Music
Writing about music is not as fun or fruitful as listening to music, but neither is cutting your toenails, taking out the recycling, or peeling the phloem bundles off a banana.
Alas, we do it.
Kiwanuka:
an outstanding album, a release masterfully marked
A sellout crowd bustles and sways before a red-orange mist. Thanks to Rough Trade’s promotional prowess, most of the room is now in possession of Kiwanuka, the freshly-released third album from neo-soul aficionado Michael Kiwanuka. It’s a sublime body of music, exhibiting the voice – full of gravel and gravitas – that’s brought him his rightful fame, and marking a continued sensibility for provocative, powerful production. Ever so simply, ever so openly, its title and frank artwork celebrate his Ugandan descent; such forthright pride combats identity crises the music industry moved to accentuate.
Doors have been open for two hours. There’s no support. Kiwanuka’s the appeal.
First (third) and foremost: listen to the record. Listen to it from start to finish and then do it again. It is worthwhile, rewarding and rich. Then go back and listen to his previous two records:
2012’s Home Again.
2016’s Love & Hate.
You’ll perhaps sense, as I do, that the latest borrows all the neat nuances of his previous two, making for a listening experience that is, holistically, career-defining.
Kiwanuka strolls out, supporting singers and an acoustic bassist in situ. ‘Thanks for coming out…we’re just gonna play you some songs’. You’re bang on, Michael. Count me in.
You Ain’t The Problem — the studio version — starts with afro-Caribbean percussion and murmurings, which turn to driving horns, snare and choral vocals. The rapturous introduction is somewhat akin to (yet more upbeat than) the remarkable Cold Little Heart, a continuation of that which captured listeners everywhere. In Bristol, Kiwanuka still sings its lyrics with double-time fervency “I lived a dream, I hope to be who I believe in”. There’s the same sensuous vocals and the same acapella backing, shooting in with high interjections of ‘I know’. However, the soundscape shifts from a sort of electro-speakeasy to that of acoustic strums, maracas and shakers. Kiwanuka then croaks Hero (both Intro and its lengthier sibling) as the lights turn lime green. These numbers are, I suppose, microcosms of the conceptual album as a whole:
Empowerment is key > Ah, here comes the doubt. Blasted cognitive dissonance! > Let’s tackle it with heaps more resilience > Articulate all of this beautifully and thoughtfully. No exceptions.
Simple enough, right? For Kiwanuka, it seems so.
In the context of this show, such a profusion of conflicts and resolutions lean more on the power of the lyrics. The man and his band have a few months to rehearse the full compositions, to prepare the staging and the live narrative.
Kiwanuka is a remarkable release, with plenty of distortion, nifty rhythms and complex passages. Many of these mark themselves against serene, rapturous downturns. Hero (Intro) and (ironically) I’ve Been Dazed are examples of this calmer sound, as is Hard to Say Goodbye. Each has a confusing, imperfect clarity. Each is beautiful.
Anyway, Thursday with its stripped back sound:
The event’s ‘intimate’ billing was justified by its instrumentation, if not by its attendance. Kiwanuka played Solid Ground sat alone at the keys, with white rays and vapour pouring off his silhouetted frame, from his silhouetted fro. Light — an exquisite album ender — was performed with aplomb despite the absence of the lovely strings section. ‘Even if we’re miles apart’, sung repeatedly, saw Kiwanuka harmonise with and deviate from the charming chants of his fellow vocalists…
That was it from the new record — four or five numbers. A taster. A glimpse of the new body of work interspersed with a couple of older tracks. Tell Me A Tale followed one of his own: a record store story and a longing for longevity. Cold Little Heart and Rule The World are both sprawling, artistic achievements from his sophomore release. One of the female singers genuinely stole the show on the latter, mind. The lungs on her!
I would’ve liked to have heard the twangs of frazzled sixstring on Rolling, the community evoked in its inviting voice.
I would’ve jived to the harp just rising the scales to acknowledge and celebrate the birth, spectacle and fears of Another Human Being.
I’d have appreciated hearing the white noise made stunning, made gospel-esque on Piano Joint, with its turn to the keys baring soul fit to accompany silk or rags.
It’d also have been intriguing to see how the narratives of empowerment and justice — existing as snippets of speech/historical recordings on the album — were presented or layered live on stage. These poignant prompts add an extra magnetism to the album, to its loose snare and modern, cool jazz. I wonder if they’ll come to the fore when he hits the road for real…
Synopsis:
The album is one that again marks the artist’s perpetual maturity. Blending vintage soul with African influence and classical composition, Kiwanuka somehow leaves room for plenty of rich, experimental turns. And to what avail? Well, he’s produced a record that is simultaneously meandering and assured, one that never falls short of completely compelling. This musical and thematic growth was equally manifest in his comfort at SWX. Sitting front-and-centre, he seemed both understated and understood, flanked either side by healthy portions of humility and talent.
So, from Withers and Callier and Redding to what, exactly? To Kiwanuka. Scrap the comparisons altogether. He feels to be his own tour-de-force. An artist that perhaps emulated others when starting out now operates in an altogether unique field, one formed for himself and one that is flourishing, masterfully, over and over again.
Nils Frahm @ Salle Pleyel, Paris
I wanted to start this brief note by bemoaning how relatively few people seem to know about or prolifically enjoy Nils Frahm, but that’d be absurd. He sold out one night in Salle Pleyel and subsequently added a second. This decision fortunately gave me an opportunity to book a ticket a couple of months back. I’d imagine his ‘Music For…’ tour is actually very much a procession of sold out shows, hauling people who evidently know and most likely prolifically enjoy his masterful music to auditoriums and concert halls across Europe. People, may I add, of all ages, creeds, colours, backgrounds and existential states. I very well dare you to try and typecast a Nils Frahm fan. You can bet your little ear canals that the piano purists rub shoulders gleefully with the electronica eccentrics in the bar prior, and in the chattering street post sonic journey. So I guess all I really mean in the way of introduction is that too few of my own friends and acquaintances seem to be aware of Frahm or appreciate just how ridiculous his talent is. I’d be so achingly pretentious as to label myself a music human, and so I feel some weird, unforced obligation to try and get people to listen and adore.
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Anyway, about the gig.
Well firstly, the Salle Pleyel acoustics are a bit of a Tingy McTong, aren’t they? Some of the best in the game. Definitely the sharpest and somehow simultaneously the most atmospheric and cinematic that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience. What an unsuspecting soul he seems to be, fair Nils. He strolls out to this almost ironic cluster of equipment — instruments arranged with such precision, and yet their tight grouping and colouring resembles a sort of jumble of pastel chalk luggage, browns and blacks and whites abound. There’s a shimmering element on the left side (as we look, right as he looks out, irrelevant clarification, thank me never) — the glass harmonica, which comprises much of his surprising, elongated, and extraordinarily contemplative newest record, Music for Animals. Thought it was a bunch of champagne glasses containing goodly French bubbly at first, lit from beneath by some never-ending candle.
The first tune, one of the new ones, leaned heavily on that elaborate spiralled glassware, that heroic harmonica, and I did for a moment truly believe him to be using his hands to conjure soothing melodies on the rims of those glasses. In the last paragraph I foolishly labelled myself a music human and must now rescind the claim. Alas, the next, what? — just shy of two hours — he did a plethora of Nils Frahm things, vis a vis: produce cacophonies, symphonies, and soundscapes that make you simultaneously elated and abject, faithful and fearful, awestruck and away. He has this marvellous ability to take an entire theatre under his control and captivate as much with sonderous downturns as with erratic, otherworldly crescendos; or perhaps his ability to do so derives precisely from this combination and contrast. There were a few from Music For, including Briefly, which is a quite beautiful sprawling number that introduced some drums and marches slowly, assuredly, from the harmonica to something less ethereal.
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Fundamental Values was big, and a twist even on what I’ve come to know it as, with multiple false peaks. The version on Tripping With Nils Frahm is such a joke that it's actually not funny. If anyone laughed at it I'd throw them out. He started it different here, blending it with the back end of a previous track. Alas, when that piano came in I knew I’d arrived and that he had me. The choral exclamations at the end are stunning and harrowing. He's done it again.
Hammers was a bellowing number on the ivories, fittingly so, boring out into the anonymous masses, shaking their bones. And indeed, Says was, I’m not even ashamed to say, the highlight. Giggly bumpos (these are goosebumps) covered my arms and thighs and chest as he sat down and cranked hands hard down on keys during the loftiest highs of the spiralling synths.
This doesn’t even suffice as a review. I know. But it was a momentous, mesmerising, and truly memorable gig experience, and I’m so so glad we were there.
Brothers in Arms
I remove the record from its sleeve, and then I imagine.
Mark Knopfler peered out the window of the jet as it continued its descent. He could see the plains of Montserrat sprawling out before him. Landing at John A. Osbourne airport, Knopfler and his band-mates roused from their rest. Guy Fletcher tripped over a seat as he worked his way off the plane. Fletcher was a new addition to the line-up, and had been brought in by Knopfler to bolster the consistency and quality of synthesisers in their sound.
The men joked a little whilst in the mini-van that picked them up, but mostly they were quiet. The West Indies island was peaceful and sparsely populated. Soufriere Hills cast a daunting but dormant shadow. The slow curl of waves was faintly audible outside, and a light wind threw particles of sand and dirt against the vehicle window.
As the van pulled up outside of Air Studios, the driver wished the band luck in their ventures, and helped them unload their bags. The complex loomed over them, with its triangular peaked roofing and the stacked appearance of its buildings as they merged, one into another, spanning back a couple of hundred metres. Knopfler was pleased. It was a clear day.
The first day in the Studio was the 24th of November.1984. No Orwellian dramatics, just pending hits. Knopfler, radiant but cool, walked through the thick wooden doorway into the control room. A faded navy turtle-neck was clinging to his body and he was clinging to a coffee. ‘Right, let’s get started on this record then.’
John Illsley removed his bass from its padded case, plugged it to an amp, and started warming his fingers with a rhythm. ‘Terry, give me a four four beat on the snare, please’, he said. Terry Williams, whom he addressed, was finishing up tinkering with the positioning of his drum-kit. He gathered his sticks and started rolling a steady tempo, hitting with greater vigour on every four count. Illsley accompanied him with slower plucks, taking a second out here and there to tweak the tuning of his four strings. In a further corner of the small recording room, Fletcher was fumbling a little with the new Yamaha DX1. It was larger than most synthesisers, and had been used on only a handful of records in the last few months. None of them had been recorded at Air Studios. Stealing a glance at the new recording member, and his new recording apparatus, the band’s pianist Alan Clark finalised the structuring of his keyboard stands. He plugged in and played a few chords to accompany the bassist and the drummer. Fletcher joined suit. Finally, a guest recording artist named Michael Brecker stepped in, clutching his saxophone close to his body and placing himself before some deliberately placed microphones.
Knopfler watched this scene unfold from behind the studio glass. He took a sip from his coffee, placed the Styrofoam cup on the switchboard counter, and hovered for a second, nodding his head to the sound of his band-mates on the other side. Neil Dorfsman, the co-producer who’d been contacted by Knopfler a few months prior, turned to Knopfler...
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‘Sounding good, you ready?’ Not breaking himself from his swaying nod, the leading man drifted towards the door and into the recording room.
As he walked in, he motioned with a rolling finger to the rest of the men to continue their playing. His eyes were closed for long intervals at a time, opening them only to locate his Style 0 Resonator guitar (the one that would later adorn the record’s front cover) and fix it up to the amplifier. Then he let his fingers lick the strings. This continued for a few minutes, with the band extending smiles to and fro.
Then Knopfler hit the in-count, and the rest of the band loosened their bodies for a final time. ‘A one, two, three and four’. The band stopped playing, Dorfsman hit the recording button, Michael Brecker raised his saxophone to his lips, and began to breathe out a slow and sensuous rhythm. It fluctuated in its notes, producing a sound that could easily have been a physical wave of nostalgia. Clark came in with some accompanying chords, and Williams feathered the ride cymbal to signal the crest of the wave overturning. Knopfler smiled and swayed to the sound of the saxophone. Then he started on his electrified strings, which produced a warm and progressive sound. The saxophone introduction, off this cue, increased in vigour, turning a melancholic distance into an immediate thought. The click of the snare rim punched the rhythm forward. The lights in the studio seemed to brighten slightly, and the band was underway in their recording of the track Your Latest Trick.
‘No, no, stop’. Knopfler was displeased, and the music ended abruptly. ‘Terry, what’s that? That’s damn loose. The sax is loose, and for good reason. We don’t need you loose, your snare needs to be tight, and your hi-hat rhythms are off-beat’. He glared at the man behind the drums, and the band started re-recording. But the sound was still not what Knopfler wanted, so he exclaimed ‘right, we’ll come back to this in a couple of days. Let’s go with concept seven from the start, not too much drumming in that one’. Then, in one take, Knopfler and the band produced the nuanced sounds of The Man’s Too Strong. After, he gently placed his guitar down and moved into the control room.
‘Neil, I want you to get Omar Hakim on the phone. We need a real rock drummer who doesn’t flop about when it comes to playing some jazz’.
Hakim flew in three days later, having been excused from tour rehearsals by Sting. He arrived at the studio and got stuck straight in, ousting the despondent Williams and leaving him a touch stranded on Montserrat.
Shuffling on his seat slightly, Hakim fixed the sheet music in front of him and adjusted the tension of the snares. He worked up his rhythmic impulses with his brush-sticks. Knopfler enquired, ‘we good?’ and counted in again. The saxophone started up, and the rim clicks that Hakim produced were on-beat and crisp. He lent his hands to the production for two days, in which he recorded drums for every track, and then Williams was brought back in for the tours. The recording process for Brothers in Arms — perhaps not an exercise in the unity of its name.
The scenes in that Montserrat studio space over the next four months became ripe with musical class and innovation. The finished product was a record that went on to become nine-times platinum in the United States, and remains one of the best-selling albums of all time. Indulgence in it remains a process of art.
A slight static noise comes after placing the vinyl in the turntable and shifting the stylus . Next, fifty-five minutes of irrepressible beauty.
Wolf Alice
@ Truck
I guess I have to be ready to talk about it now. I absolutely stand by its being one of the best sets I've experienced in life. They are one of the best bands around, surely? Surely Shirley? Surely Ellie? Certainly one of my favourite bands to listen to when the Spotify scroll stops. Look, I'm obviously gona sit here and claim my musical taste is tip top. Eclectic. Brilliant. Who wouldn't? Probably Wolf Alice to be fair — they don't seem a particularly pretentious bunch.
The field is abuzz and it’s balmy. They rock up and rock on, greeted by a right royal rush to the front, an irregular jolt in response to the recognisable first few chords of Moaning Lisa Smile. For the next hour, a mass of bodies swell and settle, swell and settle, surge, sing and smile just like that alternative historical masterpiece. If you pressed me for other highlights of their set from Truck Festival 2019 I’d probably have to opt for every single god damn track they played in the playlist. At no point did the energy drop. At no point did Rowsell's vocal work and assurance fall short of rock-pop demi-goddess levels. At no point were the band rushing or dragging. They played immaculately and loudly, exhibiting all the pace changes and exploratory themes of their first two records. Mature yet raw, sizzling with distinctly human themes that are plopped carefully, ever-so-intelligently into a crisp pool of sound.
Alas, it’ll suffice to say that Bros is an absolute banger, complete with that sweet crooned downturn, vulnerable and expectant, followed by the ‘drop’ (you crass!), another semi-moshpit and a big old smile on my face; that Planet Hunter is so delectable, and perhaps all the more so given that I didn’t expect them to play it. I, too, proverbial Wolf, left my mind behind in 2015, and have been scrambling ever since; that Lisbon is heavy, angry and immediate but also somehow really sweet and nostalgic — I, too, Wolf, feel like going out and smashing windows, but I'm scared of the financial and legal ramifications; that Silk is delivered near enough acapella, with perhaps only some light keys to accompany, and its characteristic, perhaps titular reverb folds and builds with emotional weight towards a dangling conclusion; that Space & Time rightly hopes my body gets better; that the final stretches of St. Purple and Green house some of the best instrumental passages I've come across in recent years; that Beautifully Unconventional is just that; that, and this is important so pay attention, that Visions of a Life is in no roundabout way one of the best songs ever made so stick that perceived exaggeration in a lovely toasted pitta with whatever the hell you want because, hey, perceive away, I believe it and I believe it because it is invariably true. A catastrophic, winding, three-act opus, each act of which could function in its own right as a really nice song and no-one would question it. An unbelievable track, meticulously made, charismatically performed, with big bold upturns and sentimental descents and always, always unerring beauty.
It’ll suffice to say that. Right? Right.
And this is a couple of years before the release of arguably their best record —
Blue Weekend
Oh would you look at that it’s also packed to the rafters with stone-cold heaters.
Its opener, The Beach, starts with a creeping piano. From the golden, anticipatory fog emerges Rowsell’s voice, recalling Macbeth’s gnarly witches: “when will we three meet again…in thunder, lightning and rain”. Some such allusion to mind control and sorcery which the four-piece definitely uphold, over me at least. They touch on the angst, alienation and lofty obstinance of those previous two efforts: “still sink our drinks, like every weekend but I'm sick of circling the drain”. Resonant, no? The song rises through an ethereal refrain, and dips again to those sweet vocals, simultaneously affecting and jolting. At the end of the next refrain, the record is all but unleashed on its suspecting, expecting visitor. A swirling madness of a chorus, which serves as a blueprint for the ride you’re in for — “lost in my mind…was a storm from the beach”. The liminal and the limiting, offset by the great abundance of possibility that comes with both. Explore those corners, dive into the ocean.
Among the most spirited and curious components of Wolf Alice’s music is the sense of both losing and discovering, releasing and grasping, all within a series of melodic jaunts. Oftentimes, when listening to them, I echo the final phrase of that first track: “I close my eyes and imagine…I'm not there”. At others, I am wide, bulging, alert, and all the more reflective for having them to hear. How’s that for a framing intro.
Track two is called Delicious Things and opens with a little snare roll. Such nice ride alongside choral vocals, synths and a sweet little guitar riff. There’s some biblical imagery. “Could I belong here? The vibes are kind of strong here. Ask me if I’m from here and I won’t say no” — an infectious recklessness inherent to Ellie’s rise, from SU alt-rock to headliners and Worthy Farm. Welcoming the buzz, the drugs, the rush. The cymbal work is out-crescendoed only by the layer of vocals in the chorus. It is a nebulous track, symbolic of the high life and its ballast pitfalls. “Hey, is Mum there? It’s me I felt like calling”. You can be on any kind of trajectory, but you daren’t forget the roots – the higher register sees us out — ‘don’t lose it’.
Electric strums and the most sublime voice welcome us to Lipstick On The Glass, and once you’re there you’re not leaving, you’re not getting rubbed or washed off.
Right I won’t wax too lyrical, but Rowsell and her bandmates drive pretty much straight at the aorta of what it means to be a human. Her voice is stunning. Their playing is tight where it wants to be, frenetic and symbolic at others (ye, I’m talking about Play the Greatest Hits). How Can I Make it Ok? Is a chart hit that leans on some pop-like Shepard's Tone, rising exponentially in its benevolence and desperation. It’s a record of exemplary alt-rock, folky turns, and sporadic maximalism. Of course, in about 2 minutes you’ll see how futile an enterprise that sort of categorisation is. We’re passing into a new phase — a clearer record, yet even more episodic than their previous turns. Grand and cinematic, yet run through with such drama — loneliness, inebriation, integration, joy, widespread misogyny, glitz, and grime. These are structures that play out in the musical world of Blue Weekend.
And when I saw them again a few months after its release, what of it? Well if you’re anything into tone, then you can probably anticipate what’s about to come — they were of course absolutely sensational. Try and genrefy Wolf Alice then. Go on. Why have you done that? They played a two hour set that undulated in intensity, from the ponderous, lamenting Don’t Delete The Kisses to the thrashing heavy Smile and anthemic Feeling Myself. God, that track. All the tracks. This time round it was a medley of their three sublime albums and it was received exactly how it deserved to be: with thunderous adulation.
That’s quite enough of you, Wolf Alice. I think you’re decent.
Good Winter
Bon Iver’s discography is a rich and remarkably disparate catalogue of soulful musicality, emotive lyricism, experimentation, and technical prowess. They are a band. Many refer to the spearhead face of the band — Justin Vernon — as Bon Iver, but they are a band. This mistake is justifiable in the context of that first gorgeous, devastating record: For Emma, Forever Ago, the story of which is better documented and more widely known than the decline of many species on this here habitable planet. How can I possibly know that? Years of meticulous surveys.
No, but the retreat, the healing, the secluded production quintessentially reinvented your humble ‘break-up record’ didn’t it? And those naughty noughties following its release gave rise to a bunch of half-baked copycat attempts. A bunch of good ones as well, to be fair. It did a lot for acoustic music. It added depth. So here we have it: recording over the course of several months alone in his father’s rustic, rural Wisconsin cabin, Vernon perused what I can only assume were all-too-present emotions (by no means restricted to: loss, heartbreak, deception).
You know Vernon had released a full-length piece before this? It’s called Self Record. That one too he recorded by himself, but it preceded the moniker*, and so it was and is his only actual solo record? I duno. Doesn’t matter. That album was similarly rooted in those aforementioned emotions, and I say aforementioned in the loosest sense of the directive term because they’re a good few lines back now, closing out that previous paragraph. If you have a chance, listen to the final, 12 minute number that closes out that record. It’s called We Will Never Die, and it’s a roaming lament, a dreary ambient scape of guitar-licking gold, with hints of Mayer and a slow trumpet to match. A good one to kick to with a glass of wine and a big old think about proceedings.
* Bon Iver is a play on ‘bon hiver’, French for ‘good winter’. Makes sense when you think about it doesn’t it? Think about it. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Does.
Back to For Emma. By the end of the album’s conclusive, emotive zenith (and for me, the standout track) Re:stacks, the new moniker lays claim to a quite exquisite inaugural output; a body of work devoid of forced narratives and entirely full of mourning. An unassuming, layered masterpiece of quiet beauty. Following its release and rise in acclaim, Vernon became increasingly and intricately involved in collaboration; the band grew to become a band, for one. No no, blast my phrasing. For several. For everyone. Who’d have thunk it. Bon Iver grew in number and instrumental influence. So he’s back, our lad. And I’ll be damned if he’s not right in the mood to make some more magnificent music.
A couple of years pass in such a spirit, or so one can safely assume, for the resulting sophomore record. Bon Iver sees Vernon recruit his flawless falsetto for a similarly mournful yet simultaneously uplifting sound. Some critics lamented a downfall in intimacy. Tim Sendra claimed he ‘didn’t need all those people and instruments cluttering up the air’, yet it is precisely this difference which highlights and documents Vernon’s growth: from isolatory yearnings to an expansive openness, never better exemplified, and never more beautifully, than the A-side humility-wave of Holocene. The record’s entire B-side is to be marvelled at. The synths, reverberations and rich vocal multiplicity in Hinnom, TX induce in a listener dream-like captivation, a personal journey the simplistic chords of Wash only serve to extend. Though I’ve been prone to, I don’t want to idolise Vernon, nor paint him as a harbinger of joy and peace and thought and love and agony in an already confusing world, but I’ll be damned if the choral exclamations on Calgary aren’t ripe with a certain pseudo-religiosity. This uncannily oblique but relatable nature permeates Bon Iver’s work. Beth/Rest, vitally, sees Vernon manipulate his vocals once more, a trend and exploration that wouldn’t fully materialise until Bon Iver’s next venture…
22, A Million.
Right you are.
Typically introspective and provocative, the album came after a hiatus and a period of profound anxiety for Vernon — evidenced in the production’s opening vocals: ‘It might be over soon’ The record takes a stylistic turn, reaching for experimentation and electronica to such a degree that — at first listen — fans of the band’s first two efforts may be at best confused, at worst jarred. From a turn to the technologies of sampling, manipulation, and looping emerges a mosaic-like texture of musical excellence, a fragmentation that all the while aids the band in creating myriad original sounds. The flux in pitch and style of Vernon's vocals (at turns through a new and custom made vocoder) and his (once more) masterfully circuitous lyrics drive at the album’s big hitting themes — duality and impermanence. A cryptic track listing (the masterful 29 #Strafford APTS and anthemic 33_GOD_ highlight this aptly) echoes with another key line of inquiry: the relationship between nuanced humanism and formulaic numbering. 8 (circle) stands out not only as a beautiful track driven by the most subtle of rim-clicks, and not only as formulaically novel, but as the one most closely resembling previous releases. A touching reminder of a simpler time. Nonetheless, the other numbers (forgive me) — seismic musical achievements that fold in on themselves and explode out again, huge bangers that could well draw the attention of picky pointed ‘overproduction’ accusations — well it’s these that stir one’s intrigue most. 29 #Strafford APTS is stunning. ‘Sure as any living dream, it’s not all then what it seems’. A rising, increasingly distorted refrain and custom Vernonian words like ‘paramind’. ____45_____ is another one. Yeah that’s a song title I’m not even shitting you. It’s got like 8 lyrics but they all come in beautiful baritone (front-and-centre) with little falsetto lilts thrown in. And this incredible medley of saxophones that give way to a country guitar outro. The final song 00000 Million harks clearly to the reverence Vernon places on Bruce Hornsby’s stylistics. At the album’s conclusion, listeners can be left in an odd state, satisfied but subdued by its spectacular course. All it does, really, ALL IT DOES, is prompt continual awe in the band’s versatility and relatability, questioning all the while precisely where the ‘forces that took me on these wild courses’ will take Vernon and Bon Iver hence.
There’s a common theory, and I guess it’s not a theory but a professed intention courtesy of Vernon himself, that their four records represent a season. For Emma, Forever Ago was the sultry cold of winter. Bon Iver sprouted and blossomed and bloomed a la Spring’s fine colourways. 22, A Million was, rightly so, a “crazy energy summer record”, and thus the next one represents the fallout, beauty and crisp air of Autumn.
So, 2019’s i,i (hello duality, you fateful, recurrent little devil). With collaboration all the wider and all the wilder, with production swimming in interesting tweaks and cacophonous turns, i,i is a rather regular array of white noise, chopped vocals, folk sensibility, soaring hooks, bleeps, bloops and absurd layerage. Yet it works. U (Man Like) is a marching country hit; We moves from hums and fascinating percussive punches to breathless Vernon verses, Hey, Ma is the record’s most discernible single, boasting a catchy chorus and ethereal, higher-pitched vocal work. I actually really love the songs Salem — a beat that never wavers but somehow gathers pace via instrumental cameos from drum machines, strings and keys, with falsetto as its most fine — and the closer, RABi — an initially mournful poem tracing our way here, reaching forth to ‘sunlight [that] feels good now don’t it’. It ebbs and it flows and you’re never quite sure whether it’s all fine and we’re all fine anyway, never quite sure if the morose turns and necessary dread will solidify or soften in the season that comes next. I guess all we can do is hope for a Good Winter.
Postscript:
Hey here’s a bold, boiling hot eruption of revelation for you: none of these four brilliant albums are as good as the record Repave. It’s the work of Volcano Choir, comprising Vernon and some members of Collections of Colonies of Bees. An absolutely extraordinary eight-track of billowing beauty, with each track going from humble, stripped-back beginnings to anthemic alt-rock crescendos. Oh yes yes yes yes yes.
Ruminations on Richter
Voices / pt 1&2 / Richter @ Crystal Palace Bowl
Try this on for size: I'm waiting for a train that's delayed due to fatalities on the line. This liminal space combines with Richter’s new beautiful, poignant album and my own ever-tumultuous headspace. There's your base. Add a dash of tabasco, a nibble of an edible, a numbness and a banana. £3.80 at your local retailers. Is everyone struggling?
What a broad brushstroke, aye. The times though. There are people pushed to the point of watching a train coming towards the platform on which they stand, whatsoever is running through their head is so dark and so irrepressible that they feel choiceless and obliged to see it out. Heart-wrenching. Mercy’s violins just hit.
We were all incredibly hungry. For food in the traditional sense, I grant you — nutrition and satiation and saturates and gut gratitude — but also for nourishment that Richter’s stunning compositions irrefutably provide. Open up wide, you greedy little so-and-so. So he’s here for one night and one night only (does anyone say that anymore), an esteemed headline act on the final eve of South Facing Festival at the famed Crystal Palace Bowl. The evening was really so splendid so as to defy description. I trust that will suffice; I can now close out this non-review and sleep soundly.
No hang about give me maybe three-and-a-half-minutes, it’s a mere chunky paragraph not an extended ode.
Support came from Abel Selaocoe, an exuberant and talented cellist whose native tongue intonations bridged the gap between beatboxing and verbal didgeridoo. An unexpected, unconventional frenzy of energy and talent. Then Lucinda Chua, whose own cello and vocals served to highlight the sheer versatility and genre-agnostic potential of cello and vocals. Her music was ethereal, if not a little morose. Both were very worthy warm ups for the main man himself. Richter. Ah Richter. The guy has actually been certified in 54, nearly 55 sovereign states ‘a joke’. Such is his enduring, conceptual genius and the touching, tantalising class of his minimalism. Sit there and tell me you’ve not got lost in the Kafka-inspired labyrinthine melodies of The Blue Notebooks, in the filmic splendour of On The Nature of Daylight or the Koyaanisqatsi-like sonder of Organum. Sit there and tell me you’ve not slalomed through gnarly somnambulant landscapes to the sound of that 8-hour masterpiece Sleep. Sit there, stand there, kneel there or crawl there and tell me you’re unfamiliar with his seminal reworking of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
You mad.
So we sit there, slap bang in the middle of the site, I’d say, surrounded by other buzzing patrons flattening out their blankets and sipping cold wine from plastic cups. We had a good front-and-centre view of the whole thing. Then we watched as Richter — one of the greatest living composers of neo-minimalist classical music — and his orchestral oracles played from start to finish both Infra and Voices. The former was written in response to the 7/7 attacks, a sort of remedial musical bandage to collective shock. Infra 5 is the standout, a swirling opus that never loses pace but gains volume and texture, building to rich, layered violins, jolting interjections and a discernible crackle. The track alludes to chaos and catharsis in equal measure.
Voices (and Voices pt.2, though that wasn’t covered here) are melodious reference points to the Declaration of Human Rights. That document’s words are spoken over sonorous orchestral turns, but the voiceless versions are just as poignant. Both releases and live takes are stunning. Just absolutely delectable. Full of love, sorrow and every other perceptible emotion in between. The soprano work of Grace Davidson took me, never more so than on Chorale part 4. Throughout, Mari Samuelson played with absurd precision and beauty on the violin. It all passed by rather quickly to be honest, and I think that’s as much a testament to the fact that we could all, however many thousand of us, have sat there for another 4 or 5 hours and listened to his arrangements. Full field for good reason. Bravo sir, for all that you have done for modern classical music, for all you have done to get us through these past 18 months of strife and confusion, and for all that you have done for me, from focus to introspection and back again. By the time we sifted out, we all just wanted to listen to Max Richter some more, and so we did a bit. Then we went to bed.
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Bristol Beacon | 06.11.2024
Discounting the human voice, name two more emotive instruments than a piano and a violin. I’ll wait. Perhaps Max Richter’s undeniable genius is merely a result of having recognised and capitalised on that fact. Hats off to him, frankly. The composer’s latest record — In a Landscape — continues his distinct brand of postminimalism, offering up a delicious medley of meandering tracks and ambient interludes.
They Will Shade Us With Their Wings starts with ominous, booming chords and rolls on to a delightful violin lament, as does Love Song (After JE). Other highlights include the dense and layered Poetry of Earth (Geophony), as well as the ever-building, ever-brilliant Late and Soon, in which cellos emerge as a gorgeous, groaning bassline. There’s electronica at turns, too: Only Silent Words packs in whooshing and a metronomic pulse that ever-so-slightly resembles a ‘beat’. Once more, Richter turns the screw on the genre of contemporary classical. But what really ticks the album along? Well, his unerring ability to shape mesmeric, morose soundscapes of course. And Some Will Fall is an exquisite example, as is the closing number: Movement, Before All Flowers. The interim Life Study pieces provide ambient reprieves, complete with fuzz, whistles, birdsong and distant murmurings. You’re never far from quintessential Richter on keys either, unaccompanied and untouchable on A Colour Field (Holocene) and Andante, a delight doused in reverb.
Richter’s compositions are always moving, but there’s an additional weight tonight. It’s faintly discernible but very much there; something to do with the day’s dramas no doubt. In A Landscape is about a polarising world, a reality all too evident in waged wars and political posturing. Fittingly, a single line divides the stage into left and right, illuminating and pulsing with different shades throughout the show. These tracks see Richter confront polarity with an enduring sense of unity and hope. In doing so, he advances a musical language as exquisite as it is simple. I suppose that explains his position in popular culture.
And what got him there? Was it The Blue Notebooks? There’s a strong case. We’re treated to that whole shebang, too — a seminal, ‘good old-fashioned protest record’ that still hits all the right notes two decades later. Richter and his five astounding musicians run the gamut in all its glory, from the masterful tinkling of Horizon Variations and Vladimir’s Blues to the choral chants of Iconography. Tucked amid this series of musical wonders you have the quick keys of Shadow Journal underpinning an aching, high-pitch violin refrain. Unreal.
As a ‘patron saint of doubt’ Kafka’s words frame Richter’s opposition to the Iraq war, but the accompanying musical motifs are rich and varied. This is especially evident in the shift from bleeps and clicks on Arboretum to the raw, awesome work on Organum — it’s like Koyaanisqatsi and Interstellar had a moody little lovechild. Now, let’s be fair: why would I need to write words about On The Nature of Daylight? It’s a go-to for filmmakers and a bona fide classical banger. As that famous fragment rouses, blue light rises on the single line like iridescent mercury gauging the temperature of the room. Hundreds of people are entirely transfixed. The culminating crescendo is that of The Trees — pounding piano and string melodies interweave with serious aplomb. It’s a fitting finisher. It’s a huge tune.
Max Richter’s music is an invitation. What’s flicking around your swede? What’s troubling you? What’s giving you energy? Go on…close your eyes and mull it all over. And quite honestly, In A Landscape has all the hallmarks that made The Blue Notebooks a modern great in that regard. Both albums are contemplative, stirring, and entirely magnificent.
Zimmer @ Wembley
We’re all fully enthralled and it’s only been three minutes.
But let me take you back.
We’re at Wembley Arena we are. To see Hans Zimmer. It’s the first time he’s done a European tour with a full band. His discography kind of demands it, doesn’t it, so I’d envisage he spent the 5-10 years prior to this receiving admiring, aggressive letters from hardline fans who couldn’t believe he hadn’t yet transitioned from composer extraordinaire to live marvel.
Caved in eventually, and rightly so, and right now here he is look. Walking out at Wembley. The place erupts. The roof literally comes off of it, and that’s going to be expensive to repair but if it’s very well a penny for your smile at this first sight of the man then we’ve raised a good few thousand at the get-go.
The show starts with a pulse. It’s not racing; it’s consistent and anticipatory and warm and everyone does a nice little wriggle in their seats. Should there have been seatbelts, we’d have been sure to strap in. Out comes a clarinet player and a few strings (they are entirely animate), and the thing swells as more bodies appear on stage. That’s gotta be the ensemble now. This opening credits medley jiggles in and out of different time signatures and motifs, spanning pieces from Driving Miss Daisy, Sherlock Holmes and Madagascar. So you’ve got some famed drama, some silliness amidst the soot, and a jovial lift of a tune straight off the bat. Straight off the bat and straight out of the Arena into that square out front, am I rite, cos there’s no roof anymore, remember?
We’ve taken it off.
Glad you’re with me.
‘Hello Wembley…
…aaah it is very cool to be able to say that’.
The great man’s mellow German tones ring out. We’re ready. Ah wait nope. No we’re not. Not before a curtain rises and a full orchestral set up complete with choir reveals itself at the turn. Some trick. Now we’re ready. Hans you so cheekii.
Alright, with nigh on a hundred talented musicians up there and in our midst, the next number is bound to be a big bulbous bodacious bbbbanger. Alas, it starts with swelling vocals from the choir, across which are a few stopwatch beeps. It’s moody, this segment from the Crimson Tide soundtrack, but an electric guitar breaks through with a stunning, emotive riff, and we’re on our way. There are semblances in there of familiar Zimmer tropes and melodies. Straight from this onto the electric keys and high BPM thumping percussion of Angels & Demons. Now that’s a number of great drama and suspense. There’s a quite outrageous drum solo towards its back end as well, which slows to a roll of the snare at a couple of intervals and then kicks off again, like it’s toying with our emotions. We let our guard down and it grabs our throats again. Big up to the sticks.
I’m gonna rattle through this with the singular further comment that to my untrained and altogether overzealous ear, not a single note was played with fault in two and a half hours. Except of course I can’t leave it at that because his music is fabulous and I want to write about it.
Two of the violinists become the focus of the lights and they play the most beautiful rendition of Chevaliers de Sangreal. This is the first of maybe three instances where a slight surplus of liquid works itself to the front of my eyeballs.
Hans continues to introduce tracks and soundscapes by recounting their origin, their meticulous, experimental development, and what he deems to be their emotional core. He talks at several points of how his own memories and experiences have helped inform melodies, an immersive creative process that results in scintillating work.
The lights go out and things fall silent for a second. No one is expecting it when it arrives. And when it does, the place goes nuts with jubilant nostalgia.
AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa-zabenyaaaaaaaaa-dadabeesodanaaaaaaa. The gentleman from the original Lion King soundtrack (it must have been!) is accompanied on stage by a woman in traditional African dress; her voice is almost offensively powerful, for it reaches out and tweaks my nipples and pounds my chest but yet it’s so sonorous and elegant. It’s not hurting me, and the band plays on. We get to the Circle of Life, too, but Elton’s gone all selfish on us so he’s not here. No matter. Fuck Elton, actually, these two are class. They back-and-forth in African vernacular (I think it’s Zulu, if I remember correctly, but there are a heap of pan-African influences in that movie) and work to the famed, soaring chorus.
Ridley Scott’s name is mentioned. Wants to make a movie about ‘men in skirts’ doesn’t he. Bit of reluctance. But we’ve got the budget and the cast is looking pretty naughty, and I’m at the helm, Hans, so I reckon it could be decent. That is the precise verbatim hook that preceded the production and scoring of Gladiator. Hans introduces a tall, pretty, poised woman to the crowd; she’s been playing electronic organ to this point, and he’s known her since she was 4, and she can sing. Boy can she sing. The answer is yes, I just said. A noble step into the unfillable shoes of Lisa Gerrard, she works through the likes of Honor Him and Now We Are Free beautifully. For this one, and others like it, I press record on my phone, longing for my remembering self to saviour the night in coming months and years, tuck it into my chin, and lose myself in the unrivalled emotional splendour of those tracks. It had been a medley too, mind. We had a good chunk of The Battle ring around the different sections of the orchestra.
So the base chords and general trajectory of Journey to the Line were clearly a spark from which Zimmer flourished in films thereafter. There are sketches of connection between a lot of his pieces. They are distinctly his. Or at least distinctly the work of his studio, a little conclave of talented fucks coming up with neat leitmotifs that match and evoke and sometimes even transcend a given narrative. For Journey, visuals appear beyond the choir, a flickering ribbon of a red line which slowly seeps further into the centre of the screen. When the two ends combine, the brass section and percussion step it up a notch and the track reaches that bloody splendid crescendo. I try in vain to close my mouth; this happens every minute or so of this entire experience.
Hans continues on to talk about working with Christopher Nolan and at first leads the ensemble in a medley from the Dark Knight Trilogy which is as genre-defining as it is epic. Not even a word I’m particularly fond of, but it was just that, so I’ll shun the propensity to edit and talk instead of quick timpani, exquisite fills and the tightest string work, with different sequences pointing to major themes and characters across the trilogy. A brief pause. He steps up to the mic and starts chanting those intoxicating tones from Rise. The choir follows his lead and the pace accelerates as Wayne makes the ascent, saves Gotham, and replaces for just a fraction of a second’s fraction the roof on the place, stopping those nefarious souls from doing the same. An especially emotive turn arrives as Hans talks of the genius in Heath Ledger’s performance, and in his sadly short life, as well as the harrowing news faced when a shooter took to the auditorium at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises. The composition he penned in response to that tragedy — Aurora — is a piece that leans principally on the range of the choir. It’s sorrowful, slow, and ponderous, humbling to, I would imagine, every last person in that arena.
They go on to play a non-soundtrack number called Electro which is just about the most mad, frantic, trippy-visualled article of the night. We’re all shaking a little on our seats, jittering and laughing and floating in an awe like state at the energy of the music.
By the time he counts in and commences the beautiful S.T.A.Y. I’m completely lost within myself. Then he picks it up for Mountains and the similarly stirring finale of No Time for Caution. Everyone, quite naturally, is pumped to the rafters with awe, finding their own lines of thought to explore as they envision that defining Nolanien space odyssey. What. A. Picture. What. A. Soundtrack. All of this gathers momentum on the spectrum and finds the farthest reaches of emotional impact. He decides, in what I can only assume is a direct address to my own taste, to follow this with Stay. One of my absolute favourite Zimmer tracks. The refrain is played repeatedly and reverbedly on a lap steel guitar, rather than by organ. Fascinating, stunning twist. At this juncture I can barely see the stage through the quivering level of liquid in my optics. Closing them helps me appreciate just what’s happening. What a moment. I couldn’t express even if I tried to just how many existential dips have been addressed and amended by blasting that track out at its very maximum volume.
Hans the cheeky guy bids us goodnight and the artists walk off stage. We know that he is having us on. We know that full well Hans because there’s something still to come. Something big. Low and behold, after a few rookies head for the doors, the rumble of anticipatory footstamps shake the foundations, rendering it at risk of the same fate as the roof. The spotlight emerges on the wise and wonderful composer once more. He plays music from Inception, its tunes layered and run through with determinable symbolism that marks different highlights at different levels of the filmic dreamscapes. This culminates, as does everything ever, in Time. There comes a Time when a motif is a motif for a reason, because listening to it conjures all the shock and awe that its title and that crazy, crazy notion merits. For four and a half minutes not a cough. Not a single whisper. Not a pin drop in the space. The man on his own, establishing and controlling the pace. The rousing violins. The guitar by Johnny Marr. A heater that only swells further with the trumpets, and again to those simple chords, themselves slowing to the spinning top. The single beam of light that illuminated his genius figure cuts out, so I know it’s not a dream, I know it’s all just happened.
Tame Impala & The Slow Rush
Can’t claim to know what month, minute, moment or piece of particularly mesmeric music prompted Tame Impala to cross the proverbial road from ‘band/artist Sam likes quite a bit’ to ‘band that Sam really prolifically overplays and waxes lyrical about’. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say it was probably around 2017, slap bang between the giddy silliness of Currents and the big pressure follow-up, The Slow Rush. When I wrote the below, that latter, latest album was fast impending, and anticipation of it had become concerningly fervent between my ears. Their music is proper vibes isn’t it. PROPA. I even pre-ordered a copy from Rough Trade and waddled down to get it on the day of its release. I’ve seldom done that in my life. One of those I knew I’d listen to on repeat upon receipt. And so it went. Here’s what spooled out of my fingers:
It's really rather very bloody quite good.
Taken on a rather familiar pattern, too, so stick with me on this.
You listen to it once, it’s nice. You listen to it twice, it’s nicer. Then you get your head down, stick the record on and immerse yourself, or if you’re out and with company you grab a second to stick a track close to your ear, or if you’re out and not with company you continue to absolutely pulverise the repeat button and blast it through the headphones, neglecting about 93.8% of the time any other music entirely. You find little chunks of songs, elements and links and bridges leaping out to you, so you rewind to them pretty often and try to figure out what exactly they’re saying, prodding at, or evoking to have you enjoy them so much. Then you clock yourself being an obsessive little otter and repeat the whole record all over. Keep things fair. Swim back in. Customarily, it’s after this song and dance and over the course of the next few weeks that different tracks take turns propping themselves up as forerunners and focal points. So far this has been the chopped, looped and dragged title term that runs through One More Year, the entire seven minute Supertrampesque One More Hour, the crispest of crispy drums on Tomorrow’s Dust, and that bit in On Track where Parker sort of longingly yelps ‘challenges falling in my lap’ and extends the final word as those snares just rip through. Make love to my armpit with the beak of a tropical bird, ain’t the snare tuning always absolutely stupid in Tame Impala music?!
How do I summarise a record so sprawling and simultaneously so masterfully tight?
I don’t know. And I know why I don’t know. There are two reasons:
1. I am not a very good music writer.
2. It’s about time, and anything about time tends to send me wonderfully or woefully west, and when there I sort of glaze over and just melt in the pool of synths and the key arrangements that present themselves in fluxxy flickers or pounding passages, in the drum beats which somehow all outdo the one preceding but also stand on their own little podium as heartbeat masterpieces, and then there’s the introspective lyricism which also projects to an entire world, personal enough to be a passionpiece but meanwhile ubiquitous, and then there’s more time and with that more time I will indeed listen to The Slow Rush, from ethereal chopped vocals all the way through to fade-out.
Winston Surfshirt @ Thekla
‘Are you sure we’re not sinking?’
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Winston floats the question, shifting a few strands of long, blonde surfer-slack hair from his eyeline.
Goodness gracious ambiguity! Is it a gig crowd rallying cry? — were we all a touch too quiet during the opening tracks? Is it an overtly political remark? — is he going to launch into a scathing critique of society in the face of an impending pandemic? Could just be a mere nod to the venue? — maybe they’ve not played on many boats.
In all cases, I’m sure I’m not sure.
Thankfully, there are a few things I feel pretty sure of:
Sydney-based six piece outfit Winston Surfshirt are sailing onwards, upwards and all the way in between with their blend of soul, funk and hip-hop.
Two little tidbits from their own website prove a worthy synopsis of their talents:
“The auditory equivalent of A Tribe Called Quest splitting spliffs with your parent’s favourite band” and the simpler, just as beautiful: “If you know, you know”.
On this drizzly March night, Thekla knew, and then it knew some more, and then a little more still, for each song bubbled with a more assured fusion of the vintage (subtle jazz, RnB harmonies) and the modern (daunting bass and hip-hop twists).
Since infiltrating the Sydney underground scene in 2014 (on his good ones, good sir Winston, equipped with buttery vocals and stage presence to match), the project has grown to the offering it is today, a sextet ripe with genre-hopping, smooth stylistics and high octane performances: I’d hazard a guess that not one of their birth certificates reflects this lineup, but alas, we’ve got Bustlip on beats, The Bone on trombone, Bik Julio on bass guitar, Dool on keyboards and Mi-K on guitar. The frontman (also a moniker, sure) entered stage right, wearing a puffer. Classic February in Anglais.
New LP opener Need You rolled us underway, from muted key beginnings to a terrific trombone solo. Before long, Surfshirt was down to a T, facing off to a bustling crowd of hot bodies in the ship cellar.
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For The Record is a doozy of a RnB track with the drum machine sending us some snappy synthetic snare. Laser-like keys enter the fray on Show Love. Right on cue, too. An 80’s dancefloor somewhere rests easy. I turn to Adam with one of those odd scrunched up smiles you derive only from beautiful, bold musical moments. Adam? Yeah that’s the band’s exuberant sound mixer. Loves lager. Loves the band. Imagine Action Bronson but Australian. ‘I’ve been with ‘em since the beginning’, he tells me, beaming. He bounces and tweaks the soundboard throughout.
Where was I?
The band and its following are like a convent of funk. Every throbbing bassline shakes hands with a catchy chorus, and a trombone interlude is never left off the invite list. At all times, Winston’s signature vocals weave between rich musical passages, effortlessly navigating the higher, croaky hooks and lower, spoken passages. (His flow may just hold a little more clarity and credence on recorded versions, but obscurity of lyrics likely has multiple causes: Thekla’s hustle bustle, sound setup, one's distance from stage...)
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On a generally very tight night of music, another faux pas I might be hastened to raise would be the lack of live drums. Bustlip is esteemed on the buttons, sure, but at certain times the drum machine becomes a touch too pervasive, pounding somewhat repetitively through the funky basslines and catchy rhymes.
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Another still would be this (and how passive a criticism): I wonder if a little more diversity might be welcome? How absurd, too, given the band’s discography and performance is complex, densely arranged and original. I just mean, with such an array of skill, they could perhaps experiment more with idiosyncratic song structures, interludes, skits and instrumentals...
What am I saying? Dancing throughout the place! The band is just as infectiously listenable as another band I saw not long ago: Easy Life. They, like the midlands outfit, absorb and own every inch of the stage they’re granted.
NobodyLikeYou juxtaposes a Timberlake like vocal setup with super electronic, baritone exclamations between choruses.
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Grooviest track they’ve got? I’ll go out on thine preferential limb:
Since I Saw You There. A delicious opening minute, with simple key chords intersected by double-time hi-hat and crisp snare, which itself gives rise to a nice rhythm guitar. It’s a winding, yearning ode which sees Winston leaning between rapping and harmonising before a delectable brass outro. In fairness, the snare is captivating, if a little unceasing.
Smile is equally laudable. It is as happy as it suggests, an emotion accentuated by its midsection downturn, where Winston’s words are a touch hushed, floating out into an ambient catching of breath. When the chorus rolls around, Thekla’s lighting thrives and the crowd gets a touch rowdy. Be About You is a classic closer, with raucous falsetto and emotive subject matter prompting a singalong scene.
Winston Surfshirt are talented, versatile and at times silly (Winston riffs an improv ahead of one track: “the last time I played this I fell off the ceiling”). They are relentlessly fun, and turn out the Surfshirt manifesto a few tunes from the end, in the form of a Montell Jordan cover no less. This is, indeed, how we do it. And don’t they do it well.
Oshun @ The Fleece
Oshun discussed the origin of their title in a recent interview: ‘a West African traditional deity...a goddess who governs over sweet waters’. This benevolent figure in Yoruba religion marks the duo’s project as one of grandiose intention. Thandiwe and Niambi Sala, who met when studying at NYU a number of years back, display a fittingly enlightened edge, a certain spiritual positivity. This is at times reinforced, at times confused and offset by certain elements of their music — music largely reliant on crisp hip-hop compositions and educated themes of identity and strength. Their ‘pilot’ (DJ and hypeman Proda) warmed us with American twanged exclamations and mainstream hiphop hits. Oshun entered The Fleece stage to claims of a ‘oshuniverse’ and celestial visuals on screens around the place. Their new record bittersweet vol.1 has remnants of ATLiens in its ambient, surrealist style, albeit in a less refined and less revolutionary form. That’s one of the greatest rap records of all time; it’s no discredit to these two.
They performed a number of tracks from that aforementioned collection — including Solar Plexus, which starts with traditional sounding vocals and slips nicely into their riffing hooks off eachother, then to a spoken word passage with spacey synth. Burn is a homage to marijuana that samples Beyonce’s Check On It. Nice, drowsy rhythms see the song out. Blessings on Blessings is a celebration of their own heritage, artistry and progress; it contains some of their slickest rap work (and a period of crowd participation, which is rife).
Both Thandiwe and Niambi have silky and versatile voices; they seemed at first a little raw and tentative, taking a track or two to find their highest form. Thandiwe (her dreads tied stylishly up) hit a sweet singing solo which set the tone for R&B passages and reggae roots-inspired-flows. Niambi Sala (wearing her beaded locks down to just above the shoulder) stood in silence before the equally hushed crowd, breathing deeply, waiting, and releasing a moving acapella intro to the track Sango. Released in ‘15, it is one such mellow, bluesy turn. They long to ‘rise to love’, and its subtle production highlights the steps they’ve taken in experimenting with different sounds since they started co-composing.
The most compelling and pleasant ever-present of Oshun's style is the way they cut across, overlay and harmonise with one another. A forte. Catlike contact lenses and all red tracksuits accentuated the idiosyncratic style of their music. The pair are self proclaimed artists of Afrofuturism — a cultural movement with precedence on intriguing crossovers between African identity and modern technologies. One source suggests its works ‘reimagine how society could be if contemporary race relations had played out very differently, offering a direct commentary on modern life through fantasy’. Oshun encapsulate this goal, providing plenty of energy and entertainment in the process. (Their political presence is at its most lucid in last year’s track Not My President, which begins with angry verse and pushes on to loose jazz). The sound setup at the venue may have been a little off; initially the vocals were outweighed by the thick and effect-heavy beats, but this improved as the show progressed. On a number of occasions the two (plus Proda) riff and converse and call-out to spur the audience on and stress their own stories in spoken form. There’s even a trivia giveaway involving sunflowers and merch and the likes. We’ll call it a trivaway.
‘I shine my light so I can reap what I sow’ is a lyric dripping with resilient passion, and one that typifies afrofuturist work. It was apt that during Glow Up the lights were cut and individual beams from the crowds’ devices or lighters shimmered across the room. In that one, luminous vocals and light synth provide a backdrop to the forceful tone. One of their final songs (arriving shortly after a passage from a track they’re yet to complete) was My World, which they recorded with Jorja Smith. Their voices are not so dissimilar to Smith’s, and it’s a beautifully smooth number which utilises simple key chords, tight hi-hat and clicks. I’d be intrigued to see them with a live band actually. For sure.
They philosophise often around the ‘ability to think and write things into existence’, which is a noble observation, and one that informs their cool, complex, thoughtful music. At times, the multitude of styles and techniques on display cloud the clarity of the event, preventing , perhaps, full musical realisation of a Oshuniverse. At others it is precisely this multitude which enhances the fantasy and impresses most. The audacity to grapple with histories, to consider their rewriting, to deliberately alienate and distort forms — this is what marks their new space as a work-in-progress, one we can both already sense and eagerly anticipate.
Charlie Cunningham @ Redgrave Theatre
Singer-songwriters donning acoustic guitars. They pop up don’t they? Always and everywhere. Fresh out of cover sets at local joints and all-too-willing to put their own flavour on a somewhat saturated sector. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what differentiates Charlie Cunningham from this smorgasbord, but the key is that he is different, and in fact rather oozes quality. There are a few things to consider:
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He has a gripping, natural timidity, which is completely without pretence
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He plays with genuine prowess, but of course, that’s not enough on its own…
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Such prowess steers clear of conventional chords and structures, opting rather for an under-utilised playing technique — perfected over 2 years in Seville — a fine, flamencan classical plucking style called ‘Golpe’. Exotic sounding but essentially Spanish for ‘knock’, Golpe’s board tapping technique accentuates strums, propelling certain beats and rhythmic patterns
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His words are simple yet evoke rich scenes, and are woven cleverly over these elaborate rhythms. They’re relatable in a time of mass confusion and perpetual complexity. What’s not to like?
In performance, as on record, these traits combine to form an entrancing, light-spirited and hospitable atmosphere. Where are we? Redgrave Theatre: a modest pool of blue felt tucked away in Clifton. Serves rather well as a setting for such a concert…
Support came via the stunning (albeit sad) songs of Winnie Raeder. There’s an Adele like quality here — and the boldness of such a claim does not make it any less valid. Some numbers are performed with hands clasped over ticker, to which pounding chords add weight. Others see Winnie take up the guitar and strum with soul. Her short set was winningly tender, and fulfilled its goal of warming us all up. A few bleary eyed moments, perhaps.
After a short interval (how very theatrical), Cunningham and his bandmates take to stage. Tracks from both albums — Lines two years back and Permanent Way earlier in ‘19 — build on the grounding of his earlier 3 EP’s (‘which I saw as my first album really’). It’s all earnest music, ripe with echo, reverb and delay that don’t oppress or obscure the sound. His brand of indie-folk is gentle, it’s embellished so deliberately and so unpretentiously as to immediately set itself apart from major label grandiosity. The track Molino is as strong an indicator of this as any other. Its flamencan flare builds cinematically and drops straight into You Sigh, a beautiful song, wrought with fear, regret, the rest of it. Any sighing in the place is more a grateful exhalation than a lament.
His recent releases point to progression and maturity. How much of this is down to his bandmates, to those he surrounds himself with in production? If I were to hazard a guess based on their smoothness and chemistry, I’d say a lot. Mind, after 35 “pretty much consecutive shows”, it’s prone to feel natural. It’s certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ acoustic scene. Soft, ambient melodies are, especially in his new album, complemented by synthy drums and mellow horns. Similarly, lovely brush work on the snare (courtesy of Will, who looks like Oscar Isaac) also adds punch to the nifty fingerwork throughout the gig. Brushes and timpani mallets are part and parcel of the subtle atmospherics. It’s all carefully cultivated, excellently executed stuff.
On that – the tracks on Permanent Way remain both thoughtful and understated. Its title track is a journey, a call to longevity. The old cliché of ‘being present’, perhaps. Think Ben Howard’s Time is Dancing with a touch more clarity. Both lovely tunes. Bite ruminates on friendship and benefits from funky, high keys, whilst Headlights perhaps typifies Cunningham’s charm: “now my heart sings, in different keys with new harmony”
His music is candid and intimate, appearing disinterested in sold-out arena tours or absurd pyrotechnics. He’s got his broad tales, his will to tell them and his delectable playing. Each done devotedly and each done well, the result is an hour of half of music that borders on reverie. Two tracks from an earlier EP are amongst my favourites:
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Own Speed dwells existentially on living at your own pace, on not getting caught up in all the slap-dash madness. Lessleg is a song about drinking with friends. He’s got both the sincere and the ironic down to an art form.
Often, the ethereal backing vocals of studio recordings are cleverly replaced by sweet muffled trumpet work, and Sam (at stage rear, who “has broken two things this tour, his toe and his trumpet”) also treats us to one or two horn outros, leaving the lyrics to linger over the staggered seating. Minimum is another of Charlie’s popular ones. It demonstrates the dynamism of his music and the poignancy of his penmanship. With lyrics like “is that what you signed for…they're feeding you lines, to keep you on their side”, Cunningham knowingly flirts with politics, but keeps it personable, varnished with just the right amount of ambiguity. One fellow, a few seats down from mine, responds to the track ending by simply exclaiming ‘brilliant’. I have to agree.
Cunningham is witty, and scarcely a storyteller without the assistance of his strings. He has a number of warm exchanges with his fellow players. They all sip beers intermittently. Much of this music’s warmth falls on how the Golpe playing style interacts with the lyrics. Equipped with this combination — and the by-products of not only beautiful music but a genuine USP — what’s to prevent Cunningham from getting even better? The night’s encore comprised of Blindfold, which is balladic and bold, and then Lights Off, all too fittingly until the lights came up. Everyone’s on their feet, you see, and somewhat rapturous. I too murmur lines of admiration, and shuffle out into the Autumnal drizzle.
James Blake & Assume Form
I’ve been a fan of James Blake’s since I first came across his music. It was a cover of A Case of You, perhaps, from his first album. The way he croaked and crooned his way through that balladic, sad Joni Mitchell number was beautiful. Heck sausages, his artistry and voice are beautiful. I said it. But his voice is not necessarily the first point of focus for coverage of his artistry; that claim may well go to the crisp production which has only evolved in its complexity with each release. From the laudable breakthrough record Overgrown to the more sprawling, cynical (and sanguine?) follow up, The Colour in Anything. And so on in such a vein. One time, when we were on a long bus trip to Yala, I stood, squished and warm, listening and finding some juxtaposition or another in the track Digital Lion against the rugged, arid landscape and the pending safari. His music has a place in my formation. His ability to lay down sentimental imagery and abstract, touching anecdotes over and besides sharp beats has always been enough for me. Anyway, my relative fandom meant that upon the release of Assume Form — after a hiatus and period of introspective, artistic growth for Blake — not only did I rinse the thing for a solid few months, but I also sought out tickets for its tour. I wanto pronto.
Enough sweeping gumph, let’s get things rolling with a singular, vital fact: I love snare. He’s always had a knack, but Assume Form seems to take the physical and electronic snare tuning to a lovely new high. It’s there in perfect proportions on most tracks, turning at intervals to driven, synthy numbers and at others to vocal crescendos. Yet Blake never abandons or attempts to overcome his most powerful modus operandi: sweet piano roots. I went to see him at the o2 Academy in Bristol one Spring evening years ago. Quite rightly, he played a bunch of stuff from Assume Form, including kicking off with the delectable eponymous track: a proclamation of return, a call to clarity. Can’t Believe the Way We Flow was special, as was the brief rendition of Barefoot in the Park, with Rosalia’s looped, skippy vocals escalating and exciting. Are You In Love? — unreal; delivered essentially acapella; perhaps this particular night’s biggest evidence that Blake is an accomplished vocalist. Somewhere down the way he let the place go pretty quiet, bar murmurs and shuffles and impressed little verbal reviews, before popping off with Where’s the Catch. Rah diddly. Look, some painful idealist wiggling between my ears had thought, you know what, maybe 3 Stacks will justify heading to this little corner of Bristol from wheresoever geniuses reside to deliver that class verse, but alas, no Andre was bought out to a shivering quaking Samuel. Nonetheless, it was a wicked live take of that heater, that corker cameo, and those rhythmic rushes afterward. Everything is rose, you know?
From his front catalogue to his back catalogue, but this isn’t weird job descriptions and obituaries, this is clear markers of Overgrown’s enduring greatness, again including the titular track (morose turned magical) plus Life Round Here and Retrograde. Couldn’t pick a highlight; they all did absolute bits. Actually maybe I can — Voyeur turned into the most expansive piece of the night; he and his two band mates rolled through phases of heavy instrumentalisation that culminated, somehow, and thankfully, in punctuating cowbell. What kind of fantastical sphere would this be if we gave as much heed to cowbell as we give to snare From The Colour in Anything I have to say the highlight was Timeless, which was early in the showing; Wilhelm Scream and Limit to your Love were also special, though I’m far less familiar with his debut than I am that which followed. Nevertheless, anyway, regardless, and precisely because of all this, he basically came across humble, talented, and consistently considerate in how he composes and performs music. You know, what it says, what it does to you. I enjoyed the gig greatly and that was consensus. Thanks for coming.