Moulettes - Wonder and Possibility

Ruth Skipper

Moulettes
Hannah Miller - Lead vocals, cello, guitar
Oliver Austin – Drums, guitar, percussion, vocals
Ruth Skipper – Co-lead vocals, bassoon, autoharp
Jim Mortimore – Bass, vocals
Raevennan Husbandes - Electric Guitar, co-lead vocals

Jim Mortimore

Date - 27th November 2015
Venue - Union Chapel, London
Current Album - Preternatural (Pre-order from February 2016)

Raevennan Husbandes

Next concert/gig/tour
2016
21/04 Southampton, The Brook
22/04 Oxford, The Cellar
23/04 London, Islington Assembly Hall
24/04 Bristol, Exchange
26/04 Bury St Edmunds, Apex
27/04 Birmingham, The Oobleck
28/04 Leicester, The Musician
29/04 Edinburgh, La Belle Angele
03/05 York, The Duchess
04/05 Sheffield, Greystones
05/05 Manchester, Band on the Wall
06/05 Stroud, The Convent
07/05 Falmouth, Tolmen Centre

As you might know, this is not a blog for end of year lists, not for awarding one, nor two, nor three, nor any stars. It is rare to compare musicians or rate technique, but this concert was one that sticks in the mind and the heart. The Moulettes are worth more attention, digging that bit deeper into their music (and perhaps their ideas and motivations etc too).

Hannah Miller

Normal service resumes....

Dark earth, sickly deep. Power and enchantment but never twee. The throwing of us to the bottom of the well, our dreams on pennies or bodies, we do not know which yet.

The Observatory - Alphabetti curses, so many smears and traces like a multi-layered crime scene investigation. A death of minor kills.

Danger, spider cannibalism. Modern mythological lures, dazzling lights in the songs that pull us further into the dark sky. Modern drug addled hypnotism, the hissing of reptilian eyes.

Skin of an Octopus - Cord and trip, discord and energy, keep catching us with different traps, never with the same bait or snare.

Nematode Worm - Purpose, entwining, wrap around. A Star Trek call, aliens sucked into a vacuum of darkness with an ever decreasing echo.





Songbird - Sails in front of our eyes rather than blowing us into the storm, we are the audience once more, and for one song this is a conventional gig again. Just as we sit comfortably, re-marking the distance between us and the band, we hear the accordion of Anja McCloskey and the mystery of the penny arcade draws us closer. An automaton that deserves more than small change to bring it to life.

Anja McCloskey

Between Two Mirrors - Other worldly, again not sticking, not holding in the mold. The jelly radiates a volcanic pulse, an active ingredient, squeezing the body to make us not altogether human. Ghibli child's play, not as we remember it as safe adults but as we experience it in our youth. We felt it then, with wonder and the heat of possibility. It is the way to feel this music.

AL.

Heg & The Wolf Chorus - White Witch

Heg Brignall

Heg & The Wolf Chorus

Heg Brignall - Keyboard and vocals

Vince Martin - Violin and vocals

Joseph Kelly - Double Bass and vocals

Harriet Riley - Percussion and vocals

 

Joseph Kelly

Date - 27th November 2015
Venue - Union Chapel, London
Current Single - The White Witch

 

Bristolian folk storytellers play their wondrous narratives to a sold out London audience in the Union Chapel, Islington.

 

Vince Martin

If it was stories that were going to be recounted then we were going to need a fire. Opening song Maiden was that spark, a song full of little snaps and crackles, brittle moments and incendiaries. Three Sailors was a bellow pump, filling lungs full of air and cresting the wave of vocals. It was like a gentle push against a sieve, not catching the pure sift that runs through the small holes but the detritus that is left. The stories of lives mostly forgotten yet still caught in the Heg and The Wolf Chorus net.

 

The shadow of the White Witch is cast across the fairy tale of We Praise The Storm (?). Sinister lines, wintery surprises, like cloves in your wine or the sixpence that cracks a tooth. There is a hope but it is from the calling of Heg's chant, again it is not all pure, you suspect they are Sirens, luring us to the mountain top to see the view before inviting destruction over the cliffs beyond.

 

Harriet Riley

When The White Witch makes her appearance it is more delicate than foreboding. Light medicinal flowers are picked with long willowy stems. Amongst the light penmanship of Culpeper's Herbs is a blotting swamping stain, an oil or a seeping poison. Heg Brignall and Vince Martin play the reedy tips of the flowers while Joseph Kelly and Harriet Riley are the cloying roots, sucking us below.

 

AL.

  

 

 

New York Standards Quartet - London Jazz Festival

Tim Armacost

New York Standards Quartet
Tim Armacost – saxophones
David Berkman – piano
Michael Janisch – double bass
Gene Jackson – drums

Date - 22nd November 2015
Venue - Pizza Express Soho, London
Current Album - Power of 10 (Whirlwind Recordings)

Michael Janisch

NYSQ's latest recording, Power of 10 is their second release for Whirlwind and a tribute to their ten years of performing together. The band came together when three of New York’s busiest jazz players noticed they had one thing in common: Japan. Tim Armacost is a grammy nominated tenor saxophonist who has performed with Kenny Barron, Bob Hurst and Ray Drummond among many others, and is the group’s founder. He had lived in Tokyo several times and performed there for years. Gene Jackson, a drumming powerhouse well-known from his nine years in the Herbie Hancock trio as well as his performances with Dave Holland, the Mingus Band and Wayne Shorter, had recently married a Japanese woman and was splitting his time between New York and Tokyo. David Berkman, a fiery pianist who is both rooted in the jazz tradition and a harmonically adventurous improviser and composer, is a 30+ year NYC veteran of many bands including Tom Harrell, The Vanguard Orchestra and countless others. Berkman, also married to a Japanese woman, was traveling to Japan with increasing frequency.

Gene Jackson

Of course, it turns out they had a lot more in common than a love of Japanese culture. They had an approach to playing standards honed by their years on the NY Jazz scene, leading their own bands of original music and playing with jazz legends. Berkman, who writes much of the band’s repertoire, has a distinctive flair for re-casting well-known jazz standards in new and unexpected settings. ​On Power of 10, ​ Songs like “Deep High Wide Sky” and “Hidden Fondness” are melodies based on the chord progressions of “How Deep is the Ocean” and a reharmonized, “Secret Love”. In the band’s hands, his arrangement of the well worn standard “All of Me” becomes a daring, harmonically tense vehicle for Armacost’s mighty soprano playing and Jackson’s powerful drumming. Armacost’s arrangement of “Lush Life” brings a new perspective to this classic Strayhorn ballad and his "Green Doll’s Phone” is a playful treatment of “On Green Dolphin Street” written to showcase the brilliant technical prowess of bassist Michael Janisch who joined them for this recording. Gene Jackson, the band’s rhythmic center who drives the music forward with fire and infectious good spirits, is much in evidence throughout the session and contributes his arrangement of Elvin Jones’ “Three Card Molly.”

David Berkman

What began as a happy coincidence of three friends in a foreign land has grown into a mature collective that is more than the sum of its impressive parts. The band has toured extensively in Japan, the U.K., around Europe and the United States for ​t​en​ years. These days, that is an extremely rare accomplishment in the jazz world, where economic pressures work against band longevity. The close connection between the members is evident throughout this recording: an idea starts with one player and is picked up and developed by another​ ​risk taking and improvisation abound, but there’s a sense of warmth, enjoyment and shared purpose that permeates all of these performances.
This has become the hallmark of this group’s playing: an easy rapport with one another developed through ten years of playing together and interpreting jazz classics in a highly engaging and personal way. The audience response has been phenomenal, in part because they give the listener something familiar to grab on to, before throwing in the bends and quirks that NYSQ has become known for, creating modern shapes and visions of these well-known ​songs​. Or to quote John Fordham ​from The Guardian ​in his rave review ​from a recent UK tour:

“Deep High Wide Sky sounds like the Lee Konitz classic Subconscious-Lee, and Doll’s Phone Cause is a similarly byzantine bopper, driven hard by Janisch’s bass-walk. All of Me has an inventively reworked harmony and fresh rhythmic edge, an ominous Lush Life finds Armacost and Berkman reacting smartly to each other, and Hidden Fondness remoulds Secret Love as a vehicle for the gleeful collective energies of all four.”

As a thank you Whirlwind are  offering 30% off everything on their site from today until January 28th 2016.  Simply add the code JANUARY2016 on the Checkout page (there's a space provided that says 'enter coupon code') and your purchase price will be reduced by 30%. This discount applies on all site products: CDs, digital albums and individual tracks.

London Piano Trio - Beethoven Cycle

Robert Atchison

London Piano Trio
Robert Atchison - violin
Olga Dudnik - piano
David Jones - cello

Date - 29th November 2015
Venue - St John's Smith Square
Current Album - Oleg Komarnitsky

Olga Dudnik

Next concert - 17th January 2016, St John's Smith Square

The cries of protestors echoed in the Whitehall streets just beyond the shadow cast by St John's Smith Square imposing bulk. There was a decadence, like Rome was burning outside and we sat there gorging ourselves on fine wine and good music.
A storm was being stoked, we could see the dark branches swaying through the leached glass.

Beethoven Piano Trio No.5 in D Op.70 No.1 'Ghost'.
(ii) Largo assai ed espressivo
Jagged spires and jagged light, long thin architectural glass. The piano of Olga Dudnik is the raindrops. It is a changing day, we think beyond the inconsequential passages in light and temperature, we are beyond this. The small cycles of life on earth are seen as though through glass, through the 'wrong' end of a telescope. We are the witnesses, we are the children of a higher being, with our pathetic stumbles and downcast eyes.
Olga Dudnik doesn't play by the same rules as us mortals. Robert Atchison and David Jones have the fineness and lightness of the panes we touch with our hands, we see through their eyes.


Robert Atchison

(iii) Presto
Zipped up and down.
Thousands of shoppers in Oxford Street just a few metres away.
Closing and opening coats and jumpers, joy and folly. Wafts of perfume gush into the air, hanging ready for noses. A ballet of zips and wallets. Arms linked into arms, synchronising their collars up against the wind . Pennies spilling out from pockets.

It is some time since I had seen Mr Rich Rainlore and yet there he was as though nothing had changed. Mr Rainlore had taken me under his wing many years ago, he is still going strong despite there being no new entries to his website Rainlore's World.

David Jones

Beethoven Paino Trio No.2 in G Op.1 No.2
(i) Adagio - Allegro vivace
Layers of pastry, fine filo. Mille feuille.
Indecision, neither one theme nor another. Robert Atchison's music is the beauty that flits through the party, moving from one face to another, never lingering long but always making an impression. Atchison chatters, to left, to the right, bubbling over.

AL.

Alex Garnett Bunch of Five

Alex Garnett

Alex Garnett Bunch of Five
Alex Garnett – tenor sax & compositions
Tim Armacost – tenor sax
Ross Stanley – piano
Michael Janisch – double bass
Andrew Bain – drums


Michael Janisch

Date - 22nd November 2015
Venue - Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean St, Soho, London, UK.
Current Album - Andromeda (Whirlwind Recordings)

Ross Stanley

Hear him playing - Alex can be found in the depths of Soho at Ronnie Scott’s every Monday and Tuesday night for his weekly late-late show residency, when not on the road.

Raconteur Alex Garnett with his trim London/NYC five piece punch-in at the London Jazz Festival 2015.

Roundabouts and swings, never Fragonard nor My Fair Lady but those grubby shiny seats we love so dearly on this grimy isle. Wiping the dew, rain or damp off with a sleeve as the very British wind of Alex Garnett buffets us. There is a respect for our lead man, he is the big brother you always secretly yearned for with funny stories and an adoration that may well be unattainable.



Andrew Bain

Self depreciation is one of Alex Garnett's arts and that of Camp comic, not the effeminate kind but that of Hi-De-Hi, even the moustache would at first make you think of Clark Gable but it is Paul Shane that lingers in the mind.

Holmes - Happy chickens and steel-plated cats, Fritz get my coat! The happiness in not being superhuman but just a glorious fallible human, the happiness of the everyday, the happiness of you and me. Andrew Bain and Ross Stanley get you out of bed in the morning more quickly than a short circuiting Breville Teasmade. Tim Armacost is curiosity itself, evoking the spirit of playing in the street (whether imagined or real), fingers in dirty holes, young boy zeal and grubby knees.

Tim Armacost

Wipe away the silly string that Alex Garnett squirts in our eyes with his introductory patter and we see that here is a man of depth and poignancy. Dracula's Lullaby is a good example, it smears the actor's greasepaint to reveal a laid back Christopher Lee, a soporific villain relaxing with whiskey in hand.

You feel part of the bunch, the five swell to include the wider audience and we are all conspirators in the tune Delusions of Grandma. The gangs all here, hear, here she is legs swinging, bingeing, laughing, crying, meowing, one hand, no hands, hand me downs, pass the hammer Jack, on your back Jack. We are the gang to entertain you.

AL.

Urchin - London Jazz Festival 2015

Leo Appleyard

Urchin
Agne Motie - Vocals/Lyrics
Leo Appleyard - Guitar/Songs
Duncan Eagles - Soprano Sax
Piers Green - Alto Sax
Hoagy Plastow - Tenor Sax
Paul Jordanous - Keys
Holley Gray - Bass
Chris Nickolls - Drums

Duncan Eagles

Date - 18th November 2015
Venue - Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean St, Soho, London, UK.

Urchin on Youtube - Show Me Love

See them next at -
29.01.16 - Hootananny // Brixton // 10pm
26.02.16 - Dead Or Alive @ The Comedy // Leicester Square
10.04.16 - Omnibus // Clapham // 8pm

Chris Nickolls

Embryonic 8 piece from South London showcase their burgeoning repertoire of Jazz, EDM, DnB, Cinematic, Dance and House influenced tunes at the London Jazz Festival 2015.

Wet with dewy ideas Urchin have recently emerged from a birth by a thousand nights. A group like this, however youthful, have already cut their teeth individually on London's live music circuit. They would have probably played more than a thousand nights each in their brief careers and therefore Urchin is an apt name, they are a rag tag but charming bunch.

Holley Gray

It would be easy to cast Urchin as the mischievous group of children in Oliver Twist as they are adept at pickpocketing and assimilating musical genres into their repertoire. Although Leo Appleyard would be cast as their Fagin, he neither represents his villainous traits nor craggy looks. In fact Appleyard retains a fresh faced visage and an admirable sunny disposition despite having to corral his 7 fellow protagonists.

Paul Jordanous

On keyboard is a man who simultaneously channels the spirit of  Bill Sikes and The Artful Dogder in one fell swoop. Paul Jordanous is manly like Sikes, butch perhaps in physique while retaining his Everyman appeal, his boyish twinkle and his 'street' hoody attire cast him as a modern day Dodger.

Agne Motie

Our female lead is Agne Motie whose appearance and reputation couldn't be further from the original manifestation of the plump prostitute Nancy. Motie's vocals were entrenched comfortably in the music of the band of brothers that surrounded her. She never soared above nor alighted on a branch to delicately showcase her wares, she was one of the boys in spirit but never in Y chromosome nor front.

Hoagy Plastow

Leo Appleyard's self penned 'Sketches' was a tune to believe in, with light holiday perks from the tenor saxophone of Hoagy Plastow and tin cut snips from Appleyard's guitar. The swell about Urchin has started despite their relatively recent arrival on the scene. They have a desire to find their own path without banging the earnest drum of experimentalism nor the shock of the new. After this first helping of Urchin I hold my bowl up to them and ask, Please Sir, I want some more.

AL.

Piers Green

Toy Rokit - London Jazz Festival 2015

Bill Mudge

Toy Rokit
Mark Rose - Bass
Bill Mudge - Keys
Chris Nickolls - Drums

Date - 18th November 2015
Venue - Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean St, Soho, London, UK.

Current Album - Mission 6 featuring Mike Outram.

Mark Rose

Toy Rokit spark their improvised dynamos on the Pizza Express stage for the London Jazz Festival 2015.

Burring movement from the underground cockpit left eyes resting on the central figure of Mark Rose. Bill Mudge gave us his profile never both eyes, while Chris Nickolls dipped his head in a crisis of self confidence. Rose was the Admiral Ackbar of our scene, his music represented the Admiral's immortal lines 'It's a trap' for that was what lay before us. Hidden under the fallen leaves there were nightmarish pits for those who love to categorise and plant definitions on music, especially Jazz.

Deep bellyaching wounds were Mark Roses musical call, it had a filthiness like mechanical porn. Chris Nicholls has a freedom in this trio format, he cackled and swarmed as if a party of cavorting of locusts, he was lighter than initially expected, his fine tipped wings rubbing against a brittle exoskeleton.

Chris Nickolls

Bill Mudge was an X-ray specs shooter, sending his green and red laser lines into the darkness of the Pizza Express. At certain times it was hard to decide which musician made each noise, such was the overlap and distortion of original sounds.

Ground control samples played us, the audience, as the voyeurs of Merritt Island. The pensive Gene Kranz figure of pianist George Bone sat a few feet away from me. Mudge's keyboard protégé Paul Jordanous a few feet more. Bill Mudge cannot be caught in one mere historical epoch, he is the Captain Kirk of the mission, beaming in and out of centuries; past and future. His Spinet diversions created pin pricks in the skull as though ours heads had become miniature planetariums. As much as this describes a delicate sophistication, Mudge also regularly cleaned out his waste pipe, always for the briefest moment but enough to get us dirty.

George Bone

Toy Rokit buck the trend of many on the jazz scene where dexterity and speed are the macho bragging fist with which to thump your audience with. Toy Rokit were like one of those animated gifs that patrol the internet. Vangelis caught on a hamster wheel, it was impossible to look away.