Martin Callingham - Tonight, We All Swim Free

Martin Callingham

Martin Callingham launched his debut solo album, Tonight, We All Swim Free, on the 19th February 2015 in the bowels of the Betsey Trotwood, London. We were crammed into this vaulted underworld, rubbing knees with the full Callingham gamut of Tom Van Eker (guitars, vocals), Anna Kissell (violin, vocals), Anna Strudwick (cello),  Philip Collings (drums) and Andy Smith (bass).

Joyce the Librarian's
Blue Plaque

Released just days before on Folkwit Records, choice cuts have already been played on the Radio 6 (Gideon Coe, Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson) and BBC Bristol. Despite making a Blue Plaque for Callingham as his previous incarnation, Joyce the Librarian, this was a first chance to pen his hirsute mug in the sketchbook.

Anna Kissell - Violin/vocals

A first time for Callingham to step out of his alter ego's shoes too. “It feels odd to put this out under my own name. Partly because it’s comfortable to separate your musical self from other aspects of life; it feels sort of like coming out in some way. But also because there have been more people involved in the making of this album than last time around. Some who I’ve played with for a few years now, but also great talents like Gareth Bonello (The Gentle Good) and Anne Kissell who I’ve met since the release of the Joyce the Librarian record.”



Philip Collings - Drums

The six strong Martin Callingham experience started with the title track but it wasn't until the 3rd tune Knots that we really started to swim free. It was a fine balance between instruments, each emerging from the compositions with clarity and warmth. It's unusual to notice the drums for their delicate touch but Phil Collings' brush work caught the ear as much as his hair did the eye. Callingham's vocal delivery was a minimal one, barely spoken. You lean close and are a nipped by meaning of his graceful words.

Anna Strudwick - Cello

 The sound of Folding works against its name, instead of being reduced again and again to the size of a postage stamp the song oozed out into the audience. It was an overflowing vessel of a tune, its viscosity never dripping, just endlessly consuming the ground beneath our feet in an endless rising Plimsoll line.



Tom Van Eker - Guitar/Vocals

Water was a recurring motif, both in sensation and subject matter, Tide Returns didn't wash with rolling waves but picked out the shiny pebbles after the water had receeded. Again it was the clarity of the instrumentation that made you think of tiny pin pricks of reflected moon as they twinkled on glossy dark stones. It was the sharpness of those small round moons that kept with us, it was the spark that exists in a truly living eye.

Andy Smith - Bass

The album Tonight, We All Swim Free (Folkwit Records) is available from Amazon and other outlets I'm sure. Keep up to date with Martin activities at www.martincallingham.com

AL.

Halfbeak - Almost Smiling

Tim Gum

Who knows which coloured line ran under our feet as we stood listening to Halfbeak in the Betsey Trotwood, London. The rumbling Tubes of the Metropolitan, Circle and Hammersmith & City added to an almost Victorian ambience in the catacombs of this famous music niche. It was apt that we should be here in the Betsey for Halfbeak provided us with more searching narratives than a Dicken's novel.

Halfbeak on this occasion were Tim Gum (vocals/guitar), Theresa Elflein (vocals/guitar) and Rob Hartley (bass). They have 5 albums/EPs to date, Almost Smiling (2012), The New Happy (2012), The Jogger (2012), Killing one bird with two stones (2012) and Things I knew (2014).

Theresa Elflein

For us it was a night of sitting on Tim Gum's metaphorical knee as he led us through his stories and modern day fables. This wasn't of the fairytale kind though, here protagonists left their rose-tinted glasses at the door and wore hearts on sleeves. Often there were pangs of loneliness despite both the voices of Gum and Elflein working together. They rarely played the conversational game between the two of them for it was us who were the target of their confessions and hopes. For Anon was such a song, even though they called out to us as friends we remained behind the latticed screen of the confessional.

Fine instrumental work on The New Happy gave us the choice of differing paths again but warmth won true by the end. The charms of Halfbeak were real ones, not silver baubles hanging on a chain, but keen observations which once shared become new truths and common ground.

Rob Hartley

By the end we had died, fallen out of love and been reborn several times, so much so that we had absorbed the gallows humour of Halfbeak and swayed together in their questioning light. If you want The Answer to some of their teasing lyrics and what to do with a swooning fat baboon then their album 'Almost Smiling' is available for a modest £3 from Bandcamp.

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Dear Light - Delight

If you think that Dear Light would be just the opening line for a correspondence with Martin Callingham later on the bill at the Betsey Trotwood (19/02/2015) then you would be wrong. This duo headed by Philip Collings gave us a delightful and magical set of 5 tunes that could have run for many more pages.

Philip Collings

Like a good letter this was a personal narrative from Collings with seesaw stories and a healthy amount of navel gazing (for who wants to read a letter that doesn't describe the author and how they feel). These Dear Light words and thoughts are made of the sticky toffee kind that eyes and ears want to chew upon. In fact their residue got temptingly stuck in the molars of my mind, where they have remained ever since.

Dear Light have recorded 4 albums to date, 'Dear Light' (2010), 'Sternenfall' (2011), 'The Observer' (2011) and 'Shepherd Moon' (2012). There is an epic album in production entitled 'Broken Hymns'. On this night at the Betsey Trotwood bassist Andy Smith added his colour to Philip Collings' guitar, vocals and keyboard palette.

 



Andy Smith

The songs were a journey of nostalgia and dreamy revelation for this listener. You illustrate my dreams featured Colling's on a slow organ journey, it was sleepy (understandably) and beautiful, like watching scudding clouds move across the horizon. Time dawdled in the Betsey as we all listened, the sandwich corners of our collective hearts curled just a little in the heat from the song's warming sun.

 

The colour that emanated from Sternenfall was equally technicolor and saturated with such an orange glow it burnt a sunspot the size of a Spacehopper in my imagination. It felt like magic.. Like watching the toes wiggling on a sunbather while all the rest remained still as a cadaver.

 

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