anatomy · of · distance

Having heard about it at somewhat late notice, all the cheap tickets for the direct train were long gone, and so I booked a ticket on a cheaper route, which involved catching a train going towards Carlisle, getting off at Tamworth (a small town in the Midlands where two railway lines cross each other at a split-level railway station), and catching the next train to Derby. I did this, arriving at about 20:30, and catching a cab to the B&B I was booked into. (The B&Bm, incidentally, was alright; I booked a small attic room for £20, and this was good enough. Though the wireless internet they advertised seemed to be switched off at night, and the "full English breakfast" included in the cost took so long that I ended up leaving without it to catch my train.)

Anyway, the Deirdres gig was great. It was all themed around things that hibernate, and at the door, one had to name something which hibernates, which would then be drawn on one's wrist in lieu of a stamp. The band members were all in appropriately themed animal costumes; there was a caterpillar/butterfly, a hedgehog, a bear, and a few others. (One member, Keir, was out of costume; his costume was meant to be a computer, but apparently broke; he said it was because it was a Windows PC and not a Mac.) Their performance was much like the others I have seen; on the surface, it looked ramshackle and chaotic, but the musicianship holding it together was impressively tight, and, of course, there was the usual exuberantly ecstatic vibe to it, not too unlike I'm From Barcelona (only without the balloons or confetti).

They also screened the debut of the video of Milk Is Politics, between the second and third support bands. The video's theme has little to do with the song title or its lyrics, instead being a somewhat twee, slightly silly adventure concerning eggs. It's pretty much what you'd expect a Deirdres video to look like, and is rather ace.

Btw, Gemma and Sophie of the Deirdres are going to be in Melbourne for two months (from January to the start of March); hopefully they'll get to do some gigs then. (I could totally see them on a bill with, say, Aleks & The Ramps or The Motifs.)

This performance, which I only found out about yesterday, was ostensibly about the restless spirits trapped inside books. Momus (attired all in black, including a hood) introduced himself as "Hieronymus Proctor", a Scottish spiritualist, and then invited attendees (of whom there were perhaps 10) to choose books at random and read a sentence from them, which he then would spin into a tangent, philosophical reflection or evidence of eldritch and unholy things beyond the veil between worlds. Oh, and he also performed a few songs, including Beowulf, and a new piece he's working on with one of the chaps from Gay Against You. The new piece sounded really good, btw; a bit like Talkshow Boy or something. I look forward to hearing the album.

Momus will be back in London in late June, when he will be wandering the south bank of the Thames and telling tourists that they're in Tokyo or something like that. Which should be worth going along to.

The acts themselves: Red Bulldozers (aka local singer-songwriter Ken Chu) was pretty good, in an understated way, though played a rather brief set, not being able to get his laptop working for some of the backings and thus doing mostly guitar-based numbers. He played quite skilfully, and should be one to watch. The Crisps were pretty good, in a slightly folky sort of way. And Pikelet was amazing to behold; she would sit down in front of the microphone, grab a floor tom, tap out a rhythm, and when the loop pedal played it back, tap out something else on a snare, or add some guitar or accordion or vocal harmonies (often in several layers), thus building up a wall of sound, which she would then sing a song over. As you can imagine, all conversation had stopped as people watched what she'd do next.

teamwoolf came by and did an ace job at the door/merch table; thanks. Meanwhile, I spent most of the gig in the DJ booth, spinning tunes between sets.

( here's what I played )

But yes, it was a great night. Anyway, for those who missed it, Pikelet's playing support for Darren Hanlon on Wednesday night; if you want a ticket, hurry, as it's going to sell out.

It was much as the previous gigs, only with a few more new songs. They had the whole spectacle: the entrance to the sound of a Queen sample, the several enormous balloons inflated and thrown into the crowd, who kept them flying like a game of volleyball, the bags of confetti. The band were attired in their slightly cartoonish hipsterwear, and Emanuel was his usual charismatic self, even crowd-surfing on one occasion. The new songs were pretty good; there was one (just performed by 3 members) about making friends with grizzly bears (influenced by the film The Grizzly Man), and one inspired by The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou; and the band got up to their old tricks and broke into reggae towards the end of one song.

There was lots of audience participation, with the audience being invited to sing certain words, clap, and play kazoos, as well as batting balloons around. There was a really friendly vibe.

The support band, Irene, were excellent as well; somewhat smaller, and not quite as over-the-top, but in a similarly joyous indiepop vein.

I want to know what they put in the water in Sweden, and where I can get some.

July Skies played some songs from The English Cold, their concept album about the shadow of war over the English countryside in 1939, as well as some new songs which will end up on a new album, due out next year (finances permitting). The new songs were pretty good, and I look forward to hearing the new album.

The Piano Magic set was great. They started off with I Am The Sub-Librarian, following into No Closure, and taking it from there. Think driving grooves, vocal harmonies and the odd wall of oddly melodious howling guitar. One new song they had was titled England's Always Better (as you're pulling away), which started off sounding a bit like Black Box Recorder and then went into somewhat darker Piano Magic territory; it was basically their attempt at that classic theme, the malaise-at-the-heart-of-Englishness song. As this was their 10th anniversary gig, there was a brief interruption between songs as some members of the audience presented the band with a chocolate cake (which, after the gig, was cut into slices and made available at the bar) and sang Happy Birthday. Then the band resumed, playing Password (complete with its massive buildup of an ending).

Suzerain were pretty good too; they're somewhere between Bowie, Duran Duran and Hot Hot Heat or something. They played mostly new songs (well, newer than the last time I saw them, which was a while ago).

I took my camcorder with me to film the gig, though ran out of batteries so didn't film much of it. I have about 1 3/4 Veto Silver songs and 3/4 of the first Suzerain one, waiting to be pulled off a DV tape. I haven't looked through it properly, but the video and sound seems to have turned out remarkably well; it's good that they're putting proper microphones in camcorders (as opposed to the piece-of-shit ones they put in still cameras that do video).

They're doing a lot of US dates before that, followed by Berlin and Paris. No word on Australia.

(There are so many good bands coming out of Sweden these days. Let's see: SKWBN, Jens Lekman, The Radio Dept. and Sambassadeur, to name just four.)

The other bands were OK too; Farfarlo were decent indiepop circa Sounds-of-Leamington-Spa, though some say they're in danger of turning Coldplay-smooth* and bland (I only saw a few of their songs, though). The Bleeding Hearts were OK though unexceptional; the most remarkable thing about them was that the frontman looked like Nosferatu crossed with Marilyn Manson, which didn't at all go with the music. Michaelmas were fun again, reminding me a bit of The Rumours.

The DJ also played the new Belle & Sebastian single. To my ears, it sounds a bit like the New Radicals' "Get What You Give" Toploader's "Dancing In The Moonlight". Which, for a released single, is probably a good thing.

* Talking point: Are Coldplay, Keane and Badly Drawn Boy are the inevitable logical consequences of C86/Sarah Records-style twee/non-macho indiepop? Discuss.

Sing-Sing, aka Emma Lush's new band, played an acoustic set. They have now grown to four members (Lisa on vocals, Emma on guitar/backing vocals, another guitarist and a cellist). They did an acoustic set only tonight, and were quite enjoyable. They reminded me a bit of Wendy Rule gigs I've seen, except without the mythology/gothy bits.

Client were the headline band. For those not in the know, they're Sarah from Dubstar's most recent band, and are roughly to Adult what Dubstar were to Saint Etienne. There were three of them. One playing bass (which was mostly inaudible over the prerecorded synth backing), one playing keyboards (on a Novation K-Station synth), and one (presumably Sarah) fronting the group. She was attired in a sharp office dress, her hair immaculately arranged, and was wearing black leather gloves to finish off the look; she looked beautiful and cold, like a replicant from Blade Runner, or possibly the computer-generated avatar of a vast, casually murderous yet PR-savvy megacorporation. Anyway, she sang into a microphone, and danced around, striking electroclash-noir-ice-queen poses and occasionally writhing against the other members of the group in a casually predatory fashion evocative of the mating habits of spiders, and occasionally flashing an almost warm smile at the audience. As mentioned, much of the music was prerecorded, though the vocals and keyboards were live; it was much like Schmoof, only with the cold electroclash aesthetic (or, as Dickon Edwards said, like a band of gay German guys only they were women). The music itself is basically the pop side of electroclash (i.e., no aimless Miss Kittin/Ellen Allien-style stream-of-consciousness rants about doing cocaine with movie stars in East Germany or whatever), done very well. Anyway, it was a most entertaining show.

At the start was one of Club AC30's regular shoegazer acts, Oppressed By The Line, a.k.a. one of the members of Sleepless doing a solo guitar/pedals/laptop/vocal performance, which had overtones of Slowdive and Ulrich Schnauss.

There are photos at my Flickr page.

• Yesterday, I went to Banksy's recent exhibition, Crude Oils, at 100 Westbourne Grove. (It's on until Monday.) It basically consists of "remixed" oil paintings, as seen through his characteristically cynical sensibility; think 19^th romantic landscapes with police incident notices, CCTV cameras and shackled and hooded Iraqi prisoners and such. Oh, and the gallery was crawling with live rats. I've written more about this here, and there are photos here.
• Last night, I went to the Club AC30 gig at the Water Rats, seeing a few bands of a shoegazey stripe. I saw only part of Sleepless's set, though they were OK. Sennen were good; they sounded a bit like a cross between Season and the Underground Lovers at their most krautrocky. Then there were Malory; they're a German band who appear to have been very much influenced by Slowdive. One could probably describe them as two parts Slowdive and one part Kraftwerk (not because they're German or their use of electronics (which is sporadic) but because of the precision of their music; their drummer even plays from a click track). Finally, Ulrich Schnauss went up and played some tracks, mostly new ones. Much of his tracks seemed to be coming from a PowerBook, though he was playing melodies on a keyboard over them, and there was a female vocalist/guitarist playing along with him. It wasn't exactly rock'n'roll, but it was good. I ended up going home with pockets full of CDs.
• The Nathan Barley DVD turned up in the post this morning, and it's well bum. Even though the booklet that comes with it is essentially a Nathan Barley-branded pisstake on Banksy. More about that in my blog.
• This afternoon, I spent some time wandering around Canonbury/Newington Green, which is quite a pleasant area. I was taking photos of a plaque-shaped hole in a fence post when a boho-looking black dude saw me with my camera and spontaneously started striking poses. It turns out he's a bit of a local character there, a DJ and a youth worker. I suspect that that area could be the London equivalent of North Fitzroy/East Brunswick.

Tonight, I went to Bethnal Green, and caught most of a band called The Kissing Time. They were enjoyable, in a post-C86/Library Records sort of way; they sounded a bit like Tugboat (mostly the vocal harmonies). A few of their songs were a bit bland and AOR-ballady; one of them sounded not unlike 1927. I'm told that this is because one of them is into Coldplay.

hazyjayne

I went home with a bag full of Belle & Sebastian merch. I'm currently drinking chai out of a new "Belle & Sebastian Play If You're Feeling Sinister" mug; I also picked up the T-shirt, poster and keyring. I didn't get the book, though will get it in my next Amazon order.