music

Just back from Skopje, where I was mainly attending the Skopje Jazz Festival, but also visiting friends and going to see Animal Collective in concert. Yes, I’m prepared to drive for an entire day just to get to some decent music, and no, driving through Montenegro and Kosova is never a pleasant experience, and yes, I will be posting reviews of the concerts.

While I was in Skopje, Ivana invited me to guest on her radio show on Channel 103. We talked about the hidden links between Skopje and Croydon (seriously), the music scene in Macedonia and how all music is pop music now. Also, I played some tunes to illustrate that last point:

• Sleepy Head - Passion Pit
• Lovesick - Friendly Fires
• I’m Good, I’m Gone - Lykke Li
• Butterfingers (ft Fujiya and Miyagi) - Bomb the Bass
• Carolina - Seu Jorge
• Killers About - Benga

At some point I’m going to try and stream these tunes. Although now that Muxtape is dead, and I don’t have a broadband connection, I’m not sure how that’s going to happen.

My 15 minutes of fame was supposed to be 60 minutes, but I managed to get completely lost in the RadioTelevision Macedonia building. Next time, I plan to make incendiary comments about the political situation in Macedonia and see if I can get myself PNG‘ed. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the MRT building:

How weak is the pun in that title? Luckily Augie March have a new album out this month, which means that Glenn Richards will be working his lyrical magic once again. Title track Watch Me Disappear isn’t storming single material, but it gives me the sense that this is just one voice from an album that’s going to be full of voices. A novel in sonic form, if you will.

Good to have them back, and hoping that Watch Me Disappear is as strong as Moo, You Bloody Choir. While you’re waiting for your copy to arrive, listen to There is no such place (acoustic version) and marvel at how these horny-handed sons of the antipodean soil deliver such effervescent beauty, etc, etc.

The Shape of Music by Dmitri Tymoczko covers fascinating ground in suggesting that the human affinity for mathematics is bone-deep, as long as the bone we’re talking about is the malleus. Tymoczko offers a jumping off point for a wider discussion about the way that humans receive the world while talking about the way chord progressions using the analogy of musical notes positioned on a clock face:

The reason these chords all sound alike is that the human ear is more sensitive to the distances between notes than their absolute position on the clockface.

So in music humans are more sensitive to the relative than the absolute; likewise the visible universe in general is more sensitive to the relative (acceleration) than the absolute (speed), as Newton’s bucket showed. Humans have been in love with the idea of absolutes since at least Plato, but perhaps it’s time to throw away our dreams of perfection and accept that relative values are the only ones we can rely on. An absolute morality makes no more sense than an absolute music.

A fascinating article which I have shamelessly hijacked for my own purposes. Read it all, and while you’re at it read Music in Concentration Camps 1933–1945 by Guido Fackler, for a reminder of the perplexing role of music in human history. (HT the latter: Norm!)

UPDATE: Well, gosh:

This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education.

I feel a thesis coming on.

Montenegro lacks anything resembling a live music scene, and I was suffering serious withdrawal symptons as a result of spending too long up a hillside with only the livestock for company. On the other hand, when you’re surrounded by cows, the one thing you don’t need is more cowbell. So I went to Zagreb for the VIP InMusic Festival, arriving just in time to catch the first day’s acts.

I also arrived just in time for the weather to turn festival, with a thunderstorm that turned Jarun into a mud pit in about 5 minutes flat and delayed all the performances. Musicians are feeble - if they’re worried about electrocution, they should just wear rubber shoes. Electrifying performances! Oh, I do make myself laugh. There were plenty of Croatian acts, but I didn’t drive for half a day to see them - so I apologise to my one Croatian reader. Everybody I saw was great (I have good taste in music, anybody can tell you) but some were greater than others. In ascending order, but I wouldn’t click on any of the links below unless you really, really love Flash animation and MySpace.

9. Sons & Daughters. I knew nothing about them when I arrived, and I still don’t. Scotrock, good stuff, not much barnstorming, they probably featured on the cover of NME at some point.

8. Amadou & Mariam. Disappointing - even A&M’s inherently sunny dispositions couldn’t dispel the rain this early on. The music was fine, but there was no energy on stage - it was like watching a really high resolution DVD that consists of a static shot for an entire hour.

7. The Prodigy. If you’ve seen them once, you’ve seen them. I’ve seen them more than once, so I’ve definitely seen them. Nothing much has changed for the Prodigy since about 1996, but why should it?

6. Nick Cave. I admit to being fully mystified by the deification of Nick Cave. I was pleased that his onstage persona is nothing like his recorded persona - he talked with the audience between every song, and there were jokes, too. Imagine! His songs feel too much like cock rock in goth drag, but I can see why people like him. (Iza tells me that she loves the way he moves his body - I can’t see it myself.)

5. The Go! Team. If pogo was an Olympic sport, the Go! Team would be the UK representatives.

4. Seun Kuti and Egypt 80. The worst thing that you can say about Seun Kuti is that he isn’t his dad, but neither am I, so I can’t really hold that against him. The Afrobeat revival has taken everybody by surprise (including me, who insisted on playing Fela Kuti to drunk rugby players at Birmingham University at great personal risk) and while Seun is always going to be one step behind older brother Femi, for some reason I prefer Seun.

3. Hot Chip. Okay, I’ll admit - this surprised me as well. Hot Chip? Aren’t they just Kraftwerk wearing a pair of plastic breasts who’ve watched Stop Making Sense too many times? Well, maybe - but they also ripped up the soundsystem on the main stage and gave a walloping performance despite the rain. It’s just a bunch of guys tapping on various mini-synths and electronic doodads while one of them sings nerdy love songs over the top, but somehow it works. Perhaps I was suffering from undiagnosed electropop withdrawal, but they’ll be pleased to hear that I’d pay money to see them again.

2. Tinariwen. The reason why I came to this festival in the first place. I’ve missed seeing Tinariwen about three times in different countries, and I was determined to see them this time around. Their whole desert blues shtick isn’t as fresh as it was when they first appeared, but it still sounds more elemental than pretty much everything else going. You get more for your money as well - at least eight people on stage at all times, and if somebody isn’t a-singing or a-playing, they’ll be a-dancing. Surprisingly there was a huge and appreciative crowd for them - who knew that the Tuareg freedom struggle would play so well in Croatia?

1. Dreadzone. I didn’t even know that Dreadzone were still around - I thought they’d died in a terrible dubplate accident in the mid-1990s. I remember buying their first album and thinking it was pretty average, but clearly I didn’t know what I was talking about back then. Watching MC Spee do robotics on crutches while the soundboard mashed up Chase the Devil and the band gave shouts out to South London was priceless. Hands-down the best set of the festival, which makes it the best gig I’ve been to in the last year.

I grew up in Croydon, which was a cultural graveyard made only partly bearable by the fantastic Warehouse Theatre. (It’s still a cultural graveyard, but now with added Ikea and knife crime.) Music was my only outlet, but there was a serious lack of live music, so it was two turntables (and occasionally a microphone) for me. I spent an unhealthy proportion of my time hanging around in record shops, listening to 12″s that I couldn’t afford and waiting for something exciting to happen. Nothing exciting happened, so I got out of Croydon as soon as I could.

I vaguely recall Big Apple Records in Surrey Street being one of those record shops, purveyors of white labels so obscure that even I had no idea what they were - all shiny black sleeves and illegible marker pen. Now I discover that Big Apple Records was the spiritual home of dubstep in its early days.

Bastards. They could have told me they were planning a musical revolution.

Considering that I’m about to go on a fanboy rampage over the Iron Man film and considering that Ghostface Killah (aka Pretty Toney, aka Tony Starks) is riding high on my playlist, I’m not sure how I missed this report from MTV last year: Ghostface Killah’s Iron Man Obsession Lands Him A Cameo In Upcoming Comic Book Flick. The whole thing sounds a bit Entourage to me, but this quote is a work of genius:

I jumped in there for maybe 12 or 16 bars, nothing too major. It was a good look for the kid because Robert Downey Jr. recognized me as soon as I seen him. He was like, ‘Yo, Tony!’ … For him to recognize me, I was kinda surprised by that. I didn’t know he even knew about the kid. … We called each other Tony onscreen. I’m like, ‘Tony Stark, I got your jet, I didn’t mess it up.’ He was like, ‘I got the Bentley for you, I laced it up.’ I had two girls with me, I was like, ‘That’s you [pointing toward the girls].’ I sent two birds at him. It was a wrap for that scene. He’s a cool dude and funny. Big up to Robert Downey Jr.

Anybody who talks about themselves in the third person as “the kid” has my respect, naturally, but “I jumped in there for maybe 12 or 16 bars, nothing too major” is possibly the best description of a cameo appearance in a film ever.

Andy and Meg have recorded a new song, but I can’t mention the name of aforementioned song because my parents read this blog. What would they think if they knew that I hung out with people who sample David Lee Roth and sing Dance, Motherfucker, Dance in close harmony?

Whoops.

In other music news, masochist sits through all 763 MP3s submitted to SXSW this year - and reviews every single one of them in 6 words. Now that’s an impressive level of commitment, or possibly just a truckload of drugs. The top pick - what a pick! - were Creature, Canadian pop rock with more vim than my mum’s cleaning cabinet. For your listening pleasure:

Creature - “Brigitte Bardot”

“The Bake wants the Log” - genius.

Look, it’s not my fault if you don’t get it.

Holy isht, climate change is depressing, isn’t it? Time for some light entertainment as I turn into the blogging equivalent of the Royal Variety Performance, circa 1988 (hosted by Ronnie Corbett and Bruce Forsyth, don’cha know). In that year, Rick Astley busted a move all over the place, but how familiar are you with L’Astley’s oeuvre?

If you’re really having trouble with this question (which you undoubtedly will if you aren’t British and didn’t grow up in the 1980s), the Minute would like to assist, because that’s how we roll. Assistance comes in the form of a Rick remix which has the remarkable effect of making you want to dance to “Never Gonna Give You Up”, rather than punch someone in the lung.

Never Gonna Give You Up (Solly Remix)

I unfairly pegged Koop as a lightweight nu-jazz act, but a couple of tracks on their first album, Waltz for Koop, stood out. The reason they stood out was the voice of Yukimi Nagano and, when I finally saw Koop at Cargo in London in 2006, she really made the concert. As well as an amazing voice, she had a great look to go along with it.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been following her (which is not the same as stalking her,  although I’ve been doing that as well) as guest vocalist on other people’s albums (notably the under-rated Movin’ On by Hird) and wondering whether she would ever release anything under her own name. Now, finally -

She hasn’t. However she is the vocalist in a project called Little Dragon who last year released their debut album - also called (originally) Little Dragon. The album didn’t appear to have any marketing behind it in the UK, which is a shame because - while it’s not the best album ever - YUKIMI NAGANO IS THE VOCALIST.

One track on the album is heart-stoppingly beautiful, and should make it obvious why I’m going on so much about her voice. Watch the video, listen to the song, buy the album, as you wish.

… especially when they feature people I know!

After getting in from Dhaka yesterday, I went for dinner yesterday with Natasha and her husband Richard.  Now I haven’t seen Natasha for about 2 and a 1/2 years (since I finished the tsunami contract with WFP, in fact), so it was a bit weird to meet up with her in London.  Even stranger was her new alternative career as a video model for Indonesian rock bands, as you can see in this clip from Padi….

Apparently one of the comments on YouTube says that the model does a really good job of looking lost - Nats pointed out that she had been in London for exactly four days, had no idea where she was, and so looking lost was remarkably easy.

Nice track, anyway.  The Indonesian equivalent of Coldplay, or something.

If you haven’t seen Gary Cohen’s documentary Judah and Mohammed, you should track it down somewhere and watch it. It gets under the skin of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and after an hour of following two young men - one Israeli Jew, one Palestinian - it gets under the viewers skin as well. What made it especially powerful for me was that you are actually watching Judah and Mohammed grow and change over a period of 18 months, without any sermonising by the documentary makers. It’s this human story that really brings home the futility of the conflict, and the way it distorts people’s lives on both sides.

This was a good excuse to write something about the documentary, since I wasn’t blogging at the time it was screened. However I should also say that Gary is hosting the launch party for The Berakah Project, a group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim musicians on 27th November at St Paul’s Church on Bedford Street in Covent Garden. Too often, these sorts of project turn into a worthy muddle, but the music clips on their site talk of a dynamic blend of different styles with firm roots in the music of the middle east; so head along and enjoy.

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to befriend Tessa Souter, a British expat living in New York earning her crust as a jazz singer. Since then I’ve seen her a few times - whenever we happen to be in the same city (London, New York, Washington DC) I make sure that I go and see her play. She has a very fresh mainstream style with a pinch of exotic flavours, writes tunes that really come from her heart, and plays with some great musicians. Everybody that I play her album to loves it, which is always a good sign - maybe you should buy a copy for yourself?

If you don’t feel like buying an album solely on the basis of my recommendation (I don’t see why you wouldn’t - I have really good music taste), then there is a very easy way that you can hear Tessa’s music and support her at the same time. Simply click on this here link to Tessa’s MySpace page and you’ll instantly increase her number of hits. This sort of thing impresses record companies, you know, plus you get a chance to listen to some good music while you’re at work. Everybody, as they say, is a winner.

Unless MySpace crashes your browser, which just happened to me twice. I should emphasise that this wasn’t Tessa’s fault, however.

The third evening of concerts at this years festival was the first evening to feature what the average punter thinks of as jazz - you know, drums/bass/piano trio, horn sections, “standards” - but the audience was pretty much the same as the first two nights. I mean that literally - because the Skopje Jazz Festival is as much a social as a musical event, you see the same faces on successive nights, just sitting in different seats.

The first set was the Jean-Michel Pilc Trio. I’d never heard of Pilc, a self-taught French pianist, but his trio featured Mark Mondesir, one of my favourite drummers. On that basis alone I assumed that the quality of the music was going to be high, and it absolutely was. Pilc is an ethereal force at the piano, light and vigorous at the same time, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, sometimes playing directly with the piano strings, sometimes falling off one side of the keyboard. I was worrried that he might be too imposing for a trio setting, that he would dominate the music, but Mondesir and bass player Thomas Bramerie balanced him well. A mixture of Pilc’s own compositions and standards given his own twists and turns, I could have left happy after that without waiting for the second set of the evening.

I’m glad I did wait, however, because after the break we were treated to The Leaders, a superstar group put together by Chico Freeman. If you have any familiarity with jazz, you’ll recognise names like Bobby Watson, Lenny White and Eddie Henderson. The band were slightly off form because their luggage had been lost in transit, and so they were dressed in their travel clothes, but they still blew through the Universal Hall.

There were no revelations, just rock-solid playing; ironically the player who stood out for me was not one of the big names, but the young pianist Frederick Harris. He didn’t rock the keys in the way that Pilc did, but was equally impressive in terms of tone and fluency. The other players were exactly what I was expecting, but I was slightly surprised by how well they played together given how distinctive their individual voices are; the set had the feeling of an extended jam session rather than a formal concert. The frontline players chatted to each other between solos, and there was a real feeling that they really enjoyed playing together, a feeling that they shared with Pilc’s earlier trio.

And that was the end of my Skopje Jazz Festival. It actually went on for another two nights, but I had to get back to… well, I’m not sure what I had to get back to, but I left anyway. I was glad I’d made the effort (even though I had to dig the car out of the snow when I got back to Rozaje, and then drive 5 hours through the winter) and it will definitely be on The List next year. Except next time I’ll plan it better…

Round 2: Juan Carmona Grupo / Miguel Poveda

I love flamenco, but I have now discovered that an entire evening of it is about an hour too much. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy both performances - they were both absolutely exhilarating - but flamenco performers tend to be a bit intense, especially on the vocal side.

Juan Carmona and his group started the evening off - a full lineup of three guitars, percussion, flute and vocals, as well as one member of the group who would occasionally step out from behind the microphone and bust some flamenco dance moves. As you can imagine, the crowd went wild whenever this happened. The set itself was extremely dynamic - lots of light and shade - and Carmona himself proved to an amazing guitarist who was willing to work with his band rather than dominate them. I’m no flamenco afficionado (I get as far as Ketama and that’s about it) , but you didn’t need to be to enjoy the set.

I’m not sure the same could be said for Miguel Poveda. Poveda, a younger musician than Carmona, is an acclaimed vocalist in a very traditional style. In this case, traditional means voice and guitar, plus two members of the band whose role is to provide the clapping. I kid you not, they don’t play any instruments and they don’t sing; they just clap. It sounds a bit ludicrous until you see how essential that is to the performance (although it still sounds a bit ludicrous even then) but it underlines how seriously they take traditional flamenco.

It was during this set that I realised that I had a relatively low tolerance threshold for flamenco. Poveda is a phenomenal vocalist, and it was fascinating to hear the echoes of Arabic styles in his vocal delivery and shades of Qawwali in the intensity with which he performs. Without understanding Spanish, however, it’s next to impossible to follow the narrative that flamenco lyrics provide; for me that reduced my enjoyment of the performance, since the tempo and timbre of the songs tended to be quite similar. At the end, Poveda stood up and moved away from his microphone to the front of the stage, singing directly to the audience - a great way to end, but after he left the stage I breathed a sigh of relief and stumbled off into the Skopje night, still reeling from the intensity of the performance.

(Thanks to Beastmaster112 for posting these clips on YouTube.)

Susannah and the Magical Orchestra / Sidsel Endresen / In The Country.

Norwegians galore on the first night! Melody Mountain, the most recent album from Susannah and the Magical Orchestra (the latter comprised entirely of keyboardist Morten Quinveld) consisted of cover versions of unexpected songs that benefitted from Susannah’s wonderfully languid voice and Morten’s batty electronic instrumentation. The result is like Angel Delight - it’s really tasty, but too much of it and you feel a bit ill. It was fun to play spot the original, but the tempo remained the same for most of the set, which meant that it was difficult to get very excited by the music. Perhaps I ask for too much - you can hear for yourself on the video for their cover of “Love will tear us apart”.

Sidsel Endresen is one of the most fantastic vocalists in the world, with a breathy, versatile voice that she bends into every conceivable shape. She’s not a straight vocalist at all - by which I mean that she can be very difficult, especially when it’s just her on stage. This proved to be the case tonight, where she spent a good 40 minutes performing with a delivery that was a cross between a series of breathing exercises and an episode of Tourette’s. I’m glad I had the opportunity to see her, but I’d prefer to see her bouncing ideas off other musicians.

Finally, Morten Quinveld returned with his trio project In The Country - more accessible than Sidsel, more musically interesting than the Magical Orchestra. It’s hard to describe what they do, because it isn’t really jazz. Although they follow the classic piano/bass/drums lineup, they’re strongly influenced by the European improvisational tradition (which makes sense, as they record for Rune Grammafon) but also build in some very hummable chorus work. And they’re dark, did I mention that? Imagine a soundtrack for a Norwegian movie about the tribulations of farmers (farmers who are also jazz fans) in the immediate post-WWII period, that’s the sort of thing.

At one point, they even tried to get the audience to sing along. It was unsuccessful - somebody should have told them that Macedonians don’t roll like that- but it was also a problem with the National Opera and Theatre, which was where the concert was held. It wasn’t the sort of venue that any of these acts could benefit from - the stage was too big, the audience too far away and the auditorium too formal.

After I saw In The Country earlier this year at Cargo (supporting Supersilent), I found that listening to their album Losing Stones Collecting Bones was much the same as seeing them play live. For me, this is a bad sign for a jazz group, for whom live performance should be the opportunity to really stretch out. Despite that reservation, I really enjoy their performances - they obviously like playing together, they like the audience and they have a sense of humour which comes through quite strongly. This makes up for any reservations I have about whether I’m hearing anything really exciting happening.

So to summarise: I lose Jazz Club points for not appreciating Sidsel. Susannah and the Magical Orchestra are fine, but better in a nightclub than a concert hall. In The Country get the gold star this evening, particularly for the explanation behind the song “Torch Fishing”.

That’s right, music lovers. This year I made the pilgrimage to Skopje for the annual jazz festival, using the opportunity to visit some friends in Kosovo en route. The next couple of posts will be potted reviews of the gigs I saw, and some observations about the death of Toese Proeski. Your enjoyment is compulsory.

I saw Kris Delmhorst perform in London at the start of 2003 - before the invasion of Iraq, politics fans! She was on the same bill as Peter Mulvey and Jeffrey Foucault, both of whom are excellent musicians in their own right. They were performing as the Redbird collective (which also includes David Goodrich) but I’d never even heard of Kris before that night.

In the end, her presence gave the gig a balance that it might have lacked otherwise. Where Jeffrey Foucault was charmingly twisted, and Peter Mulvey was offensively talented, Kris Delmhorst was just flat-out wonderful. Each of the three were fantastic, but in very different ways. Like the other two, Kris is a storyteller rather than an entertainer, but her delivery was more natural, her melodies more hummable, her lyrics more accessible.

You should probably buy one of her albums (I’d recommend Five Stories or Songs for a Hurricane) but in case you don’t, here she is in 2006 performing one of my favourite tracks, “Hummingbird”.  See?  I can be sensitive.

The Spitz is one of the best venues in East London - great bistro, interesting gallery and a fantastic line up of music for all tastes. Well, the Spitz was one of the best venues in East London, because after a battle of many years they’re being forced to move out of their current premises.

The Spitz occupies an unfortunate position on the edge of Old Spitalfields Market, which has been chipped away over the years by the expansion of the City. A rearguard action has saved the historic market buildings, and the market itself still retains its outsider ambience (but only just).

Being in one of those historic market buildings, the Spitz has been under intense pressure from their landlords for several years, presumably because the landlords could get more rent if that unit wasn’t occupied by an alternative music venue.

So that chapter in the history of the Spitz is over, but hopefully they’ll find a new venue and come out of their corner fighting. To mark the end of that era, there’ll be A Great Night in the Spitz on Thursday 27th September at 7pm, with tickets at £15 for an amazing line up of jazz, blues and other musicians.

To finish, my favourite quote in the campaign to Save the Spitz came from Beth Orton, who said

If the Spitz closes it will be an absolute disgrace and a sure sign that London is on the way to becoming a glorified shopping mall with a series of unnecessary restaurants and shops that only recognises the power of the City bonus and not the creative force that gave areas like Spitalfields its identity in the first place.”

Can’t say I disagree with her.

The eternally vigorous Mike Pollitt sent me this flyer for the latest Breakneck Records night out. I appear to be listed as one of the DJs, which is unfortunate as I appear to be quite a long way from London this weekend. Shh - I won’t tell if you won’t.

The good news is that it’s not all about me - this is going to be a night of great music and general shenanigans, all with a blues and soul vibe for the east london crowd. Sunday September 9th at the Old Blue Last - get there early!

p.s. Sorry Mike, but I’ll try to be in town for the next one, and throw down some of those hot rocks.

People often ask me - Paul, who’s your favourite Japanese hip-hop crew?

Hifana are my favourite Japanese hip-hop crew, of course.

What, are you crazy? They bring the deep sea fishing skills.

The jungle drums! They beat to the rhythm of the night! And they were programmed by none other than Nick Faber! Nick always delivers the goods, and it’s a crime that he never made it as a superstar DJ. Still, the dancefloor’s loss is the media world’s gain, and he’s just finished the soundtrack for a new Tiger Beer commercial, which you can watch here.

When I am rich and famous, I shall hire Nick to provide the soundtrack to my life. Everybody should have their own personal soundtrack. Forget about pulling up random broken beat dross on your over-priced iPod - how much would you pay for a top producer to create a personalised score for your daily life?

I sense a business opportunity.

Word reaches me of an upcoming gig in smoke-free London. Needless to say, I won’t be able to attend because - that’s right - I’m out of the country! However I can wholeheartedly recommend it to the Web, even though this is only the second post on this blog and nobody (literally) will be reading it. I think of it as practice, so here’s the announcement:

The ever-louche Alexander’s Festival Hall will be purveying their unique brand of popular music at Tesco Disco on 4th July, at Hedges & Butler at 3 New Burlington Mews. A sample of their tunes can be found (as ever) on MySpace.

Thank you.