours of indescribably wonderful music. At one point I could feel the music sort of prising my heart chakra open - almost too much to take. Eventually they had a good part of the theatre on its feet (I'd love to see them in a stand-up venue or at a festival), and then the aisles filled up with happy dancing people.

There was an attempt at visual uniformity - seven of the nine orchestra members were wearing matching African-patterned shirts. The two nonconformists were one of the singers (sharp suit) and one of the sax players (bizarre dress sense, weird sequined hat framing Miles-like scowl), the latter managing to involve a few funky moves in the proceedings.

If planet Earth had to send a delegation to an intergalactic battle-of-the-bands, Orchestra Baobab would definitely be my first choice. This is how we do it on Earth...

Joy Division/Charlie Mingus

Last Thursday, Dave alerted me to the fact that Grant Gee's 2007 Joy Divison documentary was on at a nearby cinema.

An excellent film. Tony Wilson (RIP) rather overstates the "redevelopment of Manchester" theme, but the old footage of punk-era Manchester and interviews with Sumner, Hook, Morris and others (including Ian Curtis' Belgian girlfriend Annik Honoré) are all very insightful. There was even an audio clip of John Peel starting to play "Atmosphere" at the wrong speed (then cursing the French label for pressing 7" singles at 33)!

I was listening religiously to Unknown Pleasures and Closer exactly twenty years ago when I started university at Canterbury (as well as listening to John Peel regularly start records at the wrong speed — how he is missed). I haven't listened to them much at all in the last 15 years or so. I'd heard New Order started playing some JD songs a few years ago (this documentary included a brief clip of such a performance from Blackpool, 2007 — strangely moving).

I got home to put the radio on, intending to listen to Radio 4 news, but instead caught Radio 3's Composer of the Week - and this week it was Charles Mingus! Very encouraging that the BBC musical elite should have evolved to the point that he'd be included in the "composer" category. And it was listening to this programme, which featured heavily his masterpiece album The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady (as well as the "Epitaph" cycle), that I finally got Mingus.

unintentional spacerock weekend

This all started when I found a little flyer announcing that ex-Hawkwind members Nik Turner and Harvey Bainbridge were to play at Orange Street Saturday night. "An evening of psychedelic spacerock (with lightshow)" was promised, so Dave, Tim and I decided to go along and check it out.

This turned out to be a low-key warm-up kind of thing for the main event - a Bob Calvert memorial all-dayer in Herne Bay the next day.

So we got a bit of an unrehearsed spacerock jam...long pieces, morphing into each other, some lesser Hawkwind material (I think I recognised "Encoded Languages" in there) and general spaced-out jamming. Harvey's sub-Calvert vocalisings didn't quite do it for me, but the two of them were clearly having a great time, lots of grinning from the stage. With his long silver hair HB comes across like a bit of a Gandalf/Dr. Who character these days! (Here's a nice little piece someone recently contributed to his blog.)


Nik and Harvey, fairly recently, from the look of it.
There was a decent-sized audience (but sitting 'round tables with little candles on - what has the world come to??), all very appreciative, even when "Psi Power" got rather badly massacred. The main distraction was the tinny drum-machine style beats Harvey was producing with his keyboard set up. The more ambient sections worked well, but you can't really do spacerock without proper drums. An inobtrusive guitarist (Mark Powell) added some nice textures. Some top-notch flute/sax jamming from the Mighty Thunder Rider, as you'd expect.

"Worth £6", Dave opined as we cycled home (it had cost £8.50) - he'd been hoping for Space Ritual. But I don't mind forking out a few quid towards the pension funds of these committed spacerock troopers - they've put in years of service. I sensed that the Sunday was going to be a bit special, and resolved to go.



It was!

I have a lovely bikeride in sunshine (a rare commodity these days) along the old coastline (back in pre-Norman times when Thanet was still an island) from Littlebourne up to Reculver, visiting quite a few old village churches along the way (including four dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin). I arrived at Reculver in time for a truly awesome sunset worth of Turner (the painter J.M.W. - famed champion of Thanet and Herne Bay, rather than Nik... although the photo below did appear on the latter's website a couple of days later):


sunset afterglow over Herne Bay
I'd known that something was going on from 3pm, but imagined a slightly nerdy Hawkfan convention. In fact I'd missed Pentameter Theatre staging versions of two of Calvert's plays, and (apparently) some acoustic jamming. Oh well...

I wandered in to find a couple of members of Inner City Unit, having just been interupted by Nik, who'd been handed a mobile phone with "Mike" on the other end. Attempts to amplify the phone through the PA failed, so Turner cheerfully suggested that he could be the "conduit". It suddenly became apparent that this was Michael Moorcock on the phone! He was overseas and had wanted to read some poetry, so he read it to Nik, who repeated it, line-for-line, in his best Moorcock/Calvert-style solemn voice.

I later found this on a MM forum site:

"Well, I'm sorry I couldn't do everything I'd prepared to do, due to a technical hitch which in itself made me feel nostalgic for the old days... The usual Hawkup! Everybody sounded as if they were having a good time, which is the main thing! Sorry I couldn't have done more new stuff that I'd prepared. Maybe some other time when the technology is a bit more old-hippy friendly... Our attempts to install Skype have crashed our equipment in the past but I'll try to find a way of recording some of what I was going to do (incorporating some New Orleans/Second Ether stuff as well as Space is Deep) on this site."

The ICU lads played Calvert's "Test Tube Conceived", Judge Trev plugged in his acoustic and joined them for a bit, then sung the Atom Gods' unreleased "Starfighter" song, which he explained that he'd written immediately after Bob's funeral in '88. Quite a touching performance - the song's been lodged in my head since. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to speak to Trev (I played a bit of saz on one track from his album God and Man after a weirdly synchronistic meeting with he and Ron Tree in a farmhouse on Dartmoor in 2000 - in fact Nik Turner's sax playing and my saz playing were both dubbed over that track, the closest I'll probably get to playing with Hawkwind!).

The various ex-Hawkwsters were pottering about on stage, plugging in, tuning up - I was happy to be there, but don't think I was expecting much. It looked like it was all going to be rather shambolic.

SUDDENLY they launched into "Born to Go" - WOW! Ron Tree does a very convincing Calvert vocal, really gets into it (he's a proper shamanic frontman). I don't think the audience were quite prepared for how good this was going to be. We got a long jammed-out version of the song (not even one of my favourites, but I was completely swept away in the sound).

They just kept riding the momentum. We got "Damnation Alley". Then "High Rise" (Turner explained that Calvert had written that when living in the high-rise block in Margate next to the monstrosity called "Dreamland") - I'd forgotten what a magnificent song that is, and Ron really rose to the occasion on the vocal. Adrian Shaw and Alan Davey were taking turns on the bass, and despite there were three keyboards/electronics players (Bainbridge, Steve Swindells and Commander Jim Hawkman), it all sounded incredibly well put together, not the over-the-top spacerock jam tahat you might expect.

There was a bit of a problem with Martin Griffin's bass drum pedal, but rather than a couple of minutes of awkward silence while the road crew fixed it, we got spontaneous swirly space synth noises and Tree reciting, beautifully yet casually, a Calvert poem which I hadn't heard before.

"Orgone Accumulator" seriously rocked. We got a "Quark, Strangeness and Charm", "Flying Doctor", "Psi Power" (making up for the previous night's mess). The venue were being a bit strict about the curfew time, so the set got cut a bit shorter than we would have liked, but we got a mighty "Silver Machine" encore (Turner passing the mic along the front of the stage for an audience singalong).

Great mix, decent lightshow. The lineup was quite close to the Stonehenge '84 lineup (Alan Davey on bass, Harvey on keys, Martin Griffin on drums, Jerry Richards playing a convincing Huw Lloyd-Langton-type lead guitar, and with a similar general air about him). No Dave Brock tho'. That would have been the icing on the cake, had he turned up and buried the hatchet. Oh well. He does his thing. No Lemmy either. Can't have everything (and two bass players will suffice).

The band members attempted a hilarious bending-over-backwards group bow, Nik declared that this was what the original spirit of Hawkwind was all about, Davey declared that "Bob Calvert was a fuckin' genius" and Ron Tree cheekily plugged his new album Buy One, Get Ron Tree (great title). Then I cycled home in darkness through the woods.

* * *
I hadn't realised that Davey left Hawkwind (after 24 yrs) last year. He looked incredibly happy, bounding around the stage with his Rickenbacker bass, having a laugh with Harvey at the back while Alex played. He's cut his hair short so now looks less troll-like and more gnome-like.

* * *
Also, I hadn't heard the news about Jason Stuart's recent death (he'd been the keyboard player in Hawkwind for a few years - was with them when Pok and I did our "Children of the Sun" set outside their gig in Exeter back in December '04, and apparently stopped to listen, expressing his amusement/approval to the FSOE crew who'd organised the gig).

* * *
Which reminds me - RIP Richard Wright, godfather of psychedelic keyboard players, off to the Great Gig in the Sky. He'll probably be most widely remembered for that lovely "Any Colour You Like" instrumental on Dark Side of the Moon, but if you get a chance, check out some of his insanely creative piano work on the studio half of Ummagumma (the Sysyphus suite). It's heartwarming to know that he got to play with the re-united (post-Barrett) Floyd one last time, and that it was as good as it was. Let's hope Turner and Brock can manage the same before they blast off this mortal coil...