Matt Stalker & Fables / Jason Thompson - Live At The Mining Institute, Newcastle

Long-term fans, and a healthy amount of family and friends, entered The Mining Institute, in elegant attire, to salvage a last meal with Matt Stalker & Fables; a concert promoted as a ‘swan-song’ and a celebration of the group’s eight years together (in various incarnations.)

Jason Thompson’s film about the making of the band’s final record, Knots, started proceedings downstairs in the auditorium, and offered both a way for those close to the music to reflect, as well as a good entry point for others to the attitudes and ideas of the musicians ahead of their farewell show. 

The Moses Choreography started the main feature in the hall upstairs, with a quartet of strings, including Jenny Nendick’s cello backing Stalker’s crisp and spritely vocal. The rest of the band then joined in, delivering impeccable arrangements, as if writing type on the air with a fountain pen. Ditte Elly’s rich voice was wisely promoted in a number of these newer compositions from a duetting backing vocal to sharing dialoguing lead-lines. 

With confidence overflowing Stalker’s chalice, I doubt this evening symbolises any real conclusion for his own writing, but a breath for him and his friends to try other adventures for a while.  

[2016.02.20] for NARC Magazine.

The Shooting Of… (Paul Jeans) - Analogue Heart - Album Review

With his first album as The Shooting Of, Paul Jeans is putting on a theatrical show; taking the listener up with the ups, and holding our hands through bitterness and heartache. 

Melodies are the blood of every song, from big choruses, as in Captain Of My Soul, to small moments in an arrangement, such as the ‘robot-synth’ part in This Silence Is Killing Me. His voice, both solo or as a self-harmonising stentor, delivers with a range of tones.

The production is punchy throughout, supporting the bold outlook in the songwriting. Nods to Art-Pop influences such as Bowie and Gabriel catch the ear from time-to-time, further showing Jeans’ appreciation for music and joie de vivre.

[2016.02.15] for NARC Magazine.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs / Bismuth / Apologies / Supertunes - Live at The Cluny, Newcastle

Supertunes had super-fans down early to the Cluny pit. A much more exciting prospect than their name would suggest, this opening quartet brought bass-lead progressions infused with elements of trip-hop. Their vocalist operated as an instrumentalist, offering further abstraction with distant atmospheric lines.

A tight classic-rock riff modestly starts up the Apologies engine. Various hooks follow morphing through free and wild variations. The trio’s music delights by off-setting changing textures and resonances against solid central themes. Tightening and loosening were used to great effect. 

The courtesy of Tanya Burne muting her bass to tune before the set was cute as, alongside Joe Rawling’s on drums, Bismuth proceeded to take EVERY MOLECULE IN THE AIR HOSTAGE WITH THEIR TECTONIC SHIFTS. Dividing appreciation like thunder, portions of the audience were hypnotised by the might, whilst others ran from the unknown.

The porcine pageantry was unleashed as PigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigs embarked on Psychopomp to crown the night. This composition has it all, and with each twist and turn, rest is definitely left for the dead. Matt Baty’s majesty was undeniable throughout, singing with full vigour, hanging from railings, topless.

Like the best nights, the total narrative was stronger than the sum of its chapters and we have Leave Me Here to thank for that.

[2016.01.29] for NARC Magazine.

Josephine Foster - No More Lamps In The Morning - Album Review

Josephine Foster possesses a voice of the other; itself, forever travelling, and those who hear it are always catching up on its beauty. Her fourteenth album from the Millennium, No More Lamps In The Morning is made up of new raw versions of seven songs from previous recording’s (with two songs even originally from her last album.) The idea might seem unnecessary on paper, but to have these songs, sitting more freely within seemingly more intuitive retakes (captured in the studio with the lightest of butterfly nets,) gifts us a close-up on the essences that we love the most. The Garden Of Earthly Delights is a highlight with her husband Herrero’s shimmering guitar like sunlight to her peaceful melody.

[2016.01.18] for NARC Magazine.

Roller Trio / Leash - Live At The Bridge Hotel, Newcastle

In the charming upstairs room at The Bridge Hotel, the Jazz North East team are poking the stage lights into position with broom sticks whilst the opening trio Leash debate a few last minute form possibilities. 

Adrian Tilbrook, first up to the Gretch Kit, started this night under a different banner six years ago. Paul Bream and friends have now taken over the reigns, keeping its life-blood bellowed. 

With unison whole-tone fusion grooves blended with a peppering of rockier references, Leash play one-extended instrumental for their set, twisting improvisation through thematic check-points. Loyal lights of the club, Andy Champion and Mark Williams, excelled; certain scaling passages were performed with fingers too quick for any eye.     

Roller Trio punched heavy from the off, blasting out the Eastern tones in RollerToaster and ripping up hyper beats in Doris. Though the records utilise lighter and clearer tones, their live sound is powerful for its extra breadth. Redfin-Williams’ rides ring out more, Mainwaring’s saxophone wails longer, and Winter’s guitar sound is spread with a rich fatness in the bass pitches. By the end, January sorrows had been blasted from all faces. The room was a pressure-cooker of energy. Everyone was left hot! hot! hot! 

[2016.01.10] for NARC Magazine.

Nathalie Stern / Competition - Live for ENDLESS WINDOW at The Cumberland Arms, Newcastle

For their eighth and end-of-year chapter, Endless Window have brought together two artists who share a common ground in the way they perform their music; each utilising looped motifs through various ways of sampling to structure their content. 

The stage upstairs at the Cumberland Arms, in stark contrast to the cacophony of instruments and equipment covering it last month, is bare, except for a central podium stand; a table of technology draped in rich blue velvet. Unified at this lectern, in a blue macintosh, Craig Pollard, as Competition, starts his set.

The last time I saw Pollard perform solo he engaged with his instruments and effects at floor level which framed our musician as submissive and jittery as he searched for relevant knobs and devices on the ground, but tonight, by standing up tall to perform, with all of his sound playground apparatus at an accessible distance from his digits, the deeper vulnerability expressed in his music could be shown through his own confidence, as masterfully engineered quotation, without the audience being drawn to Pollard’s own practical stage concerns. His voice and lyrics sit delicately and deep inside the dense textures he samples for his loops, emphasising the delicate character of his voice more than the clarity of every word. 

Competition’s penultimate song, the project title-track, is a perfect encapsulation of melancholic confusion, and you could see it reaching inside the hearts of the focussed faces in the audience tonight. In contrast, the last song had a delightfully bouncy beat which was married with a soliloquy charting an existential crisis of a distracted mind. The song’s narrator kept returning to the burning question: “Seriously - when will I get a dog?”

Substituting the podium with blue velvet for a synth stand of her own (this one adorned with a cape sporting a green, red and yellow flower design) Nathalie Stern opened with a slow drone and steadily interjected vocal phrases. Her presence was instantly commanding and the unique texture of her voice took hold of the space with its characteristic spirit of strength and darkness. Using multiple loop-stations and a Korg synthesiser, she blended her first few songs into one another, with a particularly furtive chant using harsh Anglo-Saxon consonants. Midway through the set, coyly asking the audience for permission to play an instrumental, Stern then turned to her synth and embarked upon building up a fuzzy four-bar phrase; a tune which would not be out of place accompanying fantasy adventures. 

In this self-described ‘second phase’ of her songwriting, Stern’s composition focusses even more around the voice, with these recent performances not involving any guitar orchestration that the previous period had. This direction feels perfectly whole in a new way. The duplication of her own voice with impeccably chosen harmonies, fills the sound, and holds more power in an unshared air. Tonight, once more her bold music, balanced with her natural charm on stage, has fresh and seasoned admirers seduced alike.

The evening’s designer Mark Corcoran-Lettice swiftly followed up on the positive mood hanging in the air after Stern’s set, by launching straight into the disco portion of the evening, which brought a modest, but exuberant, amount of wigglin’ hips to the dance floor, and kept them there with songs by (to name a few) The Breeders, KLF and Kendrick Lamar. For the closing track at 12-o-clock, our DJ summoned the Gainsbourg/ Birkin duet Je T’aime; a gentle and respectfully playful nod to French culture, love and life.

[2015.11.20] for NARC Magazine.

Warm Digits with Filmbee / co￥ﾡpt / Pentecostal Party - Live at Northern Stage, Newcastle

Following on from supporting Razmataz Lorry Excitement’s Without album launch, Claire Dupree, in the name of NARC Magazine, once again utilised the space at Northern Stage, to give a band close to her heart an unrestricted stage to play with.

After a break from performing over the summer, Warm Digits (Steve Jefferis and Andrew Hodson) recently popped down the road to play at Leeds’ Recon Festival in October. Now, the Distraction Records duo return to Newcastle to give their home fans something new. As well as a set written to include recently recorded tunes, they are also relinquishing their light-show element of the show, to give way to collaborate with the film co-operative FilmBee, who will shape the display of visuals for this upcoming evening. 

In terms of the programme, Jefferis explained that Warm Digits were keen to have other acts on the bill that were doing interesting things with electronic music currently. From Pentecostal Party and co￥ﾡpt’s recent output, their inclusion on the bill certainly seems to marry this desire.     

A healthy crowd circulate downstairs in the Stage 3 venue at Northern Stage, shortly after the doors are opened, and lively chatter and the clinking of glasses is lacquering the air. Walking into the space, you discover gorgeous old Elf projectors sitting a-top of wooden platforms, whilst busy members of FilmBee’s team sweep clothes-hangers of film strips into position, ready for their collaboration with the headline act: the promise of Warm Digits’ ever-evolving spectacle supported immediately for those attending, and anticipation blossoms into excitement.

Fading up the outline kicks of what will develop into Night & Day, Dawn Bothwell as Pentecostal Party subtly develops the outline of the beat on her table of toys as the house lights fall. Behind her, a projection screen fills the back wall behind the stage, and a video loops the slithering of an intimidatingly large blue eel underwater. Pentecostal Party uses rigidity in the rhythms of her songs which carve out, what feels like, the blue-prints of physical architecture with which she sits the more vulnerable centre of her music inside: her vocal chants and reimagining stanzas. 

Pentecostal Party’s previous show for the Halloween Hauskonzert put a spell on the upstairs room at The Old Police House in Gateshead recently, with a packed room of people engaged with its heartbeat and cathartic yearning melodies. Tonight, due to a contrasting space and performance time, similar material was digested more reflectively from most of the crowd, with some attendees ignorantly continuing to prioritise the sound of their own voice over someone who actually had something to offer.

Highlights of the set included Lets Storm Heaven, with Bothwell fully immersed, one hand reaching up to the ceiling as she refrained the call-to-arms. At the close, percussion was removed as synthesised chords looped, and improvised melodies were played with, fading this unbroken streaming seance into silence.

Riding high off the back of performing at Manchester’s Algorave event at Texture last night, the live-coding spirit of Sean Cotterill, co￥ﾡpt (pronounced co-opt,) was still restless and keen to dance. Armed at his laptop, (Sunn O))) T-shirt holding his hand,) Cotterill set about creating his set, using phrases of computer code to grow and manipulate sounds and images. The language of his instructions were projected in real-time, whilst other shapes and images were mixed into the canvas, also at his command. 

His improvisation started with swelling chords, with percussion elements slowly entering the fray. Unusual words like ‘Buf’ and ‘pwhite’ built steadily in different colours of the rainbow behind him and slowly but surely the audience partially ingested the links between the visual language Cotterill was speaking and the sounds they were hearing. This first section enjoyed a half-time feel with lots of hemi-demi-semi-definition made up of small clicks and fuzzes. Certain visual motifs were established on the backdrop too, including mosaics of black triangles streaming, and cuboid lines intersecting. After a while of what was a steadily unfolding landscape, a more vigorous style was programmed kicking out the previous scene and from here on in Cotterill moved quickly through various progressive movements. Though the sounds were very different to traditional set-ups, the flow was in the spirit of progressive rock or fusion jazz improvisations. Alongside this playful sonic confidence, the visuals became more dynamic, with the original triangle motifs collapsing together and expanding, as if they were a beating heart.

As the co￥ﾡpt set came to its dramatic finish with ripped up bassy sounds, Cotterill shook his two fists at chest level in triumph; a feeling very much understood by those watching, themselves noticeably thrilled.

The crowd moved forward, embracing the gap of space in front of stage as the main feature took position. Lights circulated around the skin of Hodson’s bass-drum, projected out from the kick. With a quick nod to one another, Warm Digits were off! They opened boldly with Wireless World and then the optimism of Working For A Better Future, with its joyful skipping beat, and Jefferis’ sweet melody lines. 

Though shoulders and two-steps were grooving from the beginning of the set, it was by the time the funk bass of one of their more recent offerings, End Times, came around a few tracks into the set, the waves of movement in the room were banishing all thoughts of an outside world; their groove was in the marrow of every bone, and their imagination leading everyone. 

Throughout, the duo linked songs, maintaining the momentum, which they utilise as an important foundation upon which to build their musical textures. This sense of travel has also become one of the great attractions of their sonic identity, taken to a further, more literal interpretation, on their material for the Half Memory project. Sometimes they melted tracks together with a seamless blending of motifs, and at other times they enjoyed looping and degrading the last breaths of the previous tune before excitedly entering a new track, with a new style, and a new athletic movement. This sonic relentlessness is paralleled by Hudson’s performance throughout, which speaks to endurance. With uplighting around his drum-kit, the drama in his facial expressions and flying limbs were given added distinction. 

Towards the end of the set, the hyper scaling of Weapons Destruction started, and joyous fans made the floor bounce at the realisation; some with arms raised in the air, others hooking embraces around friends. 

FilmBee intertwined their sumptuous visuals around Warm Digits’ music across this special occasion, creating symbolic and textured film-loops on two additionally erected screens. Some of the shapes resembled Cy Twombly circles, whilst others included broader paint marks. Not only did the progressing visuals interact with the music, but both the left and right screens developed relative to one another as well, all skilfully edited live at the two stations at the back of the room. 

It’s not often two separate encores are genuinely coerced from a band, but tonight everyone was in WD’s plane as the wheels left the ground and nobody felt like coming down so the architects of flight kindly kept on going a little longer, finishing with two older classics, including One Trash Groove. Though most of FilmBee’s accompanying work had been more abstract for the evening, in this final coda, humour and tenderness were summoned, with a section of film depicting a very sweet little guinea pig.

With its combination of acts, the evening felt like a celebration of shape, space and angles explored through various styles of music and visuals, performed by artists who possess the skills to go deep within these topics. The thoughtful curation elevated each glorious part to a greater sum.

[2015.11.13] for NE:MM Magazine.