Thursday 16 August 2018

Steven Page - Union Chapel

Steven Page

Steven Page
Craig Northey
Kevin Fox

10th August 2018
Union Chapel, London, UK
Album: Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II (Fresh Baked Goods / Warner Music Canada)


Kevin Fox
Hot on the heels of his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Steven Page introduced his forthcoming album to the freethinkers of London in the spiritual cauldron of the Union Chapel in Islington. This was a night of spikey wit and proud political musicality. Although Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II, will be released on Friday, September 14, 2018 fans were rewarded with a preview of this powerful new work.

Ahead of the album’s release, Steven has launched the vitriolic first single, “White Noise,” a naked look at the current political discourse south of the 49th parallel.
Listen/Watch “White Noise” HERE.

Craig Northey
“I grew up in a household where social justice was a fundamental value, and I always believed that it was a fundamental Canadian value as well as a central Jewish one,” says Page. “I’ve watched how the term has been twisted and perverted by the Right over the last several years in an effort to diminish the voices of reason.
Although I grew up politically aware, in a left-leaning household (which, in Canada, was not regarded as anything sinister until the mid-90s and beyond), it wasn’t until I discovered the politically-charged music coming from the UK in the 1970s (the Clash, The Jam) and 1980s during the Miner’s Strike and the Red Wedge movement (Billy Bragg, Style Council, Communards, etc) that I became excited by the power of music and activism. This song pays tribute to that music, and was written in the wake of last year’s events in Charlottesville. The open displays of racism and antisemitism, and the chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us” made me grab my guitar and tell them I’d be more than glad to replace them.”

Steven Page
Recorded at Fresh baked Woods Studios just outside of Toronto and Vancouver’s Doghouse of Thunder Studio with longtime live bands Odds and The Original Six, and frequent collaborator Craig Northey, Discipline is Page’s fifth solo album and the spiritual follow-up to 2016’s Heal Thyself Pt. I: Instinct. Musically, the album tips its hat to many of Page’s influences including the aforementioned punk rock movement and David Byrne as well as a nod to the Bee Gees and the Zombies.


Wednesday 8 August 2018

Sarah Vista - Somers Town Festival


Sarah Vista

Date: 14th July 2018
Venue: Somers Town Festival
Releases: Bandcamp

Camden town’s Spaghetti Western Songstress Sarah Vista and her posse of outlaws arrive in a blood-soaked blaze of bullets, armed with a unique sound inspired by the great western movie soundtracks and dark country classics.

With a series of live bookings already under her gun belt (Nashville, Sweden, Germany, Spain) and a number of original compositions already selected for forthcoming movie soundtracks, Miss Vista and her gang are ones to watch..

Revenge is red hot and blonde, and heading for a town called mediocrity, to wish them hell!

START, or Somers Town and St Pancras Art, has brought an annual street arts festival to this area of London for over 19 years. Fittingly, Somers Town has a pioneering history of arts and community being seen as important as housing: ‘housing is not enough’ meant providing community centres and sculpture as well as new homes after the 1920s slum clearance.

Today’s hugely popular START grew out of a first festival of cultures in 1997, begun to try to bring harmony to the disparate cultures in Somers Town, after racial tensions and a murder of young Richard Everitt. Former festivals featured acts as diverse as Alexis Sayle, Les Dennis from Family Fortunes, performances by the gurkas, Tibetan monks, and the British TaeKwando team, as well as local bands such as the Mighty Caretakers, and Oh!Gunquit, activities like first aid displays, filmmaking, history exhibitions, art workshops, and the ever popular Funfair.


Tuesday 7 August 2018

Dom Aversano - Handpan Hero


Dom Aversano


Date: 18th July 2018
Venue: A World In London, Resonance FM, London, UK
Album: Geometric (2018)

Hands-On musical healing with Dom Aversano’s handpans on this A World in London! 

The handpan is one of the newest instruments ever created, and our guest on AWIL this week is a skilled craftsman harnessing its powers. Dom Aversano began music-making in his early teens with a conventional drum kit but soon navigated a course to Indian classical percussion where he’s felt most at home and found intergalactic possibilities. When he discovered the spaceship-like handpan through one of Pete Lockett’s online tutorials, he was instantly drawn towards the aquatic sounds and uncharted territory of this 21st century drum. Dom is a talented composer, visualising rhythm through time and space in his mind, and has boldly gone where no man has gone before, even concocting a complex cello piece, though he doesn’t play any string instruments. Watching Dom’s hands dance lightly across the domes of his handpans is an hypnotic, tactile experience, far out into the galaxy of tranquillity, so when you listen to Dom’s debut E.P. Geometric, close that door, switch off the lights, and chill out!

Dom Aversano
18/7/18 – AWIL 175  Online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/a-world-in-london-18th-july-2018/ Production & pics by Sofia Gaetani-Morris, Norman Druker, Sophie Darling. This week Rock to Indian Classical with Kedar Sharma on SOAS Radio. Click: https://soasradio.org/music/episodes/awil-269-kedar-sharma  Next week Meklit Hadero at SOAS and Kiranpal Singh meets YOUTH at Resonance. #AWorldinLondon – IN ITS TWELFTH YEAR! Live on Wednesdays 6.30pm Resonance 104.4  www.resonancefm.com & 4pm SOAS Radio  mixlr.com/soasradio  
Sofia Gaetani-Morris