Richard Dawson / Vibracathedral Orchestra / Phil Tyler - Live at The Star & Shadow, Newcastle

Having launched his incredible album, Nothing Important, at the Star & Shadow in the winter of last year, Richard Dawson returns tonight to play the first gig of his UK Tour once again on this homely stage.

The two supporting acts shine through the evening’s sky like the sun and moon crossing Dawson’s soul. First on, Phil Tyler stands steady and loyal as he retells melodies from both sides of the Atlantic using his banjo for divination. As the opening instrumental ‘No Wealth But Life’ draws focus from the spirited audience, many new eyes and ears fill into the room until it is packed full. Tyler’s performances are always modest, with his presence on stage almost bashful. This allows the instrumentals and songs to be witnessed and understood apart from the person playing them. By seeing such devotion, it is important to recognise Tyler as not just an excellent and skilled musician, but as someone committed to his passions for their own virtue.

As a styrofoam head presented at the front of the stage is adorned with headphones, and an A4 photocopy picture of Lou Reed is casually taped to the back curtain, the signs are set that Vibracathedral Orchestra’s performance will be abrasive, but boy, few were prepared! From a stage littered with instruments, The Leeds quartet took few moments to arrive at a torrent of sound which they then joyously improvised around and within for close to an hour. Phil Tyler’s considered approach is now balanced by this uncertainty and wilderness. Childhood curiosity was ever present in their eyes as each band-mate explored different instruments; from guitars, to synths, to percussion, to recorders. A fake severed hand lay on the floor throughout but was not utilised. Though their faces were lined with a million stories, these men were growing younger as they played. Though some members of the audience were defeated by the power of the sound, this unapologetic tirade was a strangely fitting purifier for the ears about to listen to tonight's headliner.   

With ale gleaming in his cheeks, Richard Dawson takes merriment in being a few minutes early onto the stage and enjoys joking with many characters in the crowd. Though clearly excited by this christening date in his calendar, friendly support in the audience is palpable and Dawson rides the waves with grace. As the opening motif to Man Has Been Struck Down By Hands Unseen is recognised, excitement curls in the faces watching and whatever has lead up to this moment has passed - the night now belongs to this music. 

Perhaps because of the heat in the room, or exhaustion, our singer’s voice is more strained than usual, with some of the falsetto notes falling into breath. This huskier and angular quality in his vocals however helped make tonight’s version of The Vile Stuff as violent a march as it has ever been. The fire in this performance was lapped up as one of the evening’s highlights, with the crowd singing favourite lines loudly, and laughing with its humour.

The setlist was a rich tribute to his album The Magic Bridge, filled predominantly with songs from that record with a few inclusions from the two following albums. 

When Dawson removed his jumper for the final portion of his set to reveal a Thelonious Monk T-shirt, there was something wonderfully childlike about how blushing he was of this item of clothing. Though depicting one of his heroes, he indicated it was an arbitrary clothing decision. Maybe so… 

A plethora of surprises made the denouement anything but formal. From an improvised verse of song playfully mocking his idiosyncrasies, to performing lines of dialogue from the Pacino/De Niro movie Heat, to putting the guitar into standard tuning! and then fumbling his way through Roy Orbison’s In Dreams. To finish he resurrected I Will Make It Up To You from his 2007 album, Sings Songs and Plays Guitar and the song’s bold romance capped the night perfectly.

As goodbyes are said, Dawson gives thanks to The Star and Shadow. Though the rooms now full of life and history are sadly soon to be relinquished, the community that built such a vibrant place, as our troubadour correctly identifies, will start a new lease of life in their next settlement. Long may they live! 

[2015.02.07] for NE:MM Online Magazine.

Group Of The Atlos - R U Person Or Not - Album Review

Group Of The Atlos is the name of a society of musicians that has grown around its five original members that formed in 2006. As a whole, they display traits common to post-rock practices, operating as a flexible set of players servicing the songs they compose with individual egos not rising above the resonating character of the work. Various vocalists and instrumentalists may be given a moment of focus in a track, but such displays do not provide the listener with evidence of what a future composition might be constructed from.

    Following a project scoring a film in 2013, the Wisconsin collective returned to recording this eight-track LP, R U Person Or Not. Throughout this new album, much of the music is weighty and sombre. Learning To Share opens with a slow waltz of guitar octaves. From this introduction, the texture crescendos as many guitar and brass counterparts are added. This building passage instantly supports their instrumental-rock influences. We hear similar building sections later, too - (the endings of News From Wino and On Wreck for example.)

    to: Saviour follows up, incorporating a soulful and wailing lead rock-vocal, roaming around the pentatonic scale, as the other instrumentation effectively peddles the route note. Such a style of singing is unusual within an album of more progressive arrangements like this one, for often such ornamentation and flamboyance in technique is considered immodest and individualistic amongst the post-rock purists. That kind of attitude is a lazy stereotype, and it is to Group Of The Atlos’ credit to include this vocal sound: a welcome additional timbre, giving a rich colour to this record’s rainbow.

   

    Fucks With Us presents one of the album’s most surprising sonic inclusions: a Jamaican-accent-inflected sung rap, leading a slow minor-skank. Out of delirious repetitions of ‘forgive me, forgive me,’ a manic stream of lyrical confession breaks out, resilient through to the song’s conclusion.

    Coplight uses it penultimate position to patiently wind together the roads of the record, carefully unfolding a melancholic duet. A true moment of intimacy is carved out (away from the earlier storms) by blending a solo male and a solo female’s vocal over soft instrumentation.

    The album concludes in a wonderfully farcical fashion with the spooky flash-groove of Forgiveness Rules. The paralleling vocals with guitar wails, and the celebratory energy perfectly off-setting the ernest resonances of the penultimate track.

    With the deliberately naive title of the record, and altered-skull artwork, we are given clues that, as listeners, we might experience an album focussed on some aspects of humanity (existentialism perhaps?,) and though each track is quite unique sonically, it is for this philosophical focus that the set forms as a coherent collection.

    R U Person Or Not certainly contains unique sounds, thoughtfully chosen and performed. The use of overlapping various voices throughout cleverly supports an idea of unity as an antidote against existential isolation considered in the lyrics: From the various vocalists occupying different frequencies within the crowd-chanting of Gun, and On Wreck, to the lyrical phrases completed from the gendered voices, hand-in-hand on Coplight. The variety of colour and influence throughout stimulates imagination in the listener’s mind. Such a display of so many styles, from track-to-track, makes it an enigmatic record as a whole, with certain portions resonating at different sittings.

   

[2015.02.01] for NE:MM Magazine.

Sebastian Beurkner - The Chimera Of M.

As you approach the recently constructed third floor space of The Tyneside Cinema (The Gallery) staff hand out 3D glasses and direct you to enter the room where Sebastian Buerkner’s movie-installation is showing. The film plays out on a large screen at the end of the black room. It is in constant rotation throughout the day (with a brief five minute interval after each run.) 

The twenty-five minute first-person exploration (The Chimera of M.) is made up of separate scenes from the perspective of a character journeying home to visit two people from their past with which they have been intimately acquainted. Apparently this narrative was inspired by a passage in Buerkner’s own life. Each visitation is unwound through alternating scenes, and with each framed moment, the audience is challenged to imagine, both the rest of the scene, and what past may have informed the current situations and behaviours.

Buerkner’s use of 3D technology is much more provocative than its common application to enhance realistic imagery. Though the content of the scenes is routed in a world we would know, moving two-dimensional shapes and vibrant colours are layered in a three-dimensional space to give a more symbolic representation of artefacts. By presenting images which require closer inspection to understand and relate to, as an audience member you feel immersed in the perspective of the character and the intimacy of their interactions. 

Though the piece is a celebration of how to engage an audience in 3D visuals in an unpatronising and sensual way, The Chimera of M. suffers for its supporting dialogue, which often lands half-way between naturalistic exchanges and pretension. With such imagination present in the visuals, to explore more suggestive speech elements (or vocal sounds) might have deepened the emotional connection with the audience. The other sonics enhancing the scenes (bubbles, clinking glasses etc.,) flesh the experience well.

Within a mostly ernest experience, the artist pokes occasional fun at the medium he has utilised: For example, an opening slide of an opticians eye-test chart draws attention to the limitation of our focus as viewers, and later, our character tries to thread a pen back into its lid, which the visited person is holding. Here, our hand holding the pen is shown missing the hole of the lid because, as the visited character explains, we have one eye shut. This scene acknowledges how simple relationships become problematic when the third dimension is missing. 

With works like Buerkner’s The Chimera of M., The Gallery is already proving itself a worthy compliment to the other spaces within this wonderful cinema, offering visitors the chance to explore other visual art forms relevant to cinema and film. The place where you have previously enjoyed a more traditional movie outing now offers a space to experience more experimental constructions. Once more, the Tyneside Cinema’s curators continue to inspire.

[2015.01.20] for NARC Magazine.

of Montreal - Aureate Gloom - Album Review

March welcomes another album from Georgia State’s finest purveyor’s of streaming introspections and musical erections, and once again, with Aureate Gloom, of Montreal treat us to a wall-to-wall sprawl of ideas, visiting a seemingly impossible amount of influences across the ten tracks.

Their familiar style of funk kicks off the record; firstly, with the single, Bassam Sabry, a rebellious groove lyrically set within the environment of the Egyptian Revolution, and following that up with Last Rites At The Jane Hotel, a song reflecting upon Barnes’ recent stay in Greenwich Village. Empyrium Crown is driven by a smooth pumping bassline, leaving our singer’s trademark self-harmonising vocals exposed in the foreground; as ever dreamy, melancholic and sensual. The pace of the record is intermittently broken with the slow-motion solid air of Aluminium Crown, before the energy returns.

In general, the softer folk and blues influences of Lousy With Sylvianbriar are left behind to give room for more rock’n’roll revelling, such as the likes of Monolithic Egress, bold with its four-to-the-floor drumming, and Chtonian Dirge For Uruk The Other raging against its leash, ripping with distortion and discords.

Barnes’ song titles once more relish in the less used areas of the English lexis and his lyrical phraseology is as ever scenic around its central points. Though seemingly sincere in trying to capture the chaos in his mind and relaying it, Barnes’ use of volatile juxtaposition in his lyrics (along with similar musical variation) walks that wonderful line of communication: At any one point, should this be taken earnestly or with a pinch?

Continued audacity and perfectionism keep their catalogue free from any potholes. Though False Priest flourished for its perverse sonic meanderings, both Lousy With Sylvianbriar and this latest release are exciting for the songwriting.

[2015.01.19] for NARC Magazine.

Darren Hayman - Chants For Socialists - Album Review

With his new album ‘Chants For Socialists,’ Darren Hayman once again utilises wisdom from British History, this time imagining songs from the poetic works of socialist William Morris to create a focussed LP, illuminating hope through community in these times of economic disparity.

A gorgeous a cappella song opens, outlining the records key lyrical themes, performed with a sturdy energy and unity that matches the philosophy. Though this excites the possibility that the whole album could be arranged for voices, Hayman breaks back into familiar guitar-based orchestration, with brass and snare-drum inflections referencing politically charged marches throughout. 

It is encouraging amongst a sea of songwriters with their eyes elsewhere, that there is someone bravely facing this immediate political situation with wisdom and care.

[2015.01.19] for NARC Magazine.

NARC Magazine Demo Reviews - December

Miss Danby & The What / bltp / Tighten Grip / Glenn Maltman / Debs McCoy

‘Humdinger’ by Miss Danby & the What’s is an uninhibited and joyful celebration of its muse. The garage door is lifted fully up, and this pop-punk ode jingles and jangles, warbles and tangles into the sunshine. It is a testament to the songwriting that a lot of ideas are packed up inside this three-and-a-half minute pop song without distracting the listener from the overall rush. Catchy guitar melodies and changing drum patterns add colourful definition to the sections of ‘Humdinger,’  whilst the vocals, charming for their manic vibrato and approximate pitching, lead the parade like kids on skittles. Not only does this gem promote a wonderful and underused noun with its title, but the song exemplifies its definition too. 

‘TheFour’ is a sombre warm-pad meditation by bltp (Budda’s Last T-Party.) As the sustained chords slowly rise and fade, the sound is never quite resigned to silence as each new tension replaces the last. Emerging from beneath the tide is a second voice; a soft synth whistling glissandos like a wind exploring the contours of a coastline. The patterns are patiently intensified with the tones overlapping more readily until a climatic held chord at the finish. This piece is poignant for wrapping up alarm quietly within a deceptively calm ambience. The melancholic intervals and enduring siren, however softly they are both treated, innately disturb our subconscious.

Grungey, broken-chords underpin a sorrowful description of a character facing judgement in‘Fall’ by Tighten Grip. Tightly synchronised riffs, lead by dynamic drumming, drive the song on through despondent lyrics until the reserve of its character breaks open, and Simon Dowling’s vocals unleash an impressive raucous wailing over instruments now spread in distortion. The sense of loss and despair is all-consuming as the voice eventually falls underneath the noise of the final progression. The length and ecstasy of the final act implies a longer journey leading to it than we are given. Further discussion of more hopeful times in the narrative would justify the resulting trauma, eternalised by a track fade-out.

Glenn Maltman’s track ‘The Star Navigator’ offers the greatest disparity between technical instrumental skill and compositional imagination this

month. Throughout this chilled aperitif, the fingers of our composer scuttle and spring across the keys of the lead piano part with clarity and precision. Though some of these patterns show invention, the supporting “backing-track” is tediously monotonous and muddy. It is understandable to utilise peaceful tones to highlight the brightness of the lead part, but this incorruptible beige shows us more with each passing minute the composer’s indifference to truly supporting the piano’s organic changes.

As these nights draw in, Debs McCoy’s soundscape ‘Therapy Sessions 1’  offers something tender to the severity of the season. It is a gentle creature, revealing itself in cello lines and pensive piano assertions. Low bowed drones underly each thought; sometimes as a comforting blanket, at other times as a deep depression. As the piece develops from its initial timid, and more abstract, motifs a spritelier pattern emerges in the piano part. As this life reveals itself, the weight of the strings subsides. Though much of the tonality of the individual parts are rooted to a major centre, they are cleverly arranged into a collage which uses various juxtapositions to disorientate the natural positivity of major intervals into something more ambiguous and strange. The reverb is applied with temperance aiding the natural sustain of the instruments. When the last chord fades, you realise how this music has elevated your sympathy, for in the silence that follows, you feel that the sound is still there, like a phantom limb.

[2014.11.07] for NARC Magazine.

Richard Dawson - Nothing Important - Album Review

Upon hearing that Richard Dawson was releasing a new album called Nothing Important, a slightly modified version of a famous quotation from the artist Francis Bacon cycled in my head as I tried to manage my expectations in the time leading up to hearing it.

    “I am an optimist about nothing.”

    “I am an optimist about Nothing Important.”

    Bacon’s wonderful statement has the possibility of being interpreted in contradictory ways with both conclusions being held equally true. This is just the kind of paradox Dawson finds liberating, and in a recent interview for the BBC, regarding his musicianship, he explained that it is best “to be yourself as much as possible within the knowledge that you are both nothing and everything.” Through acquainting himself with these limits and possibilities he has found more freedom to play. It would seem The Magic Bridge was his first commitment to this understanding, wanting to share the potential of this viewpoint all at once, but it is in The Glass Trunk and this latest release that we see that original enthusiasm soaked into his instincts. In these most recent records he has had the confidence to narrow his focus, which, in another paradox, has lead to the creation of albums with a greater breadth.

Nothing Important is a collection of four tracks. Two sixteen-plus minute songs as centrepieces, with two instrumentals book-ending the set. As with his previous two records, the form of the album is greatly considered to give weight and dimension to the songs above their isolated merits. By placing his song Man Has Been Struck Down By Hands Unseen as the penultimate track on his 2011 album The Magic Bridge, Dawson uses the powerful climax of that testament to bring together all of the energy and emotion accumulated throughout the record (as well as in that song itself) to deliver a cathartic release as we reach our destination; the magic bridge of the record title. With his previous album, The Glass Trunk, the listener’s ear is brutally cleansed after each of the a cappella songs by two fractured instrumentals following each vocal track in turn (except the last.) This formal segregation keeps the ear alert and listening clearly to each composition fully as each new track arrives. Here, with Nothing Important, the form celebrates the lengthy centre tracks. The outer pieces act as Prelude and Epilogue; introducing ideas and feelings relevant to the Universe about to be described, and then delivering us from that place with a final thought.

The titling of the four tracks is instantly provocative, particularly with the instrumentals being named after two controversial biblical Apostles. As a fractured progression of notes from his trusty amplified and distorted parlour guitar open the programme, the listener is asked to consider this opening track in relation to Judas Iscariot; to some, a traitor to Jesus, to others, an important catalyst in the process that saved the mankind. The opening guitar expressions are deliberately tripped-up and reset for the first minute of the track until the phrasing evolves into a violent stomp, with the open-strings rattling and the fretted notes whining. These more quantised riffs reflect Dawson’s passion for Heavy Metal music. As he punches at the Locrian intervals and beats down on the bass strings we forget we’re listening to one man with a guitar. All of a sudden, the mood changes and the tempo is relinquished as barely touched chords maintain sound just above silence. A thin lead line then falls into the similar folly as described in the introduction before being finally swept into a blasting repeat of those angry riffs. Each section of this instrumental portrays a character disaffected in some way; from their inability to harness a consistent voice, through to their arrogant reactionary swaggering. Dawson uses his Judas to demonstrate a passage of chaos and destruction - and this is where the story begins!

The album’s title track emerges from a singular harmonic; feedback gently expanding the tone until intervals seize upon shapes and nurture a new environment for themselves. Images of The Big Bang and the start of the Universe colour the mind. From this scope, the song lyrics transport the listener to the birth of a child at St. Mary’s Hospital, forty years ago. Our singer assumes the voice of the newborn and relays a collage of peculiar childhood moments. He uses physical description to recall events, avoiding the rhetoric of persuasion or judgement. As the details fill in the picture of a life, he interjects ‘I am nothing / You are nothing / Nothing Important / Death inside a dream,” each time singing the assertion more desperately until the final repetition, where the delivery is almost rabid whilst the guitar support buckles. After the track sprawls through an energised instrumental passage (a skipping section that recalls a similar motion of a former Dawson jig, The Bamburgh Beast) a final sung section takes over. Our narrator sites further memories and becomes increasingly frustrated that these seemingly insignificant objects ‘remain so clear, while the faces of [his] loved ones disappear?’ This song climaxes in an elongated melody, using melisma to stretch out a final desperate cry. The last stanza twists the knife in the story as the singer occupies the voice of the child’s parent, testifying that their child was the most beautiful thing that they had ever seen, and yet he lived for only seven days.

This song uses the concept of time to expose views around what is considered important. Firstly, donating a comparatively large amount of time to express a song titled Nothing Important raises the suspicion that this title is ironic. Over that time, the dynamic, structural and stylistic variety of the sound consistently fights the idea in the mind of the listener that nothing important is happening, for in front of our ears the terrain is constantly challenging. The music spans the life of a person, beginning with their birth and ending with their death. By including little sound before and after these events, our songwriter weights their importance as all that is different from silence.

Though Dawson sings firmly, often in unison with melody lines from his guitar, an amount of his words get camouflaged in the sound. This is in part due to the superior volume of the guitar, the more resonant tone of the instrument over his voice, and a singing style which chooses to soften the diction of certain words for a more legato style. All of these choices are deliberate and such consideration has been a consistent pursuit of his in sound-checks for gigs over the years. Sometimes he performs live without a microphone whilst still amplifying his guitar, demanding the fullest delivery of his voice to rise up and be heard. Where as a songwriter like Leonard Cohen mixes his voice clearly above the rest of the orchestration to direct the listener’s attention to the words first and foremost, to Dawson the overall effect is prime. By balancing his music this way, the listener has two choices - to zoom out and see the galaxy of stars, or to specifically focus in on the singing; to register each word, missing the full effect to discover the detail. Jarvis Cocker writes a request to the listener in the inlay of Pulp’s album ‘Different Class’  that they do not read his lyrics whilst they listen to the songs recognising what would most likely be missed if someone was to do that. Here, through these performance and mixing decisions, Dawson implies a version of that request.

     

The complimentary epic on this album, The Vile Stuff, is a mighty march through a restless dream from a hospital bed, the contents of which is ripe with calamity, mixing the believable with the symbolic. Dawson is fascinated by this situation, exploring it first on The Magic Bridge through his Grandad’s Deathbed Hallucinations. The track is introduced with a seductive swaying guitar riff. As listeners, we are gently rocked to sleep in the sweet major tonality. As the pattern disperses, there are hints of melodic augmentation, creating suspicion that all may not be what it seems, but as each repeating chord lingers longer… and longer… … and longer… … … we are drugged, and in another death of a dream. The world down the rabbit whole quickly forms around a phrygian melody from Dawson’s guitar and an accompanying marching beat, made of a bass drum and clapping. The lucid stream of lyrics are chanted in unison, an octave apart, as unrelenting as the pulse. Many characters are encountered in this Alice In Wonderland-style trip of adolescent experiences. On a school trip, we meet Craig, who cracks his head open and has to be rushed to hospital. Then, we meet a scamp who schemes and covets the bed of Miss Bartholomew. Later we meet Andrew, who is contemplating a dramatic lifestyle change. Did I mention a Horse-Headed King who sings? He’s in there too.

If the previous track explored a relationship between chronology and life, then The Vile Stuff seems to focus on the forces that throw a life around. The listed experiences are framed within a dream our narrator is having following the consumption of a liquid. “I only drank a / Few little droplets / I only took a tiny draft of the vile stuff.” Such a small act triggered this world of experience and adventure. Drinking these droplets fuelled hallucinations of helicopters. The image of someone drinking a small amount of an undisclosed liquid reminds us again of Alice in her story and the vial she drank from, the contents of which diminished her size in relation to the world that surrounded her. Dawson sings this twisted melody at full force, even double-tracking his voice to make himself heard against the surrounding ocean of noise, as if he is attempting to be heard in an environment that stands tall around him.

The instrumental support in this track allows Dawson to experiment with his guitar parts in a different way, ornamenting the central sounds with polyrhythms and splayed arpeggios. As the song proceeds, extra layers of guitars and percussion, tuned and otherwise, are added to the mix, steadily building the power of the sound, until the track finally rides out in a farmyard of noise, with saxophone improvisations and chanting, all competing within the drone.

Finally, the second instrumental, Doubting Thomas, guides us to the end of the record. The slow-moving plagal chords heal feedback as it attempts to grow. The soft repeating progression allows the listener’s mind space and time to reflect on the considerable detail of the past forty minutes of music. By placing us with the Apostle who doubted Jesus’ return with the resurrection, and required proof before he believed, our thoughts are persuaded towards the application of empiricism. With this album, Dawson has written a tapestry charting relationships with the everything, the nothing and places in-between. If you doubted the existence of these places before, it is likely that you will believe in them now. 

When The Magic Bridge was released, I was too heartbroken by it to imagine how this unbelievable painter could improve on this masterpiece. I feel so lucky to have lived locally in Newcastle to witness his concerts around that albums release and in the years following, watching the complexion of his confidence get healthier and healthier. Dawson has said that there was a long period of time in his earlier years making music before a clearer instrument and compositional personality emerged. I recall when I went to buy a record from him after the first time I ever saw him play, and as he handed me Sings Songs & Plays Guitar, he used the interaction to manage my expectations for that recording whilst enthusing that his next shortly-to-be-available release was much better. His comment held no arrogance, it simply reflected the truth of his understanding for what had been happening with his composing, and that it would be the next album rather than the one I held in my hand that would show a light he had now found. I don’t know where and when he would pin-point this rose growing through the concrete, but for me, although Sings Songs & Plays Guitar shows wonderful roots, it is The Magic Bridge that breaks through and stands up tall to the sun; exquisitely designed and utterly vulnerable. I now know why he was excited for that release. It represented change and a brave step. With both The Glass Trunk and Nothing Important following as unique triumphs in this new garden he seems so at home playing in, each new offering makes us more thankful that he took that leap. Wherever his adventures take him next, I hope he is supported and cherished.

[2014.10.21] for NE:MM Online Magazine.