Ditte Elly / Caoilfhionn Rose - Live At Trinity Chuch, Gosforth, Newcastle

After many years developing her songwriting, 2016 is the year Ditte Elly is finally ready to gift us her debut album, ‘Songs.’ Elly greeted attendees personally at the entrance of Trinity Church in Gosforth; the pews inside slowly but surely filling up for the celebration.
    

Caoilfhionn Rose’s sombre songs roused the flame of the night, with her musical partner Mitch Williams fleshing them out with gentle and reverberated electric guitar tones.

Elly’s set (split in two for a bar-break in the middle) was built almost completely from the new album. The performance utilised many of the ‘Fables’ musicians; sometimes altogether, and at other times with select members adding an instrument to the texture. Adam Coopers clarinet worked particularly well with Elly’s voice on the song Red.

Having formed close collaborative relationships with both Rosie Caldecott in Oxfordshire, as well as with Matt Stalker in her adopted North-East home, tonight’s performance was the first time that these talented musicians all shared a stage. Their voices melted as closely as true friendship.

With every detail of this evening infused with Elly’s class and character, this landmark is surely the prologue of someone who has the content to build a library.

[2016.03.12] for NARC Magazine.

Pentecostal Party - Let’s Storm Heaven - Single Review

Dawn Bothwell’s project Pentecostal Party is born of her interest “in the type of euphoric high you experience in groups of people worshiping together: an experience that is both solitary and collective.”

   

This tape-recorded version of Let’s Storm Heaven off-sets two layers; a creeping pulse established with a prominent hi-hat and light analogue synth on the surface, whilst the ear is more and more drawn to what lurks in the depths, the yearning and relentless army of voices plotting beneath.

Music can be loved for an infinite amount of reasons, but the behaviour that I find particularly special about Pentecostal Party’s music is the way it unlocks depths through deceptively simple, minimalist structure.

Small synth lines and repeated phrases map the contours of her songs, but as a listener you are compelled to imagine the terrain. The music’s majesty reveals itself like a magic-eye picture, or faces forming in tree-bark.

[2016.03.12] for NARC Magazine.

Ditte Elly - Had Me From The Start - Single Review

Taken from her recent debut album, the song Had Me From The Start reflects the lighter and brighter side of Elly’s writing.

The choice to double-track her lead vocal in unison throughout the recording removes a deeper vulnerability that could sadden the mood of this track, but here, the love being described is one that has been invited-in to consume the narrators’ heart; a celebration! This joyous expression is further emphasised with a chorus of backing vocals finding ever more energy throughout the song; like springtime bringing more and more colour with flowers.   

Elly modestly explains “I just really enjoy singing it, so I hope people enjoy listening and want to tap their feet along.”

Though written three years ago, the gleeful spirit, in Elly’s strummed classical guitar and Adam Kent’s spritely electronic sounds, marries the optimism around this blossoming time in Elly’s life as a songwriter.

[2016.03.12] for NARC Magazine