Kap Bambino / Advert at Cargo 16 June 2009

Kap Bambino

It’s a lovely summer’s evening and the venue seems almost entirely deserted. This is because everybody is sat outside and generally chilling. The time slot allocated for the first band passes without sign of interest from anyone except for a large guy pacing in front of the stage. He occasionally looks at his watch and has words with the DJ’s, who are either ignorant of events or the bearers of bad news.

Finally, languidly, the support band drag themselves up on stage. This is Advert and they soon dispel any easy summer vibe with a wall of feedback from three guitars. So apparently unstructured is their sound that it is a good few minutes before I can definitely tell that they have started their set and are not just having difficulty in getting their instruments as they would like them.

It isn’t particularly enthralling. Occasionally one of them will stoop over a microphone and mumble, and there is a sporadic drumbeat mixed in amongst the general sonic scree, but this seems lazy, derivative stuff. They don’t play for long either. It seems a token performance at best. [Reading that back, it sounds like the old Woody Allen joke – First old woman: “The food here is disgusting!” Second old woman: “Yes! And such small portions!”]

The stage is now bare apart from a small table with electronic equipment on it. A reasonable crowd is now milling in front. And then the bombs start going off.

Not literally, but certainly the sonic equivalent. Kap Bambino may only consist of a guy (Bouvier Orion) cranking up the beats and a tiny girl (Martial Caroline) singing and stomping, but my word, what a performance! The noise levels are terrific.

Martial is a constant blur of motion, often literally so as she whips her head from side to side under the strobed lighting until her facial features melt like the hallucinations in ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. She is never still.

The set relies heavily on the band’s ace new album ‘Blacklist’. Individual tracks are hard to distinguish because of the hundred-mile-an- hour pounding of the backing and the swooshing, buzzing ,electric static that will render me stone deaf for the rest of the night and most of the following day.

Those of you familiar with the set up at Cargo will be aware that the two main speakers hang overhead on chains on either side of the stage. Martial rushes from one to the other, hanging from them and swinging them alarmingly over the audience.

She repeatedly dives into the crowd of enthusiastic bodies and is either borne aloft or lost amongst their legs. She never stops shouting and singing for a second. At one stage she dares the crowd to join her on stage and they do, at which point she jumps to the floor and carries on, the roles reversed. Bouncers come onstage and clear everyone off, but they look bemused rather than angry.

At one point Martial emerges from the throng perched on the shoulders of the large guy from earlier in the evening. He supports her for around thirty seconds until his legs give out and he slowly sinks to the floor like a trusty steed whose heart has given out after a long gallop. She dismounts, gives him a hug and climbs back on stage, stopping only to mock head-butt the security guy, which is funny because she only reaches up to his belt buckle.

It’s an exhilarating, exhausting and disorientating show. There is a momentary respite as the band bounce off for water and a rest, but soon Martial is back, cavorting with a towel, which she repeatedly thrashes into the floor.

I stagger off into the night with my ears whistling like a kettle and a cut above my eye.

It’s still a lovely summer evening.

Songkick - A User's report

Let’s have a look at Songkick

This is a new website/application that aims to do for live gigs what IMDB does for films and Last fm does for music. It's been running a beta version, but is now properly up in all its glory.

The premise is simple, if daunting. Users create a shared database of gigs that they have been to in the past and the site collates these to issue alerts of when a user’s favourite band is touring (including the opportunity to buy tickets).

Does it work? It’s early days yet, but the signs are promising. It does help if a user is already operating a Last FM account, as information about preferences can be easily transferred from one to the other. For the rest of us, there is an initial, rather laborious stage of loading information into an account. Actually, it’s only onerous if you want to load in details of past events that you have been to and you live in clubs as much as I do.

The task that Songkick has set itself is to be an index of live performance. This is always going to be tough as, unlike records and singles, gigs are fleeting in nature and once they have occurred they are gone forever. Recollection of past events can be hazy, even for the performers involved, let alone any punters who happened to be in the vicinity.

As an experiment I tried to update my account with details of those gigs that I have attended this year and last. As perhaps was to be expected, given the somewhat specialist nature of these shows and the relative obscurity of a lot of the acts, in most cases the Songkick database had no record of either the concert or the participants.

To rectify this I had to put the gig on their database and then indicate that “I was there”. This rapidly became a bit of a pain.

It was also the case that the coverage of some ‘bigger’ acts was patchy. The Magazine gigs at the Forum earlier in the year were present and correct, Buzzcocks high profile Shepherds Bush Empire show was absent, although other Buzzcocks dates were listed as options. Even stranger was The Fall’s 1st April show at Koko which appeared to be missing, and the computer message that came up saying “You cannot add a date for The Fall.”

I appreciate that the database can only reflect the information that is added to it, and that it will gradually become more populated, but at the moment it is frustratingly arbitrary. It’s a Catch-22, the site will become better the more people use it, but until more people sign up, it is slightly limited at the moment.

There are nice interactive touches. Users can approve a particular concert via a five-star rating, or post their own reviews. There is the inevitable social networking element that will enable fans of a particular band to flock together. I suspect that in time it will more fully integrate with Last FM.

The ‘Tracker’ feature is hugely impressive. As the site scrobbles the contents of your iPod (other music players are available), it matches the acts with its own database of forthcoming gigs and lets you know who is coming to your area. This feature will get ever better as bands and promoters notify Song Kick of their activities as a matter of course.

If you know of a gig that is not on the database, you can add it yourself ( I have just added Suzerain’s forthcoming headline slot at Brixton Fridge on 19 June).

A feature that I would like to see (unless it is already on there and I haven’t worked it out yet) is a ‘newly added’ feature that notifies you of freshly announced gigs from acts that you may be interested in, in addition to the current calendar. In an age where attendance at a gig can depend upon being speedy with an internet booking, this would be very useful. [UPDATE: Such a feature does exist. You can arrange for an email to be sent to you notifying you of changes. I now know that Pere Ubu are playing the ICA in September]

However, as I say above, it’s early days. At the moment, I’m very impressed with this site and would commend it to you. Incidentally, it is international, so it’s not just UK users who may benefit.

Applicants / Wojtek Godzisz / A Genuine Freakshow at 229, 04 June 2009

Applicants

Going down the steps into 229 is slightly odd, as it sometimes feels like going down into a public convenience. You feel that there ought to be a 20p turnstile at the bottom, but actually there are a couple of personable young people with a cash box and a hand stamp.

Upon entering, we find the first band already on stage. We creep by, as there are more of them than there are of us. Seven of them to be precise. A Genuine Freakshow are one of those multi-instrumental groups of all the talents that make you think that they are less a band and more an evening class that enjoyed jamming together and wanted to share the fun. In addition to the usual guitars and drums, they also find use for a cellist and trumpeter. The former adds depth to their sound, but tonight at least the latter is mostly inaudible.

The focus of the band is Tim Sutcliffe, who plays guitar and sings in a piercingly pure falsetto that is impressive, but hard to warm to. The songs vary between Sigur Ros style orchestral workouts to full on thrashing of the type that dullards like Mogwai and Spiritualised use to generate the illusion of excitement. A Genuine Freakshow seem pretty good at what they do, even though their brand of music is not really for me.

At this juncture I pop into the other venue within 229 to see if there is anything interesting on. Tonight’s entertainment is a fencing class. And that’s with epees rather than creosote. As I’m a bit wary of intruding amongst people who are actually armed, I stick to the room where the bands are playing.

A quick history lesson. Symposium were a much-touted band who operated in the late Nineties and were at one point poised to be a Next Big Thing. However, for some reason they rather stalled on the launch pad and never quite took off. They were Apollo One rather than Apollo Eleven. The band split into various components, the most important of which, Wojtek Godzisz, is here tonight with his current outfit.

Godzisz stands splay-legged centre stage and blasts out a succession of huge sounding sing-a-long power pop anthems. He’s big and ginger and hairy and having a good time. It ain’t subtle, and would be better suited to the main stage at a rock festival, but it certainly makes for an entertaining, if not overly demanding half hour. The songs are still here, the stage presence is fine, and it’s just the venues that have got smaller.

My ears are still feeling battered as the next band set up. I first saw Applicants at the turn of the year and was much taken with their combination of quirky pop songs and over the top stage antics. Tonight I’m just slightly less convinced.

Part of the problem tonight seems to be the sound mix, which renders most of the vocals inaudible. Many of the samples upon which the band relies fail to trigger properly. It’s all rather chaotic, and not in a controlled way. As if sensing that things are falling apart, singer/dancer/cheerleader Jeffrey overcompensates wildly.

Beaming like a Cheshire cat she bounces around the venue like a rubber ball, grabbing audience members and whirling them around. She is singing all the while, but it’s hard to hear her. Back on stage she pouts and crawls around, reathing and writhing and fainting in coils, as Louis Carroll had it. Suave front man Fidel Villeneuve plays his guitar with his teeth and makes occasional sorties off the stage, apparently forgetting that he can’t take his microphone stand with him.

However, even a misfiring Applicants are great fun, and things start to fall into place in the second half of their set. New song ‘When Porn Took Over The world’ sounds great, ‘History Has Been Kind To Spike Milligan’ remains a wonderful song and band and audience combine for a rousing bawl through the traditional set-closer ‘Evelyn Waugh’.

There is a fourth band tonight, but as a) they are called Megadudes, b) look like a bog standard rock act and c) are called Megadudes, sheesh. It seems a good time to bail out.

A varied evening that came good at the end.

Duchess Says / Bang Bang Eche / DiD at Madame Jo Jo's - 26 May 2009

Duchess Says

At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much happening at Madam Jo Jo’s tonight. The pit in front of the stage is empty, and the DJ is playing a selection of prog rock classics, particularly The Nice’s version of ‘America’. Not the most apt of choices, because none of the bands tonight hail from the States, or even the UK.

First port of call is Christchurch, New Zealand and the maniac punk funk of Bang Bang Eche. They hit the ground running and never let up for a second. Frontman T'Nealle Worsley’s face is obscured by his long hair, and he is a non-stop blur of motion, leaping and prancing, or simply jumping on the spot. The rest of the band comprises keyboards, bass and guitar, all of whom switch instruments on a regular basis. The drummer looks to be about twelve.

Bang Bang Eche, don’t do ballads or slowies. Each track is a ridiculously enjoyable full-on explosion of dance. As their track has it, it's '4 to the Floor'. The band may have five pairs of feet between them, but no more than three are on the ground at any one time. The audience is drawn from the four corners of the club like ants around sugar, and soon everybody is bouncing and bopping like loons. It’s not the most original of sounds – mid Eighties bands such as EMF and Collapsed Lung have been here before- but it has such seldom been performed with such enthusiasm and brio.

The set ends with the final guitarist off the stage and in the pit. He leans against a monitor and is playfully strangled by his singer. The music stops and I can hardly tell, my ears are ringing so hard.

Long term readers of this blog will know that the album ‘Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs’ by French-Canadian band Duchess Says was my record of last year. I’ve never had the opportunity to see them live before, so I’m ridiculously excited about rectifying that tonight.

The band is dressed in black and start pounding out an ear shredding motorik of driving drums and white noise. The microphone at centre stage is unclaimed. Gradually, inch by inch, singer Annie-Claude edges into view, determined not to turn her back or disengage with the audience for a second. Her eyes are wide. She looks like a slow loris.

There follows a performance the like that I have not seen since huddled around a TV set in my youth, lusting after Kate Bush from afar. Annie-Claude ‘interprets’ every word, every beat, every keyboard skronk with a hand gesture. Her fingers clasp, stab, point and wave in a constant flurry. Her face contorts, grimaces, breaks into beaming smiles or scowls in an endless procession of emotions. At least one of my companions finds this too much, too ‘silly’, but I am transfixed.

All the songs that I raved about here are performed. The noise is astonishing. The crowd are dancing, but are also bludgeoned by the onslaught. Annie-Claude screams or rolls her eyes into her head until they are completely white. At one point, in mid song, she jumps off the stage, wanders through the back of the crowd to wish some friends ‘happy birthday’ and give them presents.

The rest of the band is having fun too. When a song requires hand claps, they beat their hands together in a gesture signifying wings, possibly a reference to the band’s own peculiar ‘Church of Budgerigar’ mythology. The bassist is playing his instrument at the head rather than the bridge. Annie-Claude meanwhile occasionally jabs at a keyboard, bent over a separate microphone that distorts her vocals even further.

After a rousing version of ‘Black Flag’ Annie-Claude pulls an unhappy face and says she is sad to say goodbye. Her eyes are streaming with tears and she rubs them to smudge her mascara down her cheeks. I had hoped that Duchess Says were going to be good, and they have delivered in spades.

The crowd dissipates before the appearance of the final band of the night, which is rather a shame. Hailing from Italy, the band too puts visual showmanship at the centre of their performance. DiD are dressed in matching yellow hoodies and alternate between dance punk riffs from guitars held level with their heads or beating wildly at various drum kits. It’s another terrific show, and puts a fine end to the best three-act bill that I have seen this year.

Going home, I am in such a happy daze that I barely mind the complete collapse of the train system (First Capital Connect, the shits), nor the ridiculously late hour I finally get home. Nor even that I awake the next day almost completely deaf. I’ve seen and enjoyed three bands that have come from far and wide to entertain me for the price of a fiver. Well worth it.

We Are The World + Moonspoon Saloon 'White Crane' at Victoria Miro Gallery - 20 May 2009

We Are The World

To a frantic beating of drums, the band appears. They appear to be wearing doublet and hose, they have red, sombrero–like hats and their faces are masked behind long red veils that hang to their knees. Their hands are gloved in black, the fingers bizarrely elongated until they turn on themselves like talons…

…Flashback.

A few weeks ago, I happened across the Los Angeles-based avant-garde band We Are The World. I had a listen to them and was very struck with what I heard. A check of their itinerary showed that they were playing a single UK date as part of a European tour, but that this appearance was to be as part of an exhibition and fashion show held at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

A few emails later and here I am, as a guest of the Moonspoon Saloon collective, admiring the strange yet appealing art works of co-founder and painter Tal R. This is an exhibit entitled Arms de Chine, which takes as its genesis a Chinese manual about ancient weaponry. The objects portrayed in the book are now so archaic that you can no longer tell what they were used for, and the artist has used them as inspiration for his own interpretations of their original purpose. To quote the Press Release there are “owls, sad penises, eggs, elegant guard women with buns, lost scouts, wrong fruits, melted minimal ice cream, sad fruits, junk and bottles, tombstones, embarrassed old uncles.” And very nice they are too.

The We Are The World performance accompanies ‘White Crane’, the latest fashion collection of Sara Sachs and the rest of the Moonspoon Collective. Talking to the band afterwards, it seems that they were rather surprised at this element of the evening, and it must be about the only time that they have not been the most outlandishly attired people in the room…

…Flash Forward.

Identically attired, the band features a percussionist pounding the living tar out of a series of electronic drums and tinkering with other items of equipment. There is a female vocalist, writhing and arching her back as she progresses down the runway accompanied by a pair of dancers/acolytes.

The ‘White Crane’ collection features bright colours, geometric shapes and allusions to ancient empires. There is an almost militaristic undercurrent, heightened by the thunderous percussion and the wearing of intricately designed medals as accessories. The costumes are extravagant, but not necessarily beyond the bounds of propriety, this is on-the-limit club wear and only the brave and the beautiful can carry it off. Sometimes the band mingles with the models, who are struggling to keep their composure amidst the tumult.

The band performs all the songs I want to hear – ‘Fight Song’, which is a potent call to arms, ‘Clay Stones’, which uses beseeching repetition to startling effect. And the mighty track ‘Goya Monster’. Halfway through the set, the veils and hats are dashed aside, to reveal bejewelled, face-covering balaclavas. It’s kind of camp terrorist chic. It’s disturbing but powerful imagery.

The audience are here for the fashion and the art, but are mightily impressed with the music. Each song seems faster and more disorientating than the last, culminating with all four members of the band hurtling and leaping into the onlookers. Sara Sachs and her collection are roundly and rightly applauded.

The differing elements of the evening’s entertainment have meshed excitingly together, the fashion, art and music fused into a complementary whole. Decadent, sure, but playful and funny too. We Are The World are phantoms, here one moment, gone the next. Watch out for them.

School of Seven Bells / Telepathe at ULU - 14 May 2009

SVIIB by Ena Yanai

When I first saw Telepathe at Catch before Christmas, the venue was so small and crowded that in attempting to see the band properly I injured my foot so severely that my doctors cheerfully tell me that I may never be entirely free from pain. However, on that night the band put on a great show.

Tonight is very different. Six months on, and the zeitgeist appears to have moved on where Telepathe are concerned. The venue is barely a quarter full. Melissa and Busy, who previously danced and interacted with their audience, have retreated behind a wall of equipment. They seem to be going through the motions.

The band is not helped by the sound mix, which is atrocious, and will remain so for much of the rest of the evening. The beats are muddy and indistinct, the vocals all but inaudible. It’s like watching a school disco in an empty sports hall.

The overall impression is of a band for whom this is not fun anymore. What started out as a series of vibrant performances for friends at parties in New York has become a six month slog around Europe. They seem as though they don’t want to be here. They need to go home and recharge their batteries.

Headliners School of Seven Bells are also on an extended sojourn to this side of the Atlantic. So far, they are standing up to the spotlight a lot better.

I have been following the fortunes of SVIIB (as they style themselves) for around eighteen months now and am very pleased to finally see them in the flesh. I am also very pleased to see how their live set-up differs from their recent recorded sound.

When the band first released demo versions of their songs, two things were immediately apparent. The first was the wonderful harmonies of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, and the second was the gently brooding, yet powerful menace of Ben Curtis’ guitar work, the two elements combining to make a unique and mesmeric whole.

However, when the band recorded their debut album ‘Alpinisms’, they made a decision that the music should all be electronic. It is not a bad record by any means, in fact it’s a damned fine one – it just lacks the edge of the earlier versions of these songs.

So it is great to see that in the flesh that School of Seven Bells have their guitars in evidence. They start off with ‘iamundernodisguise’ and the sisters’ voices are as one. The sound mix remains severely duff, but the spark is there. The room is much fuller now, and there is quiet attention.

Ben stands between Alejandra and Claudia, strutting his stuff. It’s standard rock hero posing, but relatively restrained for all that. The sound is more restful than that of his previous outfit, Secret Machines, and the company easier on the eye. The sisters are on opposite sides of the stage from each other, and I have to mentally stop looking at one and then the other to see which is the more identical, as though my eyes were following a rally in a tennis match.

The album gets a good work out. It’s all very pleasant, without being fantastic. Everyone, onstage and off, appears to be enjoying themselves. The evening passes serenely and there’s a relatively early finish.

Two bands, two different attitudes. Telepathe appear jaded, SVIIB still bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

But seriously, ULU, sort the sound out.

Phantogram

Ever since receiving a random Myspace ‘add friend’ request a few years ago from a band called Charlie Everywhere, I have been an avid fan of their work. I listened to the music, was utterly smitten and literally bought the T shirt. Finally, their first mini-album has arrived. And they’ve changed their name to something a little less awkward.

Phantogram, as they now style themselves, are a duo from Saratoga Springs, New York. They are Joshua Carter and Sarah Barthel, and they perform beautiful, if occasionally creepy, electronic pop songs. Fans of School of Seven Bells or Fever Ray should roll up, roll up and give them an ear.

The album starts with ‘Mouthful of Diamonds’, a track that that is both joyous and wistful, and as blissful a slice of electric pop as you will hear all summer. I’ve been playing versions of this for a couple of years now and it is still as fresh as the first time I heard it.

Next comes ‘Running from the Cops’ which has an incessant, nagging, almost insect-like buzz of a backing beat and a vocal from Joshua that is heavily distorted. Sarah provides ethereal “Ooh Oohs.” It reeks of paranoia. And yet is still a gloriously catchy tune.

‘When I’m Small’ has a distinctive bass guitar riff, but once more there is an electronic wash of unease. Sarah has an appropriately tiny voice on this, almost inaudible but perfect.

‘Bloody Palms’ is a more straightforward tune, with Joshua on lead for the first half until Sarah responds with her own verses in the latter stages. The guitars stutter and pop behind them, but s l o w l y.

Final track ‘Voices’ is as epic as these two get, the vocals getting ever high until supplanted by an electric drone. It’s gentle, and has Joshua whispering “What have I done to you?”

I’m a fan, so not objective on matters Phantogram. However, I think that there is so much potential here that this album is in many ways simply the end of the beginning phase of what Sarah and Joshua will achieve. The first two songs in particular make this an essential purchase. Check ‘em out now.

Phantogram is available on CE Records/Sub Bombin now.

‘Running From The Cops’ is available worldwide on BBE Records from 12th May.