The end

Goodnight sweet blog, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Etc.

Here's a map of the good times.

If you're looking for me, I'll be talking rubbish over at Benji's Blog.

Abe Vigoda @ Bardens Boudoir May 12 2009

Why?
It’s been a while. I’ve been doing all sorts. But I never said this would be a frequent experience. This blog will roll like thunder: occasional bursts of noise that might make you a bit wet after a short delay. Or not. Anyway, my buddy Dan bought some tickets to see Abe Vigoda, and I’d never been to the venue. 2+2+blog guilt= yup, go on then.

The Venue
This is our first review in Dalston, east London’s hipster front line. Recently (and harrowingly) anointed by the Guardian as the coolest place in England, it’s on a collision course for bone fide Nathan Barleydom, but will be very fun in the meantime. Brief history: Shoreditch and Hoxton were cool, then the cool crowd got a bit peeved as the Bridge and Tunnel mob got wind of the whole thing, so the cool crowd moved up the road, and settled on the Kingsland Road. It’s still only pockets of interesting stuff (with Passing Clouds, The Haggerston and Visions forming the vanguard) in amongst a cloud of down-at-heel urban London (which provides the “grit” and “edge” and other words that are a bit jarring but will have to do until someone invents new ones). Nonetheless, something is going on over there. I’m fairly sure the burgeoning cooler-than-thou scene will start to infuriate me, but for now it’s exciting.

That said, Barden’s Boudoir really isn’t much to talk about. It’s a low-ceilinged basement with awkward square booths pitted into the walls. The entrance on the street is next to a pound store and a newsagents, signified by a bunch of post-modern musos loitering outside, probably smoking, probably on unicycles or something like that. Very Dalston. The programming seems to be pretty on-message, and its medium size promises a good atmosphere if the music is right.

What they looked like
Abe Vigoda look like your average American geeks. Pretty indistinct. They’ve probably been wailed on by a few jocks in their time. They will never be pin-ups. Juan Velazquez, the most vocal, has a nerdy, camp voice. All of which makes them very likeable, and far from the maddening, European indie crowd.

What they sound like
At first I wasn’t immediately taken. It’s messy, discordant, and often directionless. But this is music to listen to carefully. Elements of their sound are startling- at times, the tinny, detuned chime of the guitars are a deliberately dissonant mimic of an African thumb piano; and occasionally, the drumming is a clattering mix of afrobeat and baile funk rythms. Dead City Waste Wilderness displays all of this; a brilliantly chaotic concoction of tropical punk. Imagine a disorganized, reverb-heavy version of Vampire Weekend. But at other times, they are just a stoner punk band. I was captivated by the former, and enjoyed the latter in a nostalgic, if not earth-moving way.

Conclusion
In these depressing, downward times, the re-emergence of punk it makes a lot of sense. Indeed, its cerebral cousin, grunge, is having a bit of a renaissance in the UK by all accounts. But this US-lead punk revival comes with a fascinating twist. The African influences mixed with punk (critics referred to Vampire Weekend’s preppy-cum-African sound as “Upper West Side Soweto”) are genuinely original, and represent the forging a wonderful, if unlikely, musical friendship. The band could do with putting a bit more into it, physically, but such is the trade-off when style is foregone in favour of substance. More please.

Technorati tags: abe vigoda bardens boudoir punk calypso punk vampire weekend dalston east london african music

WhoMadeWho @ Cargo, December 11, 2008

Why?
Two of my buddies, the bon viveurs behind Kodaly’s Code, are soon headed for Scandinavian climbs. On their holiday, they plan to 1. Pick up a few DJ sets, and 2. Chirps some Scandifemales (see: 1). Last night, WhoMadeWho, a three-piece Disco-Indie-Electro band from Copenhagen were playing in London, and as some sort of reccie, Kodaly's decided to head down and schmoose. My ladyfriend and I, jealous of their philandering ways, decided to tag along and be cool by association.

The Venue
Cargo is one of the Shoreditch darlings. It has been there for yonks. Along with 93 Feet East, it is something of a default venue if you’re on an East London jaunt- i.e. you can semi-guarantee that there will be decent music there, most of the time. But being one of the oldest venues in the area, it falls into the trap of seeming a little predictable, and not particularly bleeding edge when compared to the new ventures around Hackney and Dalston. That said, it’s still a goodie, and the programming rarely falters. In the bar-saturated Great Eastern-Old Street-Shoreditch High Street triangle, the club has been converted from two redbrick railway arches, one of which is an excellent gig space with a great sound system. Crucially, the capacity is in the middle ranges: small enough to feel intimate, and big enough to get rowdy.

What they look like
WhoMadeWho are what I like to call a Hyphen Band: a band that straddles more than two musical genres. Pick n' mix pop, if you will. The Noughties, perhaps, has been the decade of the Hyphen Band, a trend that you can backdate to Soulwax’s 2 Many DJs albums, where Dolly Parton and Destiny's Child were mixed with filthy house and punk. Since then there seems to be a new one every week: rockabilly-pop-punk; indie-electro-house; classical-dubstep-folk-techno (ok, I made that one up, but you get the point). Anyway, one of the inevitable trappings of the hyphen band is that they think they are the coolest goddam things around, because they are just so musically aware, you know? In this evolutionary moment...they are the fittest...and they will survive! He who has the most overlapping circles in his musical Venn diagram wins!

Anyway, WhoMadeWho are none of the above. If anything, they seem to try pretty hard to look like they don’t take themselves too seriously. Indeed, the drummer is in a lycra skeleton suit that extends to a hood over his bald head. Imagine Freddy Ljungberg as a gimp. The bass player and guitarist are also both in lycra jumpsuits, the former with a frilly satin shirt over the top, the latter with a floppy smock. They seem to be playing along with the resurgence of Ziggy Stardust-esque, camped-up on-stage extravagance. MGMT are in on the act too- they recently appeared on French TV dressed as pilgrims, surrounded by pug dogs, canapés and, Segway personal transporters.

The guitarist (pictured, above) deserves a special mention. He's a funny looking chap: with thick wavy blonde hair and a moustache. He looks two parts Dutch porn star, one part hillbilly roadie.

What they sound like
Tough one. Ok, start by imagining a slightly sleazy version of Jonny Cash, with the forced, simplistic crooning of Gary Numan or Interpol. Then add a thumping two-note disco bassline (imagine the bass part at the beginning of Standing in the Way of Control, but a lot deeper), and a tight 16-beat drum line. It’s a bit like hearing Ian Curtis singing along to a Blondie track. Then imagine the bass shifting to become a little more psychedelic funk, with bass lines that sound a bit like The Who or The Doors, with harmonised falsetto singing over the top. The closest overall match, probably, is Soulwax or LCD. However, the thing I enjoyed the most was WhoMadeWho’s inclination to rock out, switching the guitar to more electric grungy sounds from time to time. Their version of Bobby Bennassi’s Satisfaction, for example, replaces the synth line with a rocky guitar riff, and it brought the house down.

Conclusion
As you can probably tell, the music is a heady mix. And with such permutation, it is easy to forget to put a show on. Often a band will be working such wonders with the twiddly nobs and guitar effects that they spend too much time concentrating, and not enough time performing. Not these guys. In fact, they are probably the most engaging band I have seen in ages- able to make excellent music whilst throwing themselves around in their lycra suits. This, my friends, is a Hyphen Band who can pull it off live. I imagine this is because they probably started live- rather than reluctantly converted PC music into real music. All in all, this gig delivered probably the most important thing that live music can do: fun.

pics: lukeisnice, Ewan-M, Mikkel Elbech, zash

tags: whomadewho cargo copenhagen denmark disco indie cargo shoreditch kodaly's code satistaction soulwax

Taraf de Haïdouks @ Union Chapel, December 7 2008

Why?
Last summer, I was lucky enough to cover the annual Romani pilgrimage to St Maries de la Mer in the south of France. The chaos was superb...the music even better. Since then, I’ve been tentatively intrigued, listening out for anything else that sounds a bit gypsyish/Romani/Bakan/whateveritis, and a few Saturdays ago I found a great stall at the indoor market on Brick Lane dedicated to the stuff. The Bosnian owner was blasting out something that I recognised- Fanfare Ciocărlia; a superb brass troupe from northeastern Romania, subjects of the award-winning film Brass on Fire. You may have also seen them on the cover of Garth Cartwright’s book Princes Amongst Men, and heard their version of Born to be Wild on the ending credits of the Borat film.

Anyway, since then, I’ve been listening to them a lot on Last FM, and the website’s bafflingly clever algorithms seem to have noticed this. Via the excellent recommended gigs function (they recommend according to what you have been listening to and where you live), Last FM suggested that I visit the Union Chapel last night, where another Romanian gypsy band, Taraf de Haïdouks, were playing. I did as I was told.

The Venue
In truth, I was as enticed by the venue as I was by the band. Just off Upper Street in Islington, the Union Chapel is a Grade II listed church, where, if you fancy, you can supplicate twice weekly. But when it isn’t being a place of worship it is an intimate music venue, with a super bar in the back. The main body of the church is laid out in pews aimed towards the stage, where Taraf de Haïdouks were framed by an ornately-carved stone pulpit and wrought iron grills, with stained glass hovering overhead. Candles twinkled in the cloisters, and red and amber lights soared up onto the wooden roof and gothic arches. The effect is superb. Magical, even. The acoustics are likewise (but avoid the wings, where the sound isn’t as good). Last night, it was chocker with Da Izlington Massive (well-dressed, middle class world music fans, to be found topping up on red wine during the interval).

What they look like
Taraf de Haïdouks are a troupe of eleven musicians, of which only three appeared under the age of forty. At the upper end, the singer and one of the violinists are well past 70. The younger members are in jeans and t-shirts, the older musicians in their Sunday best. Due to the density of the music- requiring, at times, intense concentration- there isn’t much scope for dancing around. But as they get into their stride, there is as much movement as the music could allow. Props to the older violinist, who at one stage mounts the pulpit and began playing the violin behind his back.

What they sound like
Each member is nothing short of a virtuoso. The music is in perpetual hyperspeed, with fingers battering out flurries of notes on the violin, the cimbalon player hammering in a virtual blur, and the double bass player slapping out sprinting bass lines. Without the foot-stomping rasp of any brass instruments, the effect is more orchestral; at times like a frenzied take on Brahms or Stravinsky (apparently their recent stuff is deliberately more classical). Various members take turns at singing; warbling wails with heavy vibrato.

There are no 1,2,3,4 intros, meaning at times it feels like a long jam around a number of themes. The roughness of the ensemble, paired with the virtuosity of the individuals, make it sound something like a Romani take on the Buena Vista Social club. I love the fact that, with this music, you can almost hear the wanderings of the gypsies, with bits and bobs they’ve inherited along the way: the eastern European sound of the clarinet colliding with Iberian guitar strumming; thick French accordion with the quavering vocals of north Africa and the Middle East. The effect is a beautiful, organic hybrid.

Conclusion
Ideally, I’d like to listen to this music out of my mind on plum brandy, at a raucous wedding in a tiny village in the Carpathian mountains. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Still, though, there is something about seeing this music in this environment that made me cringe a little. I think it’s because this kind of experience makes you realise how painfully middle class you are- listening to a gypsy band in a lovely church in Islington surrounded by (fellow) card-carrying chin-strokers. It’s an uneasiness personified by the sight of forty-something pashmina-clad yummy mummies trying dance while constrained by a church pew. Granted, Taraf de Haïdouks were not particularly rowdy, and yes, to suggest that the middle classes should be exempt from such music is ridiculous and self-defeating in a variety of ways, but, you know, that’s how it felt, a bit. I’ll stop there, because there’s a very high chance that I’m talking utter bollocks. Class consciousness aside, the music was beautiful. Thanks.

Pics: flykr, scraplab, perreira

tags: Taraf de Haïdouks Fanfare Ciocarlia union chapel islington brass on fire princes amongst men Garth Cartwright romani music gypsy music balkan folk music born to be wild last fm romania romanian music

Yo Majesty @ Barfly, November 17 2008

Why?
Yo Majesty are a duo of black lesbian crunking Christian rappers from Florida, who sometimes perform topless. And tonight, Matthew, they will be playing at a venue most accustomed to head-nodding indie chin-strokers. Their lyrical repertoire includes such gems as “put your hands between your thighs and rub on your monkey”. My buddy has a spare ticket. No-brainer.

The Venue
Ah, the wonderful Camden Barfly. As, erm, regular readers might have deduced, this is not my favourite venue. With a small-to-medium sized gig space in a dark, musty Camden backroom, it promises oh so much. But usually they screw up the levels, and rarely deliver. Tonight, however, everything works. Perhaps this is because it was essentially a PA set...a piece of piss compared to setting up for a band. Either way, in this instance the Barfly was an excellent venue for a small, rowdy gig.

What they look like
Shunda K is the rapper. She wears a Dickies jumpsuit, which makes her look like a hospital custodian, with the prison-esque arm tattoos to match. She has a face that can look really endearing and loveable and happy, and then very scary and crazed and like it’s going to kick the shit out of you. She’s really very funny, bantering with the crowd in between songs, japesing like a comedian. She’s a very theatrical rapper as well, with each line matched with a facial expression. This, I feel, is something we can learn from the Americans...there’s nothing wrong with a bit of theatre...you don’t always have to look cool. Jwl B is the everything else. She is bonkers. She is quite a big girl, and is known for stripping off. Tonight she looks like a fat kid who has been dragged on a skiing holiday against her will, but has placated herself by buying a big baggy garish yellow sweatshirt and silly sunglasses. She flashes her right nipple from time to time, whips her top off to reveal a skin-tight sports bra, and ends the gig smoking a joint on stage. Great shift.

What they sound like
Be-jesus. There is quite a lot going on here. Shunda K is a rapid rapper, cramming a barrage of lyrics into extremely tight lines- the effect is more rhythmic than lyrical. Imagine the vocal flexibility of Busta Rhymes or Twista with Andre 3000’s southern Twang, with the rhythm-focussed edge of Ludacris, all sung by an angry lady, and you’re somewhere near. Jwl B is probably quite an excellent singer, but her role here is to growl and scream and squeal and yell like a female Fatman Scoop with a much better vocal range. She buffers the music, and doubles it, and adds flourishes. As previously mentioned, she is a fruit-loop- at one stage she announces to the crowd that her “pussy is real sweaty”. The music is a heavy mix of squelchy electro, supped-up crunk, and bouncing off-beat hip-hop. I say this with very little authority.

Conclusion
Perhaps the most entertaining gig I have been to this year. The tempo of the music is superbly matched by Yo Majesty’s on-stage hyperactivity. Shunda K leaps around the stage in a flurry of animation, acting out every word. Jwl B is, I repeat, a few Tracker bars short of a packed lunch, and throws herself from side to side, convulses in ecstasy, lapses into dance spasms, and occasionally flashes a nipple. But beyond all this, they are both excellent lyricists...Shunda K is one of the best rappers I have ever seen. And there is something political here, too: if the boys can be filthy mutherfuckers peeling their tops off and rapping about banging bitches, why not the ladies? The music I could give or take, and I can’t see myself buying their album. But as a performance...yes, yes and more yes. At the end of the gig, Jwl B is puffing on a joint, praising God, telling the crowd that she loves them, simultaneously inducing cries of “Fuck that shit!” And then there is a shambolic stage invasion and they play two more songs. Bravo.

Pics: Simon Clayson, fabbio, gretchen robinette, nudevinyl

Tags: yo majesty Shunda K jwl b tampa florida crunk rap camden barlfy lesbian busta rhymes ludacris

Friendly Fires @ Kings College, October 7 2008

Why?
It’s freshers’ season, and oodles of fresh loan money is burning holes in the frivolous pockets of thousands of students across the country. In other news, the music industry is fucked, and (as indicated by the recent trend of album tours) the top dogs are hell-bent on making as much money as possible from gigs, because album sales just aint cutting the yellow condiment any more. Put these two things together and what do you get? Lots of good gigs in student unions in October. I’d heard the Friendly Fires on the radio- Jump in the Pool got quite a lot of airplay- and thought it sounded quite good. My good buddy Dan bought tickets, and off we trotted to Kings College Student Union.

The Venue
Thank the lord I’m not a student any more. First up, Kings College is in Temple, which, other than the eponymous temple, is a thoroughly uninteresting part of London. This is the problem with London universities, I guess- they are a disparate affair; plonked seemingly at random, with no real campus, no real sense of a student community, no real buzz. The KCL union is a standard identikit job, with horrible purple panels and drink promo posters and suchlike. To be fair, the top floor club is a good, medium size, and has windows with views over the city, which is nice, but otherwise is a bit too geometric, and sans atmosphere. Easily the best thing about it is the ability to order two pints of snakebite without getting punched. But then I realised that, when you are 24, snakebite tastes abominable.

What they look like
The band were just a band. Top Man chic and so forth. But the lead singer, Ed Macfarlane, was an interesting fish. He is a short chap with a curly bob. And he dances like a latino floosy. He is bestowed with superb snake hips, that gyrated with Mick Jagger ferocity. The kind of hips that ask confusing questions about one’s heterosexuality. And he’s full of energy too, buckling his body into spasms in between vocals, jumping into the crowd. Excellent front man.

What they sound like
There’s a whole lot of zeitgeisty things going on here. A bit of Spandau Ballet melodrama with the vocals tapping into the rocketing acceptability of 80s pop...a bit of cheesy syth chords suggesting early 90s anthemic rave music... punchy synth for a bit of late Noughties electro... a bit of wall-of-sound guitars (see Jesus and Mary Chain/Glasvegas)...a bit of cowbell and samba beat bringing in a bit of the disco Club Tropicana thing...and a bit of Prince-esque funk. How very post-modern. Ed Macfarlane sounds a bit like Brandon Flowers from the Killers.

Conclusion
It doesn’t quite work, methinks. Rhythmically they are excellent, and all of their songs are easy to dance to, but the songwriting just isn’t really there. Jump in the Pool is an exception. On Board has funk, and is a good gimmick of a track, but anyone can do a gimmick track. Everyone seems to think Paris is excellent, but if you deconstruct it, other than the reptitive synths, it really isn’t that interesting, despite having a nice sound to it. And although the songs sound nice and make you want to dance, there isn’t really any musical depth. However, I reckon might be a third-album band- i.e. a band that could do great things after a while, but not now. And the front man is a right little goer. But right now, Friendly Fires are a very strange thing.... a band that sound very good, without actually being very good.

pics: Abby Cattermole, colinmeeks, prusakolep

tags: friendly fires kings college jump in the pool ed macfarlane fresher's week mick jagger

Those Dancing Days @ Barfly, September 25, 2008

Why?
First, an apology. On my Scroobius Pip review, I stated that Jon Hillcock’s Saturday night show was the only thing worth listening to on the increasingly rubbish XFM. In fact, John Kennedy’s Exposure (Monday-Thursday), where I first heard Those Dancing Days, is also a great show, focussing on new music. There’s a theme here- by day, XFM is bobbins; by night, is it actually very good.

And since we’re talking themes, here’s another: I am a fan of Swedish pop, it turns out. Somewhat inadvertently, this is the third Swedish pop band I have seen this year. And someone high up in the musicosphere meant for this to happen, because Scandinavian pop bands are being shipped over to London with intentional regularity- Lykke Li, The Shout Out Louds, Ida Maria, and now this lot. And they are all very good, really, so well done whoever is behind this. It might also be some kind of Darwinian musical selection too... a kind of inevitable musical osmosis flowing across the North Sea...as there is something very (naturally) cool about these bands (no pun intended). In fact, some in the fashion world have being saying it for years- when it comes to style; Scandinavia has got the rest of Europe licked.

The Venue
The Camden Barfly is a venue of two halves. Atmospherically, it is excellent. The downstairs bar is rarely packed, meaning that the gig space upstairs always comes as a bit of a surprise. You walk into what seems like a back room, up some grubby stairs framed in exposed brick, and into a dark, musty, small gig space, fit for a couple of hundred at most. So far, so Camden. But for a venue that promises so much, I have never been anything but disappointed by the quality of sound at the Barfly. And once again, they cocked it up. The drums were too loud, and the synth keyboard and vocals (the two most crucial elements of Those Dancing Days) weren’t loud enough. There’s an argument that with small, atmospheric venues, shit acoustics go with the turf, but I don’t buy it. The Camden Barlfy is lazy: too self-satisfied with being a bit of a Camden institution to make sure the fundamentals are right.

What they look like
Very young. The guitarist could have been 14. They look a bit like a higgledy piggeldy bunch of geeky art foundation students. Excuse the horribleness, but for all the promise of being an all-girl group from Stockholm, they are not an obviously attractive bunch, which is quite nice actually- if they were stunners that would become their gimmick, rather than the music. The lead singer, Linnea, stood out stylistically, with a pencil skirt and a tied-up baggy shirt, which made her look something like a glamorous diner waitress. 80s US bowling alley chic, perhaps, which suits the music. There was something latterday about the way she moved too, posturing her body diagonally and arcing her neck towards the mic like one of the Supremes, clenching her fists and swinging her arms.

What they sound like
Linnea’s voice is full of squelchy melodrama, and makes the whole sound anchored in pop. There is a kind of knowingly trashy romanticism about it, with lots of warbling and accidentals- the closest match is Mutya Buena, weirdly. There is a New Jersey twang to her voice too, that kind of sugary female vocal that you get with the Long Blondes and even Kate Pierson from the B-52s. The music rides with the sound of her voice, in soppy cacophony. It’s teenage crush music, sooped-up by superb drums that maintains the tempo and intensity of the vocals with lots of fills and rolls (a bit like the Go! Team). The fairground synths carry a lot of the songs, making them sound like a poppy version of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Conclsion
Excellent, if only a little spoiled by the rubbish sound. There is something distinctively teenage about Those Dancing Days, not only because they all look about 17, but carried in the music too. Hitten is a pining love song, Run Run is an excitable and naive, and the self-titled track is full of pubescent, joyous release. They make you feel nostalgic and soppy. Gawd, they actually make you feel like you are reliving those dancing days. They make you feel like a teenager. And that, my friends, is a good thing. Top pop.

Pics: rainsoaked, fabbio, possan, Laura Charlotte

tags: jon hillcock john kennedy xfm exposure those dancing days stockholm pop ida maria lykke li the shout out louds camden barfly mutya buena b-52 kate pierson long blondes go! team clap your hands say yeah run run hitten