Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Gigs - News and reviews

Marc ALmond's 'last' album out on Monday.

new interview here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article7143631.ece

Just spent a random Sundy evening at the local GigSwap enjoying the creative energy of Zimbo Hook.

http://www.thetalkingheads.co.uk

An excellent student band wherein David Byrne meets The Copemeister with backing tracks from The Cramps, the Blockheads and the Bare Nekkid Ladies.
Energy, creativity and humour over-ruling a disgraceful lack of technical ability.
But who cares...?

And I tell you what. Really made me reconsider the next time I spend £40.00 and 3 hours getting to London...

Life is all around you. Just turn over a few stones...

me again

Now here's a thing. I have lots of early material by Band of Holy Joy but have only just realised they have a new album out!!!

MUST get this in the next couple of weeks

http://thequietus.com/articles/04661-band-of-holy-joy-paramour-review

*****

Also, an event in two weeks time that looks fun:

Exotic Pylon Live at The Vortex in Dalston
Friday August 13th

hosted by
jonny mugwump

and starring....

Position Normal (live)
Woozy sounds and weird dadaist junkshop collage-pop unveiling a through-the-looking-glass London- an England that is more real than you realised. Position Normal put together a highly acclaimed show for Exotic Pylon in late 2009.

Cindytalk (live)
Now working with Editions Mego, Gordon Sharp has reinvented the always beautiful and mysterious Cindytalk into an extraordinary improvising unit unravelling an idiosyncratic and abstract cracked ambience pitched in a twilight zone of eerie bliss and searching melancholy.

Doug Shipton (DJ set)
From global sonic detectives Finders Keepers Records and mutant psychedelic party specialists B-Music Doug will be bringing a good-times party overload of Persian funk- folk, Turkish rock, Spanish psychsploitation, cosmic Parisian prog, Lollywood electronic pop and a bunch of genres that you didn't know ever existed.

Exotic Pylon Radio Orchestra
An ever-mutating tag-team of special guests (to be revealed on the night), the EPRO will be intervening throughout the night with visuals, poetry, instant composition and Djing.

China Crisis - Abc Glasgow


Gary & Eddie were on top form here. The old songs still sounded great & Eddie always has a smile on his face for the whole evening. The only bad thing was that they came on at 9.20 & there was a curfew at 10.30. There was 2 support acts which in my opinion could have been cut to one to give the Chinas more time on stage. Spoke to Them both after the show & also to Will who was/is a member here too.

Moon Duo, Stereo, Glasgow July 26th

Moon Duo I caught completely by chance and right at the last moment, as on the Monday of their gig I just happened to be browsing the internet at home, in fact I should have been a few hundred miles away in England staying with a friend, but we’d cancelled the trip a few days before due to him being ill.

Ripley Johnson from the Wooden Shjips is one half of Moon Duo, its his side project, and as I’d enjoyed the Shjips gig earlier this year I was wistfully hoping that they might return to my neck of the woods again soon. It was coming up for 5pm when I got the happy surprise and discovered that Moon Duo were actually playing that very evening in Glasgow, so a crazy period of dropping everything and trying to reschedule my evening ensued, and a mad dash by train got me through, with much time to spare as it turned out, as the whole gig started late (due possibly to there only being a tiny audience at the beginning) and it was nearly 10pm when the main act came on.

Earlier on there were about eight audience members including myself, and even during the support act that number had only grown by a couple of dozen. During the wait beforehand there was plenty of time for me to calm down with a beer or three, and reflect on the fact quite a few people also waiting around me were passing the time by texting on their phones, even I joined in. This must be the new pre-gig ritual, so much so that I became aware of a figure standing by an open doorway across from me who was also texting, it was Ripley Johnson, so even the band members pass the time in this way!

Mugstar, the support act, turned out a really good industrial guitar sound, and by the time Ripley and the other Moon Duo band member Sanae Yamada appeared I think there were now at least 70 people in the audience, so I guess that’s not too bad for a little known group, and it felt like there was a genuine level of appreciation being given out with applause during the set.

Moon Duo produced a really enjoyable show of Shjips style psych-rock throughout their act, playing through their two EP’s, (and possibly also one or two other things which I didn’t recognise). As a unit they are as tight as the Shjips, though perhaps somewhat less dynamic to watch. In the Shjips there’s a great visible rapport going onstage between Ripley and fellow guitar player Dusty Jermier, here though Sanae stood behind her tiny keyboard with very little light on her, and her fringe hung totally over her eyes as she played. I’m going to expose my complete musical equipment ignorance here and say that her petite keyboard had quite a few little boxes attached to it, and it really gave out a powerfully effective sound.

Ripley on guitar, was dressed from neck to foot in white, with tee-shirt and trousers, and the spot lighting was entirely focused on him, and it soon became clear that his mode of dress and Sanae’s dark attire was quite deliberate. Throughout the gig there was a swirling and streaked black and white light pattern being projected onstage, a completely simple thing really, but it worked with Ripley’s white in the light, and Sanae in the shadows to his side.

All in all, a good straightforward gig, great music for me, and a psychedelically visual feeling to the show that was neither laboured nor cheesy, I’m so glad I happened to learn that they were playing, it was definitely a case of not having time for any expectations beforehand leading to an unexpectedly enjoyable evening.

The Besnard Lakes, Sneaky Petes, Edinburgh August 17th 2010.

Its been something of a whirlwind romance for me with The Besnard Lakes, I bought this years new album during the summer, (it came out back in march), then quickly got the previous album, and noticed straight after this that they were due to play in my town within weeks.

I’ve never been to Sneaky Petes before, it’s a pub which is part of an old tenement building and I was really surprised at just how tiny the whole place was inside, in fact its probably smaller than some of the enormous livingrooms that you can find in a few of the large old Georgian tenements in the (once) posher parts of Edinburgh. I went along to the gig with a few other people, and the pub very quickly filled up to bursting. It was a humid kind of evening, and during the Besnard set I thought that it must have been raining outside as something wet kept dripping on my head and I assumed that the old building above us was most likely leaking, but in fact it was the condensation being produced by all of us folks crammed into there.

The venue very annoyingly has a thick column slap bang in the middle of the floor (presumably to hold up the roof) and we were stuck at the back when the first of the bands came on with this structure in front of us, obscuring half of our vision and completely blocking out the right-hand side of the stage, we put up with this for the entire duration of the two support bands.

Penguins Kill Polar Bears, and Heart Beats, the supports, were both very good post-rock acts. I particularly liked Heart Beats, just two guys who made a fantastic sound. The vocalist in Penguins’ was extremely good natured about the main act, clearly he’s a fan, and made some nice comments about the Besnard Lakes in the breaks between songs, quite a pleasant attitude between fellow artists, and in such an intimate venue it created a nice atmosphere for us audience.

After the supports acts had finished, I squeezed through the sardine-tin-like conditions and found that down at the front there was surprisingly a good pocket of space just feet away from the stage, and a guy standing there with his girlfriend started cheerfully talking to me about the Besnard Lakes, seems that they too were newbie’s to the bands music. After a bit, four guys shoved through as (as you do) but now there was an extremely tall guy plonked right in front of us. As myself and the guy I’d been talking to, together with his small girlfriend, all struggled to look over this guys shoulder and not bump our noses on his back, the three of us could only shrug our shoulders in dismay at each other, I’d now swapped a stone column that had been blocking my vision for a big male galoot.

The Besnard Lakes were superb live, really polished, and just great people at their craft, and heard live they are as engaging as their actual album material. Many of their songs have fleeting moments of great emotional delivery, and Jase Lasek together with his wife Olga Goreas, and the band, lived up to my expectations and performed beautifully in their singing and playing.

After the first song there was a short break while Lasek replaced one of his guitar strings that he’d just broke, this led to some nice banter between himself and a fellow band member, and later on there were a few more similar moments of sociable exchange between the band, naff as this sounds, it was a really sweet atmosphere to share in.

I think we had quite a mixed attitude amongst the crowd that night, for me I’d had a nice conversation with a total stranger, but I suspect that there were a few boorish types amongst the audience. When the Besnard Lakes had finished playing their third song of the evening I noticed some space to my side, and during yet another impromptu break I went off to the back to get one of my companions, a small woman in height, and I brought her to the front where she was finally relieved to see the band, she hadn’t even been able to see Olga onstage. Later on though she told me that a guy, taller than us, had given her a ‘where do you think you are going’ look as I led her through the crowd, and he had actually made a point of saying to her in a very serious tone “you cant do that”.
Those alpha males eh, I wonder if that same guy would have said that to that big guy that blocked my vision earlier.

Several times during the early part of the show Olga Gorea’s had to say something to a guy who was right at the front of her, he was over-zealous with a camera, god knows why, the Besnard Lakes are hardly photogenic, but he was continually trying to get his shots, and at first Olga made some well handled jokes about it, but when the guy actually got up on stage during another long break between songs Olga had to physically ‘guide’ him back down again.

At the end of the gig while we were slowly getting out from the place, Jase Lasek was amongst the crowd and heading to get behind the merchandise stall, he sounded like a really appreciative guy as people complimented him about the gig, and I even managed to blurt out something to him myself as he crossed my path. Later when walking back to the car we all agreed that we’d seen three good bands that evening, and all for the price of a tenner.

Just ordered my tickets to see The Charlatans at Brixton Academy - can't wait.

Jean Michel Jarre - "In-Doors 2010" tour, Manchester MEN Arena, 09.10.10

Best known for his one-off outdoor spectacles in unusual locations, touring is something of a rarity for Jean Michel Jarre, so to get to see the man live, playing a smaller scale, "indoors" version of these shows is something very exciting indeed.

The lights went straight off, just after 8pm and Jarre made his entrance through some of the stand doors, and made his way to the stage through the crowd, met with rapturous applause.

Accompanied by just four musicians, including long-time collaborator Francis Rimbert, and banks of analogue synthesisers and instruments from all eras (over 70 according to the tour programme), the show opened with "Oxygene 2"; perhaps Jarre's second best-known piece. With not a digital synth in sight, the vast array of analogue equipment and intricately played sequences laid to rest the rumours in fan circles that Jarre didn't perform everything live – the odd mistake here and there gave a much more human touch to the purely electronic music.

The PA system was hidden out of sight behind the enormous projection screen which spanned beyond the stage boundries – upon which a wide range of animated sequences from travelling around a giant Moog synthesiser to an animated version of the "Equinoxe" album cover. Combined with laser lights and other lighting effects, every song had it's own unique visual identity and colour scheme as the small but hard-working JMJ band performed all of Jarre's greatest hits; tracks from Oxygene, Equinoxe, Magnetic Fields and Rendez-Vous to name just a few.

One of the show's main highlights was the famous laser harp - luminous beams of green light grew from out of the stage and soared up to the ceiling, as Jarre donned special glasses and gloves and impressively began to play the lasers. Cameras on stage and built into Jarre's glasses gave a unique band perspective during some songs thanks to live image mixing.

Jean Michel worked very hard at trying to get a rather inanimate crowd animated, and eventually succeeded. Although looking around the arena, it soon became clear that Jarre's music has an appeal to all ages, from young teens to some people clearly well over 70!

For me, there has always been something life-affirming about Jean Michel Jarre's music. It feels somehow personal – perhaps because there are no lyrics, so a piece of music becomes your own, to interpret in your own way, giving some songs a whole new meaning. And given that I've been fascinated with the man's music from an early age, there certainly is something extra special in seeing him perform so many of these epic instrumentals right in front of me. Encore!

Sounds brilliant!

Did you get any photos etc...? I've seen some youtube footage from MEN last year and it looks pretty amazing

have to agree, sweet review Alex, and I love the 'life-affirming' description of the music.