Originally published at kemptation.com on 12 November 2015. Words by Richard Kemp
(Photo credit: Jenny Berger Myhre)
Monday 9th November 2015
An angelic, yet haunting, performance from Seattle-based singer Briana Marela precedes Norwegian purveyor of avant-garde, and unapologetic crosser of lines, Jenny Hval. While Marela’s hand had gently built up feelings of pop-laced euphoria, Hval takes pleasure in announcing to the Bristol crowd that her hand is very different. A severed hand, perhaps.
Perched atop a half-deflated yoga ball and wearing a Goldilocks blonde wig, Hval cuts a slight stage presence. Her curious personality and penchant for the uncomfortable, however, envelope the entire venue. This is embodied perfectly as she wanders through the first few rows of seating, an ethereal shape dressed in grey that is neither on this plain nor beyond it.
Terrifying screams are juxtaposed with uplifting, industrial beats that, when silenced, create a gaping chasm of loneliness almost too raw to bear.
Previous tours of Hval’s have included live bands and a focus on instrumentation while this show is very much centred on her performance. Screams of “who does your feeling?” and “so much death” serve to terrify while juxtaposed with uplifting, industrial beats that, when silenced, create a gaping chasm of loneliness almost too raw to bear.
It’s not all so serious, though. Hval proves that she has a sense of humour, referring to the yoga ball as her ‘spirit animal’ and even assuring the awestruck crowd that not everyone in Norway sings this kind of music.
We sit through a short, awkward timeout, during which Hval patiently plays a cover of Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness through a smartphone, and then the theatrics take a turn for the outlandish. Hval removes her blonde wig and places it on the floor above her now-also-removed jacket and trousers to create a flat model of herself. Dressed now all in black, she lays next to the empty frame, appearing to either dominate her own stage persona or submit to the empty vessel she has presented herself – all this soundtracked by a montage of Hval’s howling vocals.
Hval invites the audience to chat after her set, though she warns that she often makes no sense after a show. While a few people may have felt this way during the show, most will have left The Lantern giddy from having witnessed something that boldly challenges the way we think about live music performance.
Originally published at kemptation.com on 26 June 2015. Words by Laura Thomas
There was a time when England was the very apotheosis of a failed state, as waves of invaders scratched a living in the ruins of an ancient civilisation. The land depopulated by famine and relentless epidemics, religious sects practiced trial by judicial torture. Public executions by burning or beheading were common. Scientists were heretics. Civil wars raged between absolute rulers, armies packed with foreign proxies. It was a haven for pirates and launched countless wars of aggression.
No one can be sure quite what triggered the quiet revolution, known as ‘The Age of Enlightenment’, that led England and Western Europe out of the dark ages. Thoughtful souls gathered in coffee shops and parlours and replaced superstition with science, bigotry with reason, and fear with knowledge. Maths, science and history; unravelling the mysteries of it all started with these small bands.
It is that salon movement, that restless curiosity, during the dawn of the age of reason, that Also festival’s curator, Helen Bagnall, sought to recreate as scientists, writers, musicians and artists all gathered in rural Warwickshire.
Also festival managed to assemble not only a guestlist of great variety and depth, but an audience to match.
Salon-London has been running for several years now, promoting events with science, art and psychology at the heart of the agenda. The movement has spread through word of mouth, eschewing commercial marketing models and defying received wisdom.
The festival that grew out of those clubs is now in its second year, with the Capability Brown-designed landscape (the original, not the 1970s art-rock band) forming the ideal framing. Infrastructure is otherwise minimal; adequate, but never falling into empty spectacle.
On Friday, the excellent Mr Heart took to the main stage. Before that, though, came Matthew Morgan with a performance heavily influenced by Bauhaus (the 1920s German art movement, not Pete Murphy’s post punk poseurs).
Mr Heart’s Tamsin A is every bad girl’s punk fantasy: dressed in black, crushed velvet and DMs, she spat and snarled as the band launched into a full-on psycho waltz. Polyrhythms lay underpinned by the powerful, lyrical percussion of Helen Suzy, Amy Spray’s nimble bass lines thudding against your teeth like a gob full of vomit. In front of them, a dozen or so toddlers sat and looked on politely, their parents standing behind the tousle-haired moppets, reminiscing about Glastonbury ’04. Muscle memory soon took over, though, as another generation lurched sheepishly into Dad Dancing.
Mr Heart put on a good show – better, in fact, than the format they adopt allows. Songs were interesting and well-constructed; A’s lyrics often hinted at subtlety (and real rage) but were masked by the over-use of loops and vocal effects and by their sometimes-clichéd style. Arrangements were complex and interesting, with changes of rhythm and tempo. There was great use of the considerable dynamic range of the band to provide light and shade. A’s guitar was underused, with solos only rare teases and promises of Tom Verlaine-type soaring, spiky arpeggios unfulfilled (lock this girl in a room with a copy of Marquee Moon). The band’s set was mostly drawn from The Unspeakable Mr Heart, which is worth a listen. Keep an eye on this band and watch them develop.
As Mr Heart were wrapping up their tight and well-received set, the Bat Walk, led by Stuart Spray, went past, down to the lake in the dusk of a midsummer’s evening. Nearby, a cocktail bar in the Black Cab Coffee Co dispensed martinis and good cheer as Marcel Lucont, the Gallic comedy creation of AlexisDubus, took the main stage to entertain a large and enthusiastic audience and bring the evening to an end.
Saturday, the longest day, dawned with festival goers in surprisingly good shape. This is a crowd that has a pint of water before it goes to sleep, refreshingly free of the usual mobs of testosterone-driven, pissed-up wankers shouting at the moon till silly o’clock. There was one man playing pipe and tabor to welcome in the dawn, and he is recovering well following rectal surgery.
This was a day for dodging the showers and wandering from venue to venue. Down in the disco bunker (made from straw bales, no less), DJ Steve Vertigo taught kids how to modulate EQ rapidly and produce a rhythmic effect. Couples were looking over the lake sitting on wicker settees. Strangers met and chatted about the appropriate uses of post-feminist irony and the modal structure of the first Velvet Underground LP.
The main stage was packed to hear David Tong’s talk on dark matter. A dedicated knitting tent was well attended, too, and everywhere conversations were breaking out as a community started to form. The very brave went wild swimming in the lake. Few people bothered climb to the top of the hill where there was rumoured to be 3G reception.
Joanne Harris entranced the crowd with her reinvention of Loki for the modern age as a sort of cosmic Arthur Daley. Singer-songwriter Matt Maltese, only 19, showed some deft touches in composition and arrangement; a little bit predictable but plenty of time to mature. Joana Parker gave an interesting talk on her book of maps, though possibly needing a map to show when Marcos Santana and the TRIBO samba drummers were going to kick off, we lost the last ten minutes of her talk.
It became more normal to engage your neighbour as barriers came down, and that’s when things started to get really interesting. Somehow, Bagnall had assembled not just a guestlist of great variety and depth, but an audience to match. Daniel Richard’s excellent talk on his book, Great British Songwriters, grew into a discussion of the intellectual and scientific basis of sythesthesia (seeing sounds as colours), with one member of the audience, Mr Heart‘s Amy Spray, talking like a consultant neurologist. Jamie Bartlett led a passionate discussion from the floor about the Dark Net, the internet and its abusers.
Cool and beautiful, Karin Fransson mixed her own sophisticated jazz-light compositions with traditional Swedish numbers to celebrate mid-summer, generously providing a measure of the Swedish ardent spirit snaps for each audience member before leading a drinking song and having three or four glasses herself; after which point she became rather less cool if no less beautiful.
The site was abuzz during the afternoon from those who had attended musical director Juliet Russell’s workshop and choir that morning. The main stage was packed for her show for which she had expected maybe a dozen people at most; in the end, 40 festival goers packed themselves in front of the stage to watch Russell give a performance of spine-tingling intensity and passion.
Also is a Marmite festival: you’ll either love it or hate it. If your idea of a good time is to get wankered on supermarket vodka to a deafening soundtrack of cock-rock bands and wake up in your tent covered in mud with a trainee accountant from Basingstoke snoring in your ear, then this festival is not for you, look away now.
Also is one of the few festivals to take genuine risks in pursuit of its aims; it has a soul and a mission and a confidence that embraces the chance of ridicule. This is a festival with no barriers between performers and punters. Artists were there as facilitators rather than entertainers, educators and not stars. The audience comprised poets and scientists, doctors and dreamers, teachers and dozens and dozens of individuals from all walks of life who came away with renewed belief in their own intellect and creativity, with more hope and less fear.
In Juliet Russell’s own words:
“Sometimes we need reminding
To take beauty where we find it
I am you and you are me
And my voice lifts my soul
And I set my spirit free.”
At the climax of the number, led by Russell and the massed choir, festival director Helen Bagnall gave a little jump, fist pumping the air. Agreed, Helen. You smashed it. Well done.
Originally published at kemptation.com on 10 June 2015. Words by Laura Thomas
A trend in recent years has seen many artists eschewing traditional gig venues – with their sticky carpets, overpriced drinks, broken PAs and ear-bleeding volumes – for acoustic gigs in informal venues, sheds, people’s front rooms (crammed onto the sofa with the TV pushed into a corner), kitchens…and bookshops. A whole circuit of community bookshops is springing up as the thoughtful, literate community reject Amazon and Kindle to make community and gather in a circle of light with fellow souls.
The beautiful and enigmatic Sale has been a poorly kept secret for some years now
The Tree House Bookshop in Kenilworth is typical. Tucked away in this hidden gem of a middle-England town, its proprietor, the redoubtable Victoria Meir, provides and oasis of calm in a hectic world. There are books, many books. There is cake, and tea and coffee and sometimes homemade biscuits. And on Friday, local legend Lucy Anne Sale came and brought strawberries and chocolate. The plan was to video a low key acoustic set; she was baffled to find the tiny venue packed in anticipation of her appearance.
The beautiful and enigmatic Sale has been a poorly kept secret for some years now, but somehow she has managed to avoid the mass popularity her talent demands despite touring with Kelly Joe Philips, performing sets at Glastonbury and the Union Chapel and boasting collaborations with Devon Sproule and Rachel Ries.
Sale quickly establishes an easy rapport with her audience, sitting slightly hunched over her nylon strung guitar, her smoky, jazz-infused vocals flowing over a soundscape of chords and runs. A classically-trained composer, Sale has devised her own system on the guitar, refraining from hackneyed three-chord tricks. After playing a couple of numbers solo, she brings on vocalists Lizzie Coughlan and Liz Crowley.
Songs like The Beatles (about a Facebook stalker) and the bitterly acerbic Where Does all the Money Go? show the trio’s unique vocal stylings. These are no mere backing singers; the three voices syncopate against one another and the jagged polyrhythms of Sale’s guitar, harmonic intervals and breaks unexpected and glorious in their originality, reflecting hours in the practice room and the considerable skills of Coughlan and Crowley as well as the classical training of Sale. The arrangements resemble a string quartet, with the guitar taking the part of the cello and three voices driving rhythm, melody and harmony into one glorious whole. Or, as one wag put it, ‘like the Andrews Sisters on acid.’
Sale’s lyrics are a mixture of the enigmatic and the commonplace: the homespun themes of Hurry, Quickly merging with displays of breath-taking vulnerability on Fooled by the Minor Key or Slow Motion Heart.
Material is drawn from her privately-released second album Sonomama and her yet-to-be-recorded new album on which Sale promises string arrangements and is looking for crowdfunding to try and get the project off the ground. Check her out at www.lucyannesale.com and make your pledge.
Lucy Anne Sale has a busy summer coming up, and the gig with full band at the Bridge House Theatre on 26th July (as part of Warwick Folk Festival) is one not to miss.
Originally published at kemptation.com on 28 May 2015. Words by Richard Kemp
Another year, another venue, the same zesty mantra: Love Saves The Day. Now in its fourth year, the Bristol-based festival for all things electronic, hip-hop, dub and drum ‘n’ bass returned with a glittering, all-star lineup, which included the likes of Groove Armada, Roni Size, Grandmaster Flash, Jessie Ware, My Nu Leng and Four Tet. There was worry of it being a rain-drenched slopfest this year, but the event, moved to new location Eastville Park, proved itself a veritable suntrap, the sun’s dazzling rays roasting the heads of anyone who had neglected to bring a hat (or at least a welder’s helmet like one forward-thinking party-goer).
Walking through the gates of Love Saves The Day (LSTD) on Saturday was an instant shot to the senses: multi-coloured balloons and bunting decked the vicinity, as did pillars painted shocking pink, a ferris wheel, an old-style horse carrousel and a giant inflatable chapel (devoted, of course, to dance and spur-of-the-moment marriages of convenience). There was even hula hooping all day long, a big cuddly playpen for the kiddies (most of whom were all wearing construction-site ear mufflers) and an enormous robot structure under which sat a full-size wrestling ring dedicated to the many high-octane dance-offs that would ensue all weekend. There was no way around it: LSTD was a colossal adventure theme park built specifically for adults; adults who had all come to get drunk on dance and high on love.
Eastville Park seemed the perfect setting for such an event: a great rolling hill of lush green played below a wondrous blue sky that gave way to nine different stages, each one decked out more majestically than the last. The gurning and face chewing started early here, with many punters running themselves into the ground unable to calm their chemical jitters. A good thing there was so much to keep people active, then, from the aforementioned dance-off wrestling ring to the Bump Roller Disco arena, which featured a proper ‘90s-style roller disco but without the skin-crawlingly bad commercial radio music. Instead, the skating was soundtracked by live DJs all weekend (the likes of Dirty Thoughts, Lee Pattison and Hot Buttered Soul to the rescue). The hulahooping stand encouraged much entertainment, too, not just for the people doing it but for those watching who got to see numerous fest-goers, clueless of what to do with their bodies, spend 20 minutes simply gyrating at thin air – this, of course, at a dance music festival, where that sort of behaviour is nigh-on compulsory!
It was nothing short of impressive to see how much effort each company had gone to in order to set up their stage for just two days of partying. The robot above the dance-off ring was staggering in its size while even the tiny (relatively so) Cocktails and Dreams stage was covered in bamboo canes, floral strings and juxtaposed with a full-size clamshell for any festival mermaids who wanted to climb inside and bob away to their own meditative beat. Every stage was dressed to the nines in rave colours – pinks, yellows, greens – even the bazaar burst with colour.
And then, of course, there was the music. Hard to avoid it, really: thunderous basslines collided into one another like confused bulls in heat as DJs in every corner of the park threatened to drop any beat they were currently holding, resulting in screams of euphoria from the audience when they finally did so. People piled into every tent, venue and stage, excited for everything around them, though, unlike your average rock or pop festival, there was actually room to move. Even at the front of each stage, where a crowd might normally concentrate most of its energy, there was plenty of space to flail away. Perhaps this is the nature of electronic shows: after all, you’re there to get wild and have a good time, not necessarily stare wide-eyed at the band on stage while yelling the lyrics to every song in your neighbour’s ear. There was never any reason for artists to introduce themselves either since, for most of the time, people weren’t paying that much attention anyway. They were more interested in exploring and marvelling at their own bodies as the chemical-induced imbalances began to kick in.
This fourth year of LSTD had plenty of big-name acts to draw in crowds – your Groove Armadas, Roni Sizes and Azealia Bankses – but there was a mass of new music to discover, too. The Just Jack stage played host to a great many contenders, from funky disco outfit Soundstream to an entire Sunday curated by Teachings in Dub, which included an especially chilled set from Channel One. The Cloud 9 stage, meanwhile, boasted some of the strongest acts of the weekend, including Gorgon City, My Nu Leng and the soon-to-be-huge Tourist. Pop sensations Rae Morris and Indiana urged Saturday’s main stage crowd together early, both backed up by full bands to prove you didn’t need tables of decks and MacBooks to get a gig here while Futureboogie brought a bevvy of delectable delights to the Apocalypso stage in the forms of Maxxi Soundsystem and Ame, among others. Crack Magazine, ever the purveyors of quality music you wish you were cool enough to have found on your own, did not disappoint with a stellar cast of heavyweight beatsmiths, including Floating Points, Daniel Avery and bedroom nerd / heartthrob Four Tet. The London DJ graced the Paradiso tent at 9pm to rapturous applause and hollers from a crowd that could not have been happier to see him. He repaid the respect by ending his two-hour set with a couple of dub-fused numbers to mollify the Bristol locals. The set seemed to end rather abruptly at this point, though, as if the DJ hadn’t completely thought it through. No matter, though, as the LSTD audience had moved on to exploring the inner workings of their own legs by this point. They were just happy to have something to move to as they fell deeper into their Four Tet vortex (fourtex?).
Originally published at kemptation.com on 25 May 2015. Words by Lumina Kemp
Not much is generally to be expected of a Thursday night show – especially for a band that hasn’t been on tour for a couple of years. They could be rusty or shy, and it being a school night it’s generally best not to hope for much. But tonight seemed to have a buzz about it and Bristol’s O2 Academy was pleasantly full with a patient flock of those in the know. Tonight, the stage was set for Django Django, with a backdrop of white drapes and screens creating a sharp contrast to a collection of instruments that also patiently awaited the show to begin. The lights flickered off and on, as if a playful child had seized control of the switch, while the lads arrived onstage dressed in smart, white-and-black-striped, buttoned-up shirts. They looked like the kind of boys you’d not give a second thought to having over for tea with your nan: polite and modest, but with an underpinning of immense and mysterious talent.
If you weren’t taken away with it all, you must have checked your pulse at the door
The fourpiece began gently, sleepily, with soft harmonies and almost ominous tones; their opening number sounded akin to the credits for an early ‘80s video game before swelling into a huge, orchestrated movie score for an unknown epic Western and later spiralling into an intergalactic drama. Songs like Waveforms and First Light were held together with a driving beat that kept hips a-boppin’ and heads a-rockin’. It was clear from the onset that they were going to give it their all tonight. Lead singer/guitarist Vincent Neff never took a shortcut on vocals, playing a whole array of extra bits and bobs; more fun was to be had as songs expanded and were improvised on the spot, spreading out the goodness like butter on toast.
As the Bristol crowd loosened up, they grew hungry for more of this cosmic stew of indie-styled, ancient surfer rock. No worries if you forgot to take your drugs, though, as the boys provided all the elements to send you to outer space and back. It was like watching a live art film unfold in real time: strobe lights and a laser show complimented their complex and seamless changing and weaving melodies. Song after song flooded the room with unpredictable, and yet perfectly aligned, changes, woven tightly and yet given enough room to roam and explore.
Halfway through the show, the quartet invited saxophonist James Murray to come up and join them, and together the now-quintet continued setting sail. They were obviously enjoying a bit of play with the audience, at one point having everyone get down on the floor only to rise back up with the beat as Wor sent the crowd completely off their feet – not even the sticky beer glue of O2 Academy’s dance floor could keep them down. So high off the rhythm were the crowd, instead of cheering for an encore, they belted out their own rendition of Wor so the boys could return to a serenade of their own tune.
By the end, Django Django had managed to strap the entire crowd into their psychedelic, interstellar spaceship destined for a better world; a world where never-ending, driving beats sync with your heart and stomping feet. Where surfer rock dines with sprawling Western scores and float together through a sea of harmoniously dreamy vocals. If you weren’t taken away with it all, you must have checked your pulse at the door.
Originally published at kemptation.com on 19 May 2015. Words by Richard Kemp. Photos by Aidy Brooks
Once you get close enough, the sound of Motion, Bristol’s leading underground music venue, pulsates all around you, echoing off houses, warehouses and rushing along the grubby wet floor of each underlit street. It feels a little like you’re making your way up a hill in the dark, toward one of those old creepy hotels from a horror film, or the lair of a mad scientist. Get close enough, though, and it’s something else entirely. More like a biker den in a post-apocalyptic B-movie.
Scores of punters line the outside of the bustling club, some buying Slush Puppies, others waiting for the portaloos to open. Others still lean against the walls, drinks in hand, laying to waste any memory of a largely unmemorable working week. Inside, Motion is a labyrinth of sweaty, wet caves juxtaposed with intermittent, bright lights and throngs of people needing propping up every which way. Tonight, people are here to forget their troubles, forget their responsibilities and, most importantly, forget themselves.
French DJ troupe Chinese Man play to a sea of enlightened wanderers who, tonight, leave whoever they were at the door to jive together as one. The trio bring with them a mass of equipment and enough MCs to cover half the venue. The stage itself is flooded in light and smoke, often blinding the audience’s view, while flanking it are two dazzling pieces of artwork: totem heads made from a collage of digitised leaves. The sharp eyes of each electronic head pulsates with every pound of bass.
The smoke hadn’t really cleared by the time Chinese Man started their set, which left some people scratching their heads and wondering whether this was the group they had come to see tonight. Many simply followed their ears.
Chinese Man play to a sea of enlightened wanderers who, tonight, leave whoever they were at the door to jive together as one
Fans of Chinese Man are generally enticed by the group’s melding of cultures, influences and styles: electronic beatsmithing, hip-hop, jazz and Asian rhythms. It’s all there with Chinese Man. And so it was difficult to get that excited when they started with the dubstep. Perhaps the threepiece wanted to please the regular crowd, the ones that come to Motion every week to dance like strung-out zombies. Nevertheless, it was different to what the average Chinese Man fan thought they were coming for. The overuse of bass does have its good points, however, and certainly gave the venue reason to light up its hypnotic totem heads and send further punters into blissed-out trances. Plenty of Groove Sessions material came out, too (classics and soon-to-be classics), many with live MCing.
Such trying intrusions are minimal in their gripe, however, when you have the likes of Krafty Kuts & A-Skillz on second. Veterans of the live circuit, the duo had no qualms with giving the audience exactly what they wanted – and, indeed, what they didn’t know they wanted. When a DJ puts on Queen‘s Flash Gordon, for example, it’s pretty customary to look around and check you haven’t walked into a cheese night by mistake. There were hefty boos as Kuts & Skillz tried just this. However, before people even had time to throw their hands up in disbelief and walk out, the pair had cut the first ‘Flash’ in with a rolling bass and turned it into one of the most irresistible dance lines ever blasted through speakers that had electronic totem heads on either side. Such talent can be jaw-dropping at times. That and the duo had a plethora of dancing ladies in front of them.
Kemptation 