A belated RIP... Jackie Leven

KRIS NEEDS remembers the visionary and neglected JACKIE LEVEN.

JACKIE LEVEN (1950-2011)

While punk ruled in 1977, Jackie Leven appeared out of Maida Vale‘s squatting community with the psychedelic onslaught and astounding beauty of Doll By Doll, a band out of time (and often their minds) who released four monumentally intense albums before splitting in ’82. Born on the18th of June, 1950 in Kirkaldy, Fife, Jackie’s gypsy roots and highland upbringing continued to underpin the sweeping soul confessionals and emotive reflections he continued making until losing his battle with cancer in November.

After spending the years after ’67 busking through Europe, Jackie landed in the close-knit Maida Vale squatting community by the mid-70s, forming Doll By Doll in ’77 with guitarist Jo Shaw, bassist Robin Spreafico and drummer Dave McIntosh. The group were a shattering experience live, combining early Velvets apocalypse, West Coast guitar interplay and soul-wrenching ballads, often polarising audiences to the point of violence. My Zigzag magazine were first to report on them as they signed to Warner Brothers-backed Automatic, releasing Remember in March, ’79, followed by their hallucinogenic life-cycle master-piece Gypsy Blood. Doll By Doll’s self-titled third album, released in ’90, lightened the mood in a last bid for the greater acceptance which alluded them, its heart-breaking ‘Main Travelled Roads’ hailed as Leven’s most moving ballad.    

After releasing his first solo single, 'I Believe That Love is Shining Down On Me' in ’83, Jackie suffered a vicious street attack, suffering appalling throat injuries and becoming addicted to heroin. After kicking his habit, he set up the CORE Trust anti-addiction charity, restarting his solo career in ’94 after signing to Cooking Vinyl, releasing Songs From The Argyll Cycle, the acclaimed The Mystery Of Love Is Greater Than The Mystery Of Death, followed by a string of others up to 2011’s Wayside Shrines And The Code Of The Travelling Man. To accommodate his savagely-prolific output, he also made albums available through his Haunted Valley website. While still exploring the dark side of the human psyche, the wry humour of Jackie’s stage announcements also helped make him a much-loved figure touring Europe’s pubs and clubs, a captivating last troubadour already being missed tremendously.

Record Reviews - V/A (Small Stone Records)

Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned 30 Weight

Backwoods Payback Momantha

Dixie Witch Let It Roll

Tia Carrera Cosmic Priestess

Freedom Hawk Holding On

All Small Stone CDs/LPs

Detroit’s Small Stone label has slowly but surely gained a reputation since its 1995 inception for quality heavy-rock across a wide variety of retro styles. After releases by such luminaries as Dozer and Acid Witch, the label’s roster has grown rapidly in the last few years to feature more quality new bands than ever – a small cross section of which are reviewed here.

Gideon Smith third full-length album (following the snappily titled South Side Of The Moon) is a strange brew of stoner, southern and dark gothic heavy-rock. Smith’s adherence to the outlaw code is writ large all over the vampiric desert sound of this album. The covers of Saint Vitus and GG Allin numbers show his clear outsider lineage while his evil croon is a pretty unique blend of Tom Waits and Jim Morrison. This whole album is a dark treat.

Backwoods Payback are from Pennsylvania and channel the dark stoner blues of Clutch and Alabama Thunderpussy. This album is mostly catchy riff-rock like the standout ‘Mr Snowflake’, though my favourite moments are the doom of ‘Velcro’ and the tortured vocal howls on ‘Timegrinder’. A real grower of an album, after several plays it had burrowed deep into my psyche.

Dixie Witch are a rough, tough Texan power trio playing super-heavy Southern rock. Perhaps a bit too metallic for the average Shindig! reader, their album is a hugely catchy quality classic rock album for all those who like that sort of thing.

Another Texan trio that will probably appeal more to Shindiggers are Tia Carrera (no relation to the Wayne’s World actress). Playing wild ’n’ heavy psychedelic space-rock that’s both instrumental and improvised the band really impress across four long tracks packed with wild wah-wah and memorable telepathic jamming. Highly recommended to all.

Last up are Freedom Hawk who have unleashed a great ’70s-influenced noisy stoner album, Holding On. What sets it apart from the pack is the really great songwriting and riffs that traverse areas of light and shade to provide a real diversity and power to every song. One of the very best super-amplified stoner albums of the last 12 months.

Austin Matthews

News: Wooden Shjips Euro tour and new 12"

Wooden Shjips have announced a handful of live dates in Europe this summer...

June 29th - Berlin, Festsaal Kreuzberg

June 30th - Hamburg Indra

July 2nd - Leipzig Centraal Theater

July 3rd - Munich 59 to 1

July 10th - Bristol Fleece

July 11th Wrexham Central Station

July 12th - Manchester Sound Control

Wooden Shjips also release a brand new Remixes 12", that follows on the heels of 2011's much-heralded West LP. Featuring two remixes, one by Andrew Weatherall and one by Sonic Boom, and a collaboration with kandodo. Andrew Weatherall remixed 'Crossing', whilst Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3/Spectrum fame) contributed 'Wiking Stew (aka Red Krayola-ing)'. When Pete was called in to help master the record he was inspired by the album and made this mash-up from West on his own. Last but not least is the track 'Ursus Maritimus (Last Bear's Lament)', a long distance collaboration with kandodo (otherwise known as Simon Price from The Heads). Ripley created the bed of the track in Colorado in between tours and sent if off to Simon, in London. Simon added all the additional instrumentation at his home studio.

Remixes will be released on February 20th, is only available digitally and on limited edition 12" on crystal clear vinyl with black streaks (for a light smokey effect) as well as classic black.

Event: Happening the clubnight, London, Saturday February 4th

HAPPENING CLUBNIGHT - Saturday February 4th

LIVE ONSTAGE...

FLAMINGO DRIVE (right)
https://www.facebook.com/FlamingoDrive
Flamingo Drive are intelligent, timeless, guitar pop with a dynamic voice, inimitable razor-sharp psychedelic verse and the best twin guitar play-off since Verlaine met Lloyd or Kramer duelled with Sonic-Smith.

ELGAZELLE
http://www.myspace.com/elgazelle
Manchester's garage rock'n'roll sensations, banging out an irresistible sound between garage & soul. Think The 13th Floor Elevators, The Count Five, The Stairs, The Electric Prunes, Joe Meek, Captain Beefheart, & Small Faces...

THE J-PEGS
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-J-PEGS/111059885602935
London's sweet country rockers. IPO said "Think of all your favorite music from the 60s - be it the intricate harmonies of soft pop Left Banke style, Merseybeat, or the bubblegummy mod sounds of The Monkees, these have got it all!

Then DJs Phil Istine, Charlie Salvidge (Toy) and Imogen (Velvet Cave Vintage) will spin your world via ’60s/’70s dancefloor psychedelia, garage, beat, and general rock’n’roll wondermints!

@ The Drop
below The Three Crowns, 175 Stoke Newington High Street London N16 0LH
8pm-4am, £6 entry. Buses: many. Train: Stoke Newington (from Liverpool St)

Facebook event

Record Review – Goat

GOAT 
Goat Man
Rocket 45

Goat supposedly stem from the tiny Swedish village of Korpolombolo (a settlement that practiced voodoo before being burned out by the crusaders). Dressed in masks in a suitably satanic promo pic a similarity to acts like  Gwar emerges, but rather than dealing in monstrous forms of metal Goat however trade in a cinematic rock gumbo parts Performance, Dr John, Ruth Copeland's sleazy ’70s voodoo grooves and the put together afro rock of the Demon Fuzz album. That said, the production is quite contemporary and elements of  such ’80s noise droners as Loop can be picked out by a discerning ear, drawing closer comparisons to fellow Rocket acts.

This then is clearly the product of likeminded hipsters akin to the muse of Votel, Cherrystones and co. And no, it's not a bad vibe either. It's just that the real sense of both the horned one and the tunes of pioneering dark arts groovers like Graham Bond is evidently missing.

Jon 'Mojo' Mills

Trembling Bells with Bonnie Prince Billy Tour

Qu Junktions and CNL Touring presents

Trembling Bells with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

                                 UK tour April/May 2012 

with support from Muldoon's Picnic

This UK tour presents the Trembling Bells playing, singing and duelling with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, performing a new collection of songs written by the Trembling Bells some of which appear on the forthcoming collaborative album 'The Marble Downs', out on Honest Jon's on April 9th with a taster EP slated for release before this. This will be the first time these songs are going to be performed live … list of tour dates below.

Trembling Bells lead vocalist Lavinia Blackwall will sing in duet with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Alex Neilson, the chief songwriter for the Trembling Bells, plays drums, while Simon Shaw on bass and Mike Hastings on guitar make up the pack. Originals, covers and traditionals will be featured in the sets.

With a limited Christmas 7” single already under their belts, Trembling Bells and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy kick off 2012 with a collaborative album of male/female vocal duets.

Alex Neilson has synthesized his love of seat-of-your-pants improv and raw folk into his songwriting with the Bells. While Bonnie has long since shed the Appalachian dirt of his earlier records to enter a fertile period of grace. Now these paths converge on ´The Marble Downs´ - a triumphant exercise in major key ensemble playing concerned with minor key heartbreak, and a marriage of some of the most mercurial and imaginative musicians of our time.

The shows will encompass a special select route around the South West of England with support from Routes South West to take place around the 'Obby Oss' May Day celebrations.

Dates

Wed 25th April – Edinburgh / Queens Hall


Venue Address: Clerk Street, Edinburgh EH8 9JG
Doors: 7pm
Ticket Price: £18 adv + booking fee
Weblink: www.thequeenshall.net


Thurs 26th April - Holmfirth / The Picturedrome


Venue Address: Market Walk, Holmfirth. HD9 7DA
Doors: 7.30pm

Ticket Price: £15 adv
Weblink:www.thegigcartel.com


Fri 27th April - Leeds / Picture House


Venue: Hyde Park Picture House

Venue address: 73 Brudenell Road, Headingley, Leeds LS6 1JD – 0113 275 2045
Doors: 8.30pm
Ticket price: £15 adv
Link: www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk


Sat 28th April – Cheltenham / Frog and Fiddle (part of Routes South West)


Venue: Frog & Fiddle
Venue Address: 313 High Street, Cheltenham,
Doors: 7pm
Ticket Price:£15/£12 adv
Weblink: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/151359


Mon 30th April – Exeter / Phoenix (part of RSW)


Venue: Exeter Phoenix
Venue Address: Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS
Doors: 8pm
Ticket Price: £15 adv
Weblink: www.exeterphoenix.org.uk


Wed 2nd May - Penzance / Acorn (part of RSW)

Address: Parade st, Penzance, TR18 4BU
Doors: 7.30pm
Ticket Price:£15 adv
Weblink: www.theacornpenzance.com


Thurs 3rd May – Bristol / Trinity Centre (part of RSW)


Venue: The Trinity Centre
Venue Address: The Trinity Centre, Trinity Road, Bristol,BS2 0NW
Doors: 7:30pm
Ticket Price: £12 adv
Weblink: http://www.3ca.org.uk


Fri 4th May – Oxford / Bullingdon Arms


Venue: Bullingdon Arms
Venue Address: 162 Cowley Road, OX4 1UE
Doors: 7.30pm
Ticket Price: £15 adv
Weblink: www.pindroppublicity.com

Sun 6th May – London / Union Chapel


Venue: Union Chapel
Venue Address: Compton Terrace, Off Upper Street, Islington, London, N1 2UN
Doors: 7.30pm
Ticket Price: £17.50 adv

Weblink: http://www.seetickets.com/Tour/TREMBLING-BELLS-FEATURING-BONNIE-PRINCE-BILLY

Win – The Tyrant King DVD

A Swinging London spectacular with theatre school kids in cool clobber and psychedelic music galore. A real forgotten period piece tailor made for the weird, wired and wonderful readers of Shindig! and Happening.
To win the entire series on DVD courtesy of Network answer the below question:


"Which British psychedelic/progressive group provide the theme tune for The Tyrant King?"


Please email answer to win@shindig-magazine.com with the title WIN – THE TYRANT KING in the subject line. Results will be drawn on March 1st.

Event: Robyn Hitchcock's The Floating Palace

Curated by renowned English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, The Floating Palace is a series of five intimate evenings of musical collaboration and experimentation, featuring folk legends Martin and Eliza Carthy, Missouri-born singer-songwriter Krystle Warren, Scottish songstress KT Tunstall, and alt-country experimentalist Howe Gelb (Giant Sand).

The artists accompany each other on songs they know and songs they have only just met – something they would normally only get to do in the studio, or after hours. The Floating Palace was inspired by the Incredible String Band song, The Waltz Of The New Moon, by the pleasure ships built by Roman emperor Caligula on lake Nemi and by the Floating Palace in Jaipur, India.

Hitchcock says "Music is what you make it. This is a live experiment: a chance collection of musicians trapped in a lift, with only our voices, our instruments and a steady supply of oxygen, passing a couple of hours until the firemen rescue us - or till the cable is cut and we fall too far, too fast. What would we play together, the six of us? Transpose that lift to a stage, with a small PA and a live audience, and you have Howe Gelb, Krystle Warren, KT Tunstall, Eliza and Martin Carthy - five players I deeply admire - joining me in The Floating Palace."

The Floating Palace – UK tour dates 2012

Sun February 5 - Celtic Connections, Glasgow

Mon February 6 - The Sage, Gateshead

Wed February 8 - Barbican Hall, London

Sat February 11 - Brighton Dome Concert Hall

Sun February 12 - Warwick Arts Centre

Record Review - Boom Pam

BOOM PAM
Alakazam
Audio Montage CD

Israeli-based trio Boom Pam add some spice to our musical lunch today, with their third studio record Alakazam. Served up is the lesser-spotted Mediterranean surf rock - the primary instruments here are the electric guitar, drums, and tuba. Yes, you read that right: tuba. It works, miraculously - the musicianship is first rate (I’m not surprised to hear they have performed with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra), the Fender licks a mixture of east and west (Hava Naglia meets Dick Dale you might say). The production is a bit processed for my tastes, but the energetic performances cut through that. ‘Surfing Tuba’ is the offspring of Dave Allen’s classic biker anthem ‘Blues Theme’, whilst things get a bit anarchic and well, a bit Benny Hill, on ‘Hamdulila’. Some tongues in cheeks may have been utilised whilst recording. The Farfisa-sounding organ on ‘The Fall’ give it some 60s authenticity, plus the song is simply great: flailing drums, a memorable riff, and enough changes to keep things interesting.

There is just three vocal tracks here, and they aren't as convincing as the instros: the singing just doesn’t fit the sonic mood well (and using a vocoder is simply WRONG). Having said that 'Light Up' is redeemed with some lovely harmonising and a sticky fuzz guitar line. This release shares much DNA with Denmark’s The Good The Bad, so something good must be in the sea air. If you like your surf rock non-conformist then perhaps you should check in at Alakazam.

Phil Istine

Record Review – The Cramps

THE CRAMPS
File Under Sacred Music: Early Singles 1978-1981
Munster 10 x 7" Box Set / CD

As Lindsay Hutton, creator of the group's official International fan club 'The Legion Of The Cramped' points out in his sleevenote, The Cramps may not exist as a physical entity anymore, but the frightening legacy they've left behind will continue to be embraced by future generations. This handsome box set of their rare early singles, and more, goes some way to explaining just why that is.

There haven't been many groups who have managed to hurl excess rockabilly fever and sickly ’60s punk slime at the wall and get it to stick together with as much vigour and vengeance as The Cramps did. Their exultant noise exudes something so inviting the listener is beckoned in to a thrillingly strange, and hitherto unknown world. Evidence, if needed, is here in spades, whether original or remake: 'Garbageman' and 'Goo Goo Muck', 'TV Set' and 'Surfin' Bird', 'Human Fly' and 'Domino', all deranged, all pent-up, and all outta control, pushing unheard levels of tremulous cacophony in your eye, and causing heart-bumping palpitations upon hearing the late Lux Interior's impassioned vocal extrapolations. Ivy Rorschach and (the also late and great) Bryan Gregory's frenetic guitars unleashing a furious sound battle each screaming for mercy, or supremacy, or both, while clad-in-black Nick Knox keeps track with primitive jungle drums.

If you've never been sure of the missionary motivation of The Cramps, or have only ever heard (of) them from the 'A Date With Elvis' era on, then I suggest you start back-pedalling now, cos you'll be more than amazed at some of the findings.

Vinyl edition comes complete with envelope containing reproductions of vintage artefacts.
Lenny Helsing

Green Man 2012

The long wintery wait is almost over…

Let Green Man banish those January blues as we prepare to unveil their first wave of brilliant bands for summer 2012!

Green Man is delighted to announce that tickets for his 10th anniversary festival go on sale next Monday, January 30, at 9am.

To celebrate, the first batch of amazing artists lined-up to play Green Man’s big birthday bash in Wales’ breathtaking Black Mountains from August 17-19 will be announced soon, including one of three unbelievably great headline acts!

All Earlybird tickets for Green Man 2012 were snapped up in record time, and the entire festival has sold out for the last three years in a row. We’re expecting demand to be high once again, so don’t miss out!

Tickets cost:	Adult Ticket	£145
	Student Ticket	£125
	Teen Ticket	£75
	Child Ticket	£5
	Live-In Vehicle Ticket	£60
	Holiday Ticket	£40
	Car Park Ticket	£5
	Resident Day Ticket	£50

Quite how the festival will head without Jo and Danny steering the good ship will only be seen once the line-up is finally announced. We at Shindig! pray that it won't move further into the mainstream.

www.facebook.com/greenmanfestival
www.twitter.com/greenmanfest
www.vimeo.com/greenmanfestival

Small Faces Reissues Due This Spring

MAY 7^th 2012 - UNIVERSAL TO RELEASE DELUXE EDITIONS OF THE GROUP’S FOUR CLASSIC ALBUMS FOR DECCA AND IMMEDIATE RELEASED BETWEEN 1966 AND 1968.

On May 7^th 2012, Universal Music Catalogue is set to release deluxe editions of the four albums released by the Small Faces during their short but highly creative and eventful lifetime between 1965 and 1969.

The albums in question: SMALL FACES, Decca, April 1966; FROM THE BEGINNING, Decca, June 1967; SMALL FACES, Immediate, June 1967 and OGDEN’S NUT GONE FLAKE, Immediate, June 1968 are each released as deluxe two-disc editions with the notable exception of OGDEN’S which has now been expanded to three discs.

All newly re-mastered, these definitive editions carry both the mono and stereo versions of the albums, plus related non-album singles and alternate versions many of which are previously unreleased or released for the first time on CD.  In the case of OGDEN’s, there are separate discs for the mono and stereo formats and a third disc of previously unreleased

material – early session versions, alternate USA mixes, instrumentals and the previously unreleased backing track “Kamikhazi”.

Complete with rare photos and memorabilia, each album package includes liner notes by Mark Paytress featuring entertaining and fascinating new interviews with the surviving members of the Small Faces, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones.

It was Andrew Oldham who coined the phrase ‘there are but four Small Faces’, the group establishing its familiar line up of Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones and Ian McLagan in November 1965, once McLagan replaced Jimmy Winston behind the keyboards. McLagan joined within three months of the group’s debut single “Watcha Gonna Do About It” (reaching No. 14 in the charts in September 1965) adding the final ingredient to their distinctive sound.

Over the next two years the Small Faces achieved truly iconic status with a series of hits that included “Sha La La La Lee”, “All Or Nothing”, “My Mind’s Eye”, “Itchycoo Park” and “Lazy Sunday”, their celebrity heightened by their flamboyant appearance and bigger than life personalities, their sound shifting from explosive, spirited ‘mod’ anthems to memorable psychedelic pop culminating in the artistic triumph that was OGDEN’S NUT GONE FLAKE.

Never short on controversy, following a contractual dispute, the Small Faces left Decca for Andrew Oldham’s Immediate label around May 1966, hitting the charts for Oldham’s label straight away with “Here Comes The Nice”.  Decca retaliated by releasing the first in a series of spoiler singles and the album FROM THE BEGINNING. It was a collection of outtakes, singles and works in progress which, despite its untidy origins, more than holds up today. Immediate responded by rush-releasing its own debut album by the group just two weeks later, confusingly titled SMALL FACES. In the battle of the LP charts, Immediate won out, reaching the No. 12 position to Decca’s No. 17.

The most celebrated Small Faces LP, OGDEN’S NUT GONE FLAKE was easily their most successful, enjoying a six-week run at the top of the UK charts during June and July 1968. Originally packaged in an elaborately designed round sleeve like a tobacco tin, it signaled the arrival of the Small Faces as a bona fide ‘album band’, a brilliant achievement just months ahead of the group’s acrimonious collapse within a year of its release.

The Small Faces have since taken their place alongside the likes The Who or the Kinks as one of the most fondly remembered, original and wonderful British groups of the 60s. Their best loved songs are still on rotation to this day, “Itchicoo Park” and “Lazy Sunday” both re-charting in the 70s while the individual reputations of both Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane have grown considerably since their untimely deaths. Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan have enjoyed success in their own right and, of course, with Ronnie Lane, were founder members of members of The Faces.

This series of reissues, the most complete editions to date of the Small Faces four classic albums, is a testimony to a truly original group whose influence is as great today as it was during its lifetime

Record Review - Siena Root

SIENA ROOT

Root Jam

Headspin 2-LP

Although Swedish band Siena Root have been knocking around for a while now, putting out albums in striking psychedelic sleeves, somehow I’ve never taken the time to listen to them. That was a mistake as this live album reveals them as a well-honed rock machine with a very cool early ’70s hard rock psychedelic vibe. Flashes of Deep Purple, various obscure US combos and Scandinavian hard rock are the references but the overall sound has an originality and presence of its own. Driving, jamming tracks, some nifty guitar, and electric sitar (whoa!) and a real confidence in the overall execution show this band as passionate and highly accomplished group. The combination of male and female vocals at times give the band the feel of some early ’70s German band. If their studio recordings are as good as this then they are definitely worth looking into.

Richard Allen

Live Review: Toy

TOY

Shacklewell Arms, London, January 18 2012

Have you heard of the joy of Toy? The band consist of former members of Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and a drummer Charlie from our very own Happening clubnights! They have been touring last year with The Horrors and are being talked up in many quarters as ones to watch. And you can immediately hear why at this over-capacity show. The air of anticipation is clear within the rundown boho environs of this new Dalston hipster hangout that should see many a good new band come through its doors.

But right I can barely breathe the room is so heaving. No matter, we're here for music and such discomforts are soon forgotten once the set begins. The band is flanked by two hair monsters who earnestly frug their hearts out, creating motorik rhythms and cascading sheets of sound, as does Korg twiddler Alejandra Diez. We are treated to an enticing mix of psychedelia, krautrock, shoegaze, and stoner rock. Think Red Krayola, think Broadcast, think The Psychedelic Furs. They are tailor made for Shindig! types to lap up. Don't let the less than perfect melodies stop them being embraced by musically progressive types, this band is the antidote to all the insipid indie you normally come across in the UK right now. They finish the set with a frenetic version of debut single 'Left Myself Behind' that threatens to take off at any moment with us onboard. Heavenly.

The band play a residency at the Shacklewell Arms for the next three Wednesday's - do all that is humanly possible to make sure you attend one of them.

Phil Istine

Covered: Classic Sleeves And Their Imitators (Book)

Covered: Classic Sleeves And Their Imitators
Easyontheeyebooks
www.easyonetheye.net

Lovely. What with books making such a huge loss it's promising to see a  small publisher doing in print what could be so boringly done on the web.

The premise for this 10" book is simple. It takes a record sleeve and then features a host of imitators, rip offs and homages to the cover design. Along with the more known Beatles/Beach Boys/AC/DC entries we also find The Psychedelic Sound Of... The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Buffalo Springfield's Again and Q65's Revolution.  Shindig! friends that have taken their cue from the stars include The Cynics, Gorilla, The Perverts, The A Bones and The Chesterfield Kings. Compiling all of this must have been hard work.

A great project and hell of a lot of fun. This is definitely a fine book to flick through when friends are over for a music session. Long live print!
Jon 'Mojo' Mills

Wolfpeople, The Highbury Garage, London, Jan 17th

Wolf People supported by Diagonal at The Garage, Highbury.

Tuesday 17th of January

The prog-rock spectrum is long and extreme. At one end sits the jazz-inflected strand, often harsh and atonal and as inviting as a concrete housing block in Soviet-era Poland. At the other rests the warm, psych-folk style, best suited for free festivals on The Isle Of Wight and doing mushrooms in Middle Earth. 

Diagonal are squarely at the first end, coming on like Red-era King Crimson covering Derek Smalls’ 'Jazz Odyssey', fronted by a shaved-headed saxophonist who looks like he’s wandered in from an Oasis gig. Everything is played in complex time signatures, and the set moves between slow fast loud quiet passages with impressive technical finesse. It’s striking and cacophonous and perfect for stroking your wizard’s beard to, but very hard to love. They could also do with wearing more capes.

Wolf People meanwhile exist at that other fuzzy end of prog, and they are the GREATEST BAND IN ENGLAND TODAY*. Beneath their unassuming Open University looks, these four have the hearts of Dionysian behemoths and they let rip like the superstars they would be if we all took acid with our tea. ‘Silbury Sands’, the opening track from recent album Steeple, is dispatched only two songs into the gig, but it shows off everything that is immense about the band; this is a quintessentially English noise, half pastoral beauty and half rabble-rousing stomp, drawing a line from Fairport Convention through to Traffic and on up to Led Zeppelin and even Black Sabbath. Front man Jack Sharp’s vocals, sometimes fragile on disc, ring out live with unexpected clarity and strength, and if you removed the tight CS&N harmonies or took away the amps, you’d still be left with song writing that would make Martin Carthy or Roy Harper proud. 

Which isn’t to say that this is simply bucolic pastiche. Wolf People are former hip-hop kids who have swapped their decks and linoleum for guitars and madrigals, and they still know how to bring the noise - especially when they introduce their mad afro-ed flautist for the encore. Under his freaky guidance, single ‘Tiny Circles’ comes off like Focus with the funk or Jethro Tull with B-Boy attitude.

This is not music for a miserable January night on the Holloway Road; Wolf People deserve to be seen in a clearing in The Forest Of Arden, or at the very least watched in split-screen Panavision with a quadraphonic soundtrack. It may be freezing outside, but when Wolf People play, it’s the summer of Pan in our souls. With added breakbeats for luck.
Thomas Patterson

* who sound like they should be headlining the second night of Glastonbury circa 1971.

RIP Sonics' sound shaper Kearney Barton

RIP Kearney Barton – From Light In The Attic's Blog

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

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Last night we got an email from Kearney Barton’s niece Patti, telling us the incredibly sad news that Kearney passed away peacefully at 8 PM. He was 81-years old. Over the last couple years, Kearney’s health had been deteriorating, but he was still sharp as a nail, hanging on and cracking jokes when we last saw him over the holidays. To say Kearney was a pioneer of the Northwest sound would be a massive understatement. Maybe he was the inventor? Whatever the tag, we miss the man. He taught us about the Frantics, the Sonics, Little Bill, Don & The Good Times, and so many more, but the one that really blew our minds was Black On White Affair’s “Bold Soul Sister, Bold Soul Brother,” recorded by Kearney in February ’70 and released on his Topaz label. It’s the tune that led me to Kearney’s doorstep in 2003, hoping to convince the wizard to let us license the single for inclusion on a comp of Seattle soul from back in the day. I quickly discovered the man had a heart of gold and a sense of humor that would make your grandfather proud. He was a genuine sweetheart who loved to work and record and record some more, making his famous cookies for guests, and watching a hydroplane race now and then. I remember him saying he’d had a bunch of calls from overseas reissue labels wanting to license the single, but he felt reluctant. Kearney liked the idea of working with a local label. Bless his soul.

The one thing that I could never wrap my head around was the wealth of material Kearney recorded since entering the business in the 1950s. It didn’t seem humanly possible. There were few, if any, bands who didn’t record at least one tune after walking through the doors of his Audio Recording Studios. And if it made a sound, he’d record it.
Digging through Kearney’s archive years later, this becomes all the more evident to our eyes and ears. We discover analog reels of operas, country western, big bands, psych, advertising jingles, downer songwriters, soul, high school jazz bands, crooners, funk, classical, folk, modern rock, radio shows… and whatever else I’m forgetting he probably recorded that too.
It’s a rare thing to master your craft at any point in your life. To do it in your thirties and stick with it for another 45 years, up until almost the day you die, is a beautiful thing. RIP Kearney. We’ll miss you.
- Matt Sullivan,  the Light In The Attic crew
Tags: Kearney Barton, Northwest, R.I.P., seattle, Wheedle's Groove

Tags: Kearney Barton, Northwest, R.I.P., seattle, Wheedle's Groove
Posted in R.I.P., Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Record Review - Mondo Jet Set

MONDO JET SET

Ha Ha Ha

Pink Hedgehog CD

Remember when all pop music was this compact, terse and literate? No, me neither, with a few cherished exceptions. Mondo Jet Set breathe much the same rarefied garret air as The Auteurs, Momus and Pete Astor: their compositions are littered with prickly (and often bleakly hilarious) self-referential detail, yet dispensed with a debonair insouciance. They’re the sort of songs you’d sing under your breath with a cigarette dangling rakishly on your lips and a blindfold over your eyes as you faced a firing squad.

Ha Ha Ha is really rather brilliant. Witness ‘Funny Ha Ha, Bed Sitting Room’ – twisted twist for irradiated atom-age school-leavers – and the rueful ‘I Danced In A Secular Fashion’, which contains a sweetly observant zinger about Lou Reed. Speaking of Reed, ‘Ancient Green Carpet’ and ‘Jin’ paint a suffocating picture of dysmorphic domesticity that wouldn’t be out of place on side two of Berlin – were it not for the Mondos’ Wildean wit.

Marco Rossi

New Fleet Foxes offshot

Poor Moon is Christian Wargo (Fleet Foxes, Crystal Skulls), Casey Wescott (Fleet Foxes) and brothers Ian and Peter Murray (The Christmas Cards).  The band, named for frontman and primary songwriter Christian Wargo’s favorite Canned Heat song, began four years ago as a long-distance project with demos being created and sent back and forth while Wargo and Wescott were touring in support of the Fleet Foxes 2008 self-titled debut and Ian and Peter were living in the Bay area. Their first shows were at intimate Seattle house parties where they used playful throwaway monikers like Rabbit Kingdom and Cookie Mask. It wasn’t until the band opened up for Daekon at Seattle’s Neumos that things began to really take form. Recording began and the four longtime friends became a band and Bella Union (and Sub Pop in the US) didn’t hesitate to pursue them with unabashed enthusiasm. And it worked!
Illusion was recorded in a variety of bedrooms, practice spaces, the Murray residence, as well as AVAST! and Fastback studios in Seattle, Washington with the help of engineer Jared Hankins with guest performances by many a musician friend. 

You can download the EP track "People In Her Mind" on the soundcloud link below:

http://soundcloud.com/bella-union/poor-moon-people-in-her-mind 

The Illusion EP will be released in early Spring (date tbc) followed by the band's debut album later this year.

Poor Moon will be touring the US throughout March and April… UK dates will follow nearer the summer.

Record Review - Kevin Tihista

KEVIN TIHISTA

On This Dark Street

Broken Horse CD

If this doesn’t end up being on most savvy critics’ album-of-the-year shortlist, I’ll eat my spleen. It’s been a long wait for Kevin Tihista‘s fifth album, seven years to be precise, during which he‘s parted company with his US label Parasol and struggled through long periods of writers block. Not that it’s at all evident. Here San Francisco-born Kevin spews vitriol like a passive-aggressive nutter. If you enjoy gallows humour, you’ll find plenty here. Lovers tiffs, domestic violence even, the caustic put-downs flow with the same sweet ease his music, which has a melancholic Elliott Smith dreaminess about it.

In terms of mood, only the poppy 'Country Road' comes close to being chirpy, but this is truly insidious stuff. The song 'Jack K', which includes the line "sorry I ripped the cover off your Jack Karouac novel, but I had to blow my nose" shouldn’t make you want to dance…but it does.

Chris Twomey

Record Review - Mouse Deer

MOUSE DEER

Mouse Deer EP

Mouse Deer download

If you’re familiar – as you bloody well ought to be – with the highly-evolved melodies and scything gallows wit of Schnauser, it will come as no surprise that any offshoot with shared DNA will fair glow with similarly innate class.

So it amply proves with Mouse Deer, pet project of Schnauser bassist Holly McIntosh. However, if we take the seamless musicianship and immaculate pop smarts as a given, Mouse Deer music nevertheless boasts a decidedly distinct identity. Holly, who plays every instrument bar the drums, writes songs that balance a vulnerable, pensive candour with a contrastingly clear-eyed delivery – like Dory Previn channelling the Nico of ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’.

Better still, Holly overlays her compositions with ambrosial Surf’s Up-era Beach Boys textures (‘The Warning’) and Rundgren-esque chord suspensions (‘Nothing’) to devastating effect. ‘Foreground’ above all is a left-field hit in anyone’s book, with a melody as keen and blissful as a dog’s face out a car window.

Marco Rossi

Wolf People UK tour / Tidings reissue

Wolf People embark on a mini tour this month, including their biggest London headline set to date at the Garage on Tuesday January 17. The band's crate-digging tour DJ Rich Hero is also joining them on all four dates and has assembled a vintage UK 45s playlist to celebrate. Wolf People will return to the studio after this jaunt to work on the follow-up to 2010's album Steeple.

January 13 - Stereo, Glasgow (w/Hidden Masters)

January 14 - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds (w/Diagonal)

January 15 - The Haunt, Brighton (w/Diagonal)

January 17 - The Garage, London (w/Diagonal + Olivia Chaney)

In other Wolf People news, Jagjaguwar will give a CD release to the quartet's early material collection Tidings - previously only available on vinyl - on January 23. Collected from recordings made by Jack Sharp in Bedford between 2005 and 2007 (and mostly before the band as it exists now was formed).