SubVersion Stop 248: Audiograft Night 3 - [rout] ensemble feat. Jennifer Walshe, James Saunders, Felicity Ford @ Holywell Music Room, Oxford, 13.03.15

Nightshift prospective review 11: [rout] at AudioGraft night 3, Holywell Music Room, 13.03.15

 

Audiograft's third event of 2015, organised by the reliable Oxford Contemporary Music and featuring sonic art from Jennifer Walshe, James Saunders, Felicity Ford and others, proves to be a remarkable event even just three pieces in. The [rout] based collective on display tonight forge new paths out of the finish Trevor Wishart, a pioneer of the term 'sonic art', profligated since musique concrete made headway from humble origins in the 1930s jazz destructuring, later advanced by The Radiophonic Workshop.

Recorded by Wire mag types Resonance FM London, this gig makes an oblique statement early: is the room about to explode? Because here the pipe system of the Holywell has been modified to impression springing a multitude of audible leaks. It's engaging enough stuff on the surface - peppered with instrumental sprinklings - but it's the second piece for full group, a dilated worldview organism of a score, that strikes as a collapsing limb trying to admirably rebuild its core aesthetic.

After a segmented voice and movement piece at its best in choral/body matching tendencies, then a 10 minute interval, the amply attended gig takes on a tutorial pattern recognition exercise where chromatic scale is treated as a cornerstone to voice a dual idea from - "A, B, E" - "strum, strum, strum", combining the small acoustic guitar and extrapolative leanings in body direction. A gong-y double bass tone starts out a more moat-mouthed exponent of castle-like sound sculpture. The wailing violin sonar counterpointed with saxophone and Christopher Bissonnette-esque tribal gong sounds like the waves began to play their own tune. The prepared piano sidelines a melodic bridge in higher register, only to be a postcard sent from a forgotten land.

The last piece is testament to [rout] collective's vision - a fantastic old school drama with disharmonic piano and mournful strings, topped off by French vocals. Strangely, for all the craterous pacing, [rout] seem to have their roots in all adventurous places possible.

Mick Buckingham (www.kapsil.net/muttley / www.focisleft.bandcamp.com)

SubVersion Stop 246: Balloon Ascents + Duotone @ The Bullingdon, Oxford, 23.01.15

Balloon Ascents + Duotone @ The Bullingdon, Friday 23rd January 2015

A duo tone, and a balloon ascent, both point to a shape or colour. Musically the monikers Duotone and Balloon Ascents seem equally sharing of colour and shape, as Barney Morse-Brown and the fast rising, late teens indie starlets prove on this double bill from Tigmus promotions.

Duotone, usually a one-man band, evade soulless pomp and on his first track lifted from 2012's "Ropes", the chirpy cello opener "Walking To The Shore". Barney beckons in well-orchestrated loops and exact delivery of his vocals in the manner of the record, but with a sense of place that is warming in the newly-refurbished confines of The Bullingdon. Speaking to the music promoter in the intermission, there seems wanting to put the previously pretense-heavy screen of the "Art Bar" name-change intent aside and make the bullingdon THE venue for live music in Oxford. With a start to the show like this from Tigmus, Barney at least hits his stride with the lilting loveliness of "Little White Caravan", one of Nightshift's tracks of 2015 so far. Peppered with two standouts from his first album "Work Harder..." - "Greetings Hello" and "You Don't Need Church", the result of the crowd's salute to Duotone tonght is shaping and colouring of ambient pop, in the eyes of one mass that doesn't need religiousity to power its group function.

And what a group function Balloon Ascents are in a longer linger around the clouds of shoegazey, dub-inflected indie that post-rock left behind. Subconsciously seeming to owe much bassline-wise to King Tubby, the wandering waltzes never meander in their own shadow, or fall over from friction between instrumentalists. The players all appear to be doing their job with a smile and this energy translates to the crowd. This is Balloon Ascents single ep launch since their Nightshift cover story
in September and the four tracks are "Cutout" and glued into the narrative tonight. Starting with that lead, then working systematically through to my personal highlight, "The Only One", for once a short, sharp shock of a 2-3 minute length works less well for the band, as they stretch their sonic intent further than the clandestine Radiohead influence. So while post-rock has been flipped out of the fold in terms of its peak/trough nature, the progressive nature of Balloon Ascents tracks
remains a strong connector that pushes their work further than genre limitations allow. This makes it sound fresh and exciting, for one, and also in terms of a live experience, they inject more welly into what may come to them by way of wonder. And wonder, duos of tones and shape and colour is certainly what their set is full of this evening.

SubVersion Stop 245: Storyteller + Autumn Saints + Little Red @ The Wheatsheaf, 16th January 2015

Storyteller + Autumn Saints + Little Red @ The Wheatsheaf, 16th January 2015

Just like tonight's headline act name, each performer in tonight's It's All About The Music showcase has a story to tell. Whether they succeed or not, at least on the merits of tonight's landmark crowd attendance (back to a packed 100) is debatable. But for this reviewer, each performer makes a greater sum than the parts, and a defiant showcase all their own.

"Defiant" isn't a word you'd normally associate with the generally wispy songs of folk trio Little Red, but tonight they are lacking a performer in the delicately-voiced Hayley Bell. Narrowing the track selection - seeing as the tunes are built on interplay between gender - say, "What Say You" which features halfway - and underpinned by a dark, bubbling core that deals with themes of love, hope and sometimes even quiet despair. Frontman Ian Mitchell and producer/guitarist Ben Gosling make the most out of a compacted message: more energy - playing to that well-worn stereotype of male strength - and less of the feminine charm that doted their warmly-received "Sticks And Stones" LP from late last year. As a result comparisons with Fink and even Level 42 support The Mercurymen on two of their new tracks bears more weight, but if the over-talkative crowd could shut up while they play so we could hear them in their best light, that would be most welcome.

"It's all vaporous my friend" is a lyric that can also barely be heard from second band, the Americanans Autumn Saints, and despite their set being fairly interesting, pretty much sums them up. They improve as they go, and although the majority are into it, and the Hawkwind/Jethro Tull-esque worded delivery of the vocals sometimes strikes attention, much is show and no substance, and they need a proper rhythm section and astute instrumental variation to reward patience. The Fender Rhodes keyboard style guitar notes that dot throughout the middle of the set brings the quality up a notch, as do the moments where clarity over loudness gives the band the knowledge of what works and what doesn't. They show promise, in short, but we sometimes wish they'd be autumn saints for real, not autumn leaves, blowing in the wind.

Headliners Storyteller take to the stage with a nippy blast of saxophone as the Sheaf upstairs reaches near maximum capacity. Their intriguing mix of jazz, ska and punky pub rock starts out brilliantly as does the turning of a Booker Prize novel. By the end though, with a nicking of almost the entire chorus of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" comes the catch 22. That is, like a story full of ideas, a novel chock full of pages, there's often a lot of chaff that could be edited down. Besides Little Red, who I really enjoyed, and the appreciated energy gradient of the night, Storyteller sometimes pen too many sentences into their sonic diction to leave you a little lost. They have all the elements to really go places, and a dab hand interplay between guitar and saxophonist. But like oversized books, autumn leaves and even maybe a little red, the vapour needs condensing for the ideas to fully blossom into something special.

SubVersion Stop 233: Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, November 14th 2014

Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, 14.11.2014

"I know Friday night at a folk club is not a normal place to go" posits Little Red songwriter and night promoter Ian Mitchell in the headlining of this All Will Be Well label launch gig. The aching lack of affluence towards intimacy in a hyper-accelerated city creates a cause for discomfort and movement. It's one thing feeling safe in a packed club but another feeling like you really belong, which is a quality Mitchell and co elucidate on my gig of 2014.

Speaking to Ian before the event, Gus Hewlett, a folk guitarist equal parts Bill Frisell and James Blackshaw is said to have drum'n'bass chops, a contrast that couldn't be anything more sonically different tonight. Through a generous 45 minute length Hewlett hacks at his strings in sophisticated fashion, adapting a Bob Dylan piece for his second tune and elsewhere trailblazing an arpeggio wedge to gently impose his semi-auteur ear for a melody. Worthwhile, in short.

Stuart Clark is a commanding presence mid evening, an arpeggio-heavy storyteller in the vein of "Lady Grinning Soul" Bowie with just guitar for company. Disappearance's rhetoric echoes on one of his later tracks, where stop-start rhythms fuse with a folly towards lonely abstraction. It's not all reverbed abandon though, as he swoops and swoons about subjects as broad as nature creating stopgaps between time and place. There is a definite sense of human body spotlighted. Pristine playing, gently crystallising voice over instrumental backbeat. The audience are generally at ease by a paradoxically uneasy set. One to watch.

Opening with drum-free, acoustic "Cures", the vocal interplay of frontman Ian Mitchell, producer Ben Gosling and the elusive female vocalist parries inflections from Finn and more contemporarily Fink, but is sweet-natured enough in lyricism, "names carved in a tree"-esque as they sing to engrave itself onto this reviewer's memory. It's a tale about where two lovers first met, and the usual bushy beard, folk-centric influence in context of there being woods that can lead either lover astray. This leads into "The Garden", the triplet acoustic, vocal assemblages making things "wrong to right" - here the sound carries further than the "face melting" joke Mitchell coyly nods to later in the performance, about the material not being wall of sound enough for the Friday night gurner massive. "What Say You?" resonates stronger, the lead track on "Sticks And Stones", what Mitchell dubs to me as an EP on the night, even though the 9 CD tracks are filled out naturally for full length status.

Little Red definitely sound like a very new band, but instead of amateurish triptych on behalf of the singers and instrument players, they form a cohesive whole not dissimilar to Duotone or XL's Blue Roses. They close post-"Chapters" (a track from their forthcoming record) with "The Boxer", where Ian sings "I'll still be coming back for more" after metaphors for being a broken man. Given the right studio treatment of the exciting live incarnation, Little red could have a rosy future, and close this night so finely.

http://www.oldfirestation.org.uk/event/original-folk-music-little-red-stuart-clark-and-gus-hewlett/

SubVersion Stop 216: The Dublings + Mackating @ The Cellar, Oxford - 26th November 2013

The Dublings + Mackating @ The Cellar, 26th November 2013



Mackating are no strangers to the local reggae circuit. The first time I saw them, Christmas Eve 2006, was my first ever gig in Oxford. Tonight they are DJing and the drummer is even serving drinks behind the bar. And before The Dublings commence their set, we're ineffably sated by their back-to-back mixing.

A version of Jean Knight's soul classic "Mr Big Stuff" goes down well among tonight's paltry attendance, ramping the energy following, providing cool contrast to the understated, reserved demeanour of The Dublings, a white and mixed race dub group who are joining them on the decks before they break into band mode.

"Who do you think you are?" sang Knight. A new five-piece group of reggae and dub lovers brought together by the foundations of dub - soundsystem bass weight, party vibes and a vestige to channel Lee Perry through enough red hot vinyl in this, the opening lines. Staccato live drum bursts on one recording imbue the set with a rare urgency to excite. Although the blending isn't trickery-heavy, Mackating and The Dublings start by giving the lungs of dub in relation to its more renowned cousin reggae a hearty connection throughout.

Now, the band: female/male vocalist, three electrics, a drummer, "from the outside in", as the female vocalist sings. An Adele-like register. The incantations "there must be more I can do, there must be more I can say" is resplendent with boy-girl singalong charm it's difficult not to like. Epic poetry percussion peppers our narrative with a punk energy united to electric wah-wah, as they invite us to "keep it on the down low". A punkier vibe then abounds The Cellar, turning in a detour of dub, amping the reservation sensibility on its head in favour of rock-out periods. Contrast between band members who aren't very imposing but make imposing noise is a paradox full of beans, inviting seeing dub being less about aesthetic dynamics and more about weight of the sub sound.

The certainty is: The Dublings shouldn't be off your Christmas card list before long. Catch them as they rise through ranks of the local scene.

Mick Buckingham

The Dublings' SoundCloud

SubVersion Stop 173: Billy The Kid + Jordan 'O Shea @ The Cellar, Oxford, Monday 4th February 2013

Billy The Kid has a tattoo with the word "Lost" on her arm - fact. She explained on The Hour, a Vancouver show that it's about making your own map, going through life like you just stumbled into something. A shame then that this wasn't more the case for her potential audience tonight, because she turns in an excellent performance, wrought with the seductive wit of Joni Mitchell, and poppier starlet non-warble like Delilah in equal measure.

Support to The Long Way Home tour invites Jordan 'O Shea, a young lad who's been playing on bills with acoustic songsmiths like My Crooked Teeth recently. "Wintervention" gets us going as he tunes into stolen lights, stolen love, "Summer bring her back to me". Performing with a non-waily energy that peaks at just the right points while indebting itself to where the wail ends: with Radiohead, and Foals at their shrewdest. He occasionally loses his grip on the lyricism but when he's in full flow he can sound like bottled Ritz water.

Billy The Kid is also shrewd, but for something else: her track ordering. For instance,"These City Lights", a lovely Country Blues ballad she plays without drums and harmonica accompaniment - just on guitar - becomes greater the centrepiece sounded slightly later in, rather than at the beginning. A pattern shuffling is hence created where you can build your own maps, if you dared. And if you cared to deal with her meaty metaphors like "people as sand / slipping through my hands", you're repayed.  One word though: attitude. "If I close my eyes, I worry / do the stars all disappear?" sang Jordan earlier in the show. While Billy Pettinger prefers a toke with her collaborators Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and R.E.M: "what are you, bummed?" in response to the turnout. It raises a wry smile, but the lasting impression is thus: just because you've played and produced with top artists Billy, don't make you no funstar. Mixed feelings on an evening that should have been teeming. 

Billy The Kid: Website
Jordan 'O Shea: Bandcamp