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August 26, 2016August 26, 2016

BPREVIEW: The Garden + The Parrots @ Hare & Hounds, 28.08

Words by Ed King

On Sunday 28^th August, local promoters Killer Wave and This Is Tmrw join forces for an ‘all dayer’ live music event at the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath) – with The Garden + The Parrots sharing the headline.

Elsewhere on the bill are Table Scraps, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, The Terror Watts, Mothers Earth Experiment – with DJ sets from Terror Twins, Killer Wave + This Is Tmrw.

Doors open 5pm (so, an ‘all afternooner..?’) with advance tickets at £10 – which as far as Bank Holiday Sundays go, and considering the line up, is pretty bloody reasonable. For direct gig info & online ticket sales, click here.

The Garden are a self described ‘constantly evolving’ rock band from Orange County – currently touring the globe, coming to the Hare & Hounds on the third date around the UK (with two more in Southern Ireland).

Never dull, never pigeonholed, The Garden’s 2013 debut LP, the gloriously titled Life and Times of a Paperclip, is 16 track DIY extravaganza chocked full of 90sec garage band sonic booms – with their latest, and eponymous, LP losing none of the raw punches but stepping up the vocal leads and production value.

The Garden’s latest release, ‘Call This # Now’, begins (and ends) with what would probably happen if the black box from Event Horizon released an accompanying soundtrack, before jumping to a funky looped production and summer mish mash. It’s great fun, absurdly catchy, and has the occasional swear word. Sold. So what to expect on stage is anyone’s guess, but I reckon it’ll be a fun way to spend your Sunday.

But don’t take our words for it, click below and work it out for yourselves.

‘Call This # Now’ – The Garden

Sharing the Sunday top slot are Spanish three piece, The Parrots. And whilst we’re describing bands by metaphor, The Parrots are The Velvet Underground on a prolonged holiday after stealing Cliff’s double decker and driving over Lemmy’s foot. Well it makes sense to me.

Anyway… The Parrots are also globetrotting, coming to Birmingham on the second stop of their five UK dates – on the road to promote their debut LP, the also gloriously titled Los Niños Sin Miedo (Children Without Fear). Out on Heavenly Recordings from 26^th August, Los Niños Sin Miedo is 10 track garage fest of summer strained awesomeness, thrown in your face from a recklessly moving vehicle whilst spanking your rear. HUGE fun.

The album’s lead single, the… titled ‘Jame Gumb’ (if you were born in the 90’s +, Google it) is a two and a half minute meander into a tripped out soundscape that should give you a taste of the other nine tracks that sandwich it.

But again, we could be talking trite sh*te for all anyone would know. Stop, look and listen for yourself – click below.

‘Jame Gumb’ – The Parrots

The rest of the Sunday service comes from a healthy array of Birmingham bands that would be worth a cover charge on their own.

But here’s a list, with some helpful URL links if you’re feeling click happy: Table Scraps, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, The Terror Watts, Mothers Earth Experiment.

Phew… I’m off for a lie down. Wake me up on Sunday would you.

Killer Wave and This Is Tmrw present The Garden + The Parrots, with support from Table Scraps, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, The Terror Watts, Mothers Earth Experiment at the Hare & Hound on Sunday 28^th August. For direct gig info & online ticket sales, click here.

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For more on The Garden, visit www.thegardenvadavada.com

For more from The Parrots, visit www.facebook.com/theparrots1

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For more from Killer Wave, visit www.facebook.com/kllrwv

For More from This Is Tmrw, visit www.thisistmrw.co.uk

For more from the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath), visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

August 26, 2016August 29, 2016

BREVIEW: YR Welcome 3 @ Wagon & Horses 13-14.08

Words by Helen Knott / Pics by Michelle Martin (Visual Voice Media)

YR Welcome, Die Das Der’s two day festival, has reached its third incarnation. The format works to perfection – over two days and two stages you’re treated to an onslaught of 30-minute sets from some of the best bands around, all while hanging out with the Wagon & Horses’ rather bemused regulars. The festival covers a range of different genres, but the quality level is reliably high.

Take Manchester band Sweet Deals on Surgery for example. It’s not really my thing, but I can’t deny that it’s good. They play an enjoyable set of frantically delivered pop-punk songs with entertaining lyrics. It sounds a little bit like Johnny Foreigner.

Buy my YR Welcome 3 experience begins on the Sunday afternoon with Nasty Little Lonely, a Bristol group that features three members who look like they shouldn’t be in a band together. A guy who looks like Gruff Rhys is on guitar, Toyah Wilcox is on bass and Slash is on drums. The resulting sound is heavier than you might expect – it’s industrial, grinding and pushes the band’s sleazy bass lines to the fore.

The Double Happy are the funniest band of the evening. After the end of the first song their front man confides that he has a hole in his pocket and that his phone fell through that pocket during the song. He then fishes the phone out, much to the audience’s delight. This Wolves trio mixes heavy riffs and shouty vocals, with unusual vocal harmonies providing an effective contrast.

Bristol’s Downard are initially a bit of a shock to the system. Their opening track features heavily effect-ridden vocals accompanied by drums and bass guitar that, coming through a range of octave pedals, doesn’t always sound like bass guitar. It’s a confusingly big sound to be coming from two people in boiler suits – precise, heavy, groovy and in the case of set highlight ‘Yr Box’d’, super catchy.

The Terror Watts have emerged from the ashes of legendary Birmingham group Cedar House Band to create a vibe better suited to a sunny Californian beach than Brummie brutalist concrete. Their song ‘So Alone’ is two minutes of pop perfection that should by rights be all over the radio, inducing enthusiastic dancing at indie discos up and down the country.

Broken Oak Duet only joined the YR Welcome 3 line-up when another band pulled out, but they’re the highlight of my day. Continuing the trend for bands with limited band members, Broken Oak Duet meld math rock with metal. ‘Roger the Optometrist’, from this year’s debut album Terrain, has a catchy riff that heads off in all directions before returning seamlessly to pay off at the end.

Baby faced sibling duo Cassels have songs about the NHS, family dramas and, weirdly for the youngest band at the festival, getting old. They have a certain DIY charm, but don’t quite feel like the finished article yet. And they take awkward stage banter to a new level. Example – Cassels: “This is a song about naughty priests and what they’re allowed to get away with”. Heckler: “Sexy!” Cassels: “….Uh not really…”

But Cassels could get no better lesson in banter than from the very next band on, Idles. Idles’ charismatic lead singer tells his guitarist to “shut up” when he plays his guitar between songs. The guitarist replies patiently, “I was giving you your cue Joe”.

It’s hard to review Idles without mentioning Fat White Family. They have a similar political leaning and punk ethos. Idles though, have better songs. ‘Romantic Gestures’ is a Joy Division enthused romp about pretending to care about romance in a relationship. It, like other set highlight ‘Queens’, comes from Idles’ second EP Meat, released at the end of 2015. Hurry up with the album boys.

Idles are the third brilliant band from Bristol of the day. Maybe we should all move to Bristol… Hang on a minute though, here’s Birmingham’s Dorcha. Featuring singer, composer and all-out music genius Anna Palmer, Dorcha create off-kilter, atmospheric experimental music. I’m gutted when I have to leave well before the end to catch the last train home.

YR Welcome 3 introduced me to some of my new favourite bands, all in a warm, friendly and ego-free atmosphere. But as we were told in Tony Appleby’s recent interview with Die Das Der – the ‘Birmingham-based community of like-minded musicians, artists, bloggers, photographers, film-makers and journalists’ who organise the annual band fest, YR Welcome is a labour of love rather than a profit-making enterprise. And it shows.

To check out YR Welcome 3 updates and line-up information, click here.

For more on Die Das Der, visit www.facebook.com/wearediedasder

For more from the Wagon & Horses, visit www.wagonandhorsesdigbeth.com

August 24, 2016August 24, 2016

OPINION: Michael Nyman Syndrome

Words by Ed King

I call it the ‘Michael Nyman Syndrome’.

A few months ago (long enough to now comment without reprisal) Hans Zimmer came to the Barclay Card Arena – performing scores from ‘a career spanning over 150 films including The Lion King, Gladiator and the recently released Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.’

Hans Zimmer is phenomenally successful, arguably on the top rung ‘of Hollywood’s major composers’ – scoring many of modern culture’s most successful, tear jerking and Academy friendly motion pictures.

Tickets sold. Tickets sold quickly. Our accreditation came through literally hours before the show (side stepping a city wide fervour I haven’t seen since a relatively unknown Coldplay were booked at Ronnie Scotts… and then released ‘Yellow’) and an arena sized herd crashed through their 9-5 fences to be the first online.

We covered it. It got a great hit rate. Reports came back (ours & others) of a mesmerising night, full of passionate nostalgia and dramatic intent. Apparently when The Lion King got its fifteen minutes, amdist the litany of blockbuster riffs, the whole arena exploded at the ‘immediately recognisable… opening bars’.

Pockets of Birmingham (it’s fair to say) were in awe. Outside of an editorial remit, I had little interest. I shall explain.

A few years ago I happened across an Icelandic composer called Ólafur Arnalds, accidentally finding his oh-so-cheery titled album …And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness, on Spotify. I had been replaying the The Piano soundtrack, a score my mum introduced me to (around the same time I was collecting tape sets and A4 flyers from The Depot) and Arnalds’s debut LP was suggested to me courtesy of the metadata hungry nanobots behind the music site.

I fell, head over heals, in love with the compositions – a once hardcore drummer creating the most beautiful laments through keys and string. It haunted me. I let it. I listened to nothing else, until one Wednesday afternoon I found myself standing on Harborne High Street crying at clouds with my earphones in. I hadn’t been so overwhelmed by a genre since the rave ‘scene’ of the early to mid 90’s, and continued to explore the tendrils of Related Artists until my Library over floweth. Artist after artist, label after label, I was discovering music again. And it was good.

From Ólafur Arnalds I went to Ludovico Einaudi, with a short stop off at Jóhann Jóhannsson and Nils Frahm – spending a few solid months going through the Italian maestro’s extensive discography. Then it was on to Fabrizio Paterlini and Giovanni Allevi, gulping down the originality of the former (whilst retching at the saccharine of the latter) before heading north to Max Richter and the superb German imprint, Denovali Records.

Through the Denovali roster and the collaborations they’ve supported, I spent a few happy months following breadcrumbs in the snow – eventually getting a little lost in the electronica crossovers from Max Cooper, Tom Hodge and Franz Kirmann. Then the guiding lights of Bersarin Quartett and the phenomenal Poppy Ackroyd (whose debut LP delight, Escapement, I am listening to whilst writing this op-ed) brought me in from the glitch cold, before sending me back to more homegrown artists such as Dustin O’Halloran, Peter Broderick and Helen Jane Long – with O’Halloran’s sublime Lumiere still pretty much stuck on repeat.

There were others, or course (there always are) but from this hopscotch of countries and composers I began to develop an idea of what worked, for me, and what didn’t. I don’t like cheese (…Allevi lasted about a weekend), I’m married to keys with strings as my mistress, there is no place too gloomy or too inspiring, please don’t sing – you’re only making it worse (Broderick) and a blanket of ‘glitch’ can ruin an otherwise warm and fuzzy experience. And above all else, I want to believe it firsthand.

So forgive me, but I have somewhat damp blue touch paper when it comes to scores written for film soundtracks.

I can enjoy them, to a point, but I just don’t believe them. Film scores can be memorable, uplifting and all the things good music should be, but they are not grown from an autonomous seed. They were born for a purpose – one fervently tied into the commerce, industry and studio that are signing its commission. Its artistry set up, like promotional copy or professional head shots. Like a pop song. And before you explode in an adult sized defensive strop, or prepare to battle your way out of an imaginary corner (this I call the ‘Harry Potter Syndrome’) this is me, my opinion, what’s in my head. I am not telling you what to have in yours. I don’t want to fight the Barclaycard Arena.

Its simple and visceral. I’ve never watched Broadchurch and yet I know, firmly, what Ólafur Arnalds‘s music means to me – from his stripped back compositions of Found Songs to the emotive maelstrom of …And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness. I know what makes me stand in the street and sob. And it’s not an animated lion cub.

So when I go to The Glee Club and see a queue stretching around the upper floor of The Arcadian for an Ólafur Arnalds concert, I am a little disheartened when the soundtrack to Broadchurch makes up about a third of the set. It saddens me when I talk about the finger danced beauty of O’Halloran’s ‘We Move Lightly’ and I’m met by blank stares, until I explain “…it’s by the guy that wrote the music for the TV show Transparent.”

Max Richter penned The Blue Notebooks, which I used to listen to during monsoons in south India, but my friend knows him from Ari Folman production credits. Philip Glass is significantly more than The Fantastic Four and the next time someone says, “…like Enrico Morricone” I might just punch a wall and go home. And why so petulant..? At the end of this murky rainbow is Danny Elfman and Randy Newman, and nobody wants that.

But my journey started with 15 second chunks of Michael Nyman and the syndrome of fast track compositions he spawned in my head. It took a number of years (and the Gattaca soundtrack) until I stumbled across Ólafur Arnalds – but now that I have, I don’t want fostered music or 3^rd hand inspiration. I don’t want an album that conjures images of a naked Harvey Keitel or a social dystopia. I want flesh (not Keitel’s). I want to know an artist for their work – not their response to someone else’s creative brief.

So whilst I tether my high horse to the Symphony Hall, I urge the audience that ransacked the Hans Zimmer merch stall to do the only thing I can legitimately ask of them. The only thing I can legitimately ask of myself. Explore.

The world has some stunning composers in it today, with institutions and ambition creating more by the year. And now the Michael Nyman Syndrome that had me locked in for so many years has passed, I can begin to appreciate them too.

‘Lyre’ by Poppy Ackroyd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFrIdV7Sf_0

Ed King is Editor of Birmingham Review & Birmingham Preview. Follow him @edking2210

August 22, 2016August 22, 2016

BPREVIEW: Whitney @ Hare & Hounds, 23.08

Words by Graeme Elliott

On the 23^rd August the Hare & Hounds plays host to Whitney. The laid back seven-piece from Chicago are currently touring the UK backed by a surge of industry buzz, with their debut album – Light Upon the Lake, eliciting acclaim across the music press.

Advance tickets for the gig, presented by the ever busy This is Tmrw, will set you back £10 plus booking fee – for further information & online ticket sales click here. Doors open at 7.30pm, with Birmingham’s own Swampmeat Family Band playing in support.

Whitney were formed by guitarist Max Kakacek and singer/drummer Julien Ehrlich following the demise of their previous band Smith Westerns, whose music has a timeless quality to it; a mellow Americana swathed in nostalgia.

The name Whitney was devised as the name of fictional singer songwriter, a cipher to channel their song writing through. However the personal nature of Whitney’s music belies this fact; they are not shy in baring more than their souls either, as the band’s Instagram pictures also show. But perhaps taking a more detached attitude towards the song writing process has allowed them to explore this side of themselves more readily within their music.

Whitey’s songs themselves manage to make complex arrangements sound clean, warm and effortless; their studio recordings layering strings and brass with falsetto vocals and melodic, but understated, lead guitar work. Whitney trade the hazy reverb of Smith Westerns for a more direct, but no less atmospheric, sound.

Although despite the gentle nature of Whitney’s music, their performance promises to be a lively proposition, with Julian Ehrlich claiming “we bend the instrumentals, there’s more energy, some stage banter”.

And with Whitney numbering seven, as such a high head count crams itself onto one stage this isn’t surprising. As someone who finds their debut album a little too relaxed at times it will be interesting to see how their songs transform in a live setting.

To get a taste of what to expect check out their video for ‘No Woman’, the lead single from Whitney’s debut album – Light Upon the Lake.

‘No Woman’ by Whitney

Whitney play at the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath) on Tues 23^rd August, with support from Swampmeat Family Band – as presented by This Is Tmrw. For direct gig info & online tickets sales, click here.

For more on Whitney, visit www.whitneytheband.com/

For more on Swampmeat Family Band, visit www.facebook.com/Swampmeat-Family-Band

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For more from This Is Tmrw, visit www.thisistmrw.co.uk

For more from the Hare & Hounds, visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

August 20, 2016

BPREVIEW: The Flyover Show 2016 @ Hockley Circus (underneath Hockley Flyover) 20.08

Words by Ed King / Pics courtesy of UPRIZE CIC

Today, in a few hours time (we’re posting early/late), The Flyover Show returns to Birmingham – to ‘once again transform the grey space beneath the Hockley flyover into an oasis of cultural expression’.

It’s bold rhetoric, but Soweto Kinch’s ‘one-day festival of music, art & dance’ does pretty much exactly that – building a seriously serious stage and soundsystem on the forgotten grey concourse that connects the underpasses of Hockley Circus (see above).

Add an international line up of reggae, roots, jazz, soul and hip hop, with a sprinkling of homegrown talent, turn the oven to Gas Mark Free Entry and cook on a slow heat between 12:30pm and 9pm. Crikey Nigella, this puts your aubergine pasties to shame.

You’ll forgive me. I get somewhat excited about The Flyover Show. But it is a remarkable event, and not just for the line ups and artists that it brings to the city (The Flyover Show 2010 was the first time I saw Akala). Soweto Kinch consistently challenges the preconceptions that Lozells, Handsworth and the less bohemian patches of Hockley are marred with – combating tired media with a line up that the Symphony Hall would soil themselves to get.

And it’s free. It’s Free. IT’S ALL FOR FREE. Tell me of another fully community focused event in Birmingham, with no door charge, that welcomes all ages, and has the same brash line up panache and cultural gall – combining international legends (this year it’s the jazz and reggae guitar great, Ernest Ranglin) with homegrown talent and UK wide headliners . I’ll give you some time… you can’t, can you?

So… (cue dream swirls, wavy trail hands and nostalgia glockenspiel…) Why are we here? The Flyover Show began back in 2008, as Soweto Kinch was on a photoshoot in the derelict underbelly of the Hockley flyover. For more background on The Flyover Show from the man himself, read Helen Knott’s interview with Soweto Kinch – click here.

Recognising the acoustics, and being tired of the one sided reputation the area has carried for some years, Kinch decided to throw a big party. Well, what better way to combat a media circus than with music, dancing and food. The Flyover Show held its inaugural event in May 2008; what started as good idea gathered some serious momentum, then a following, and after seeing the likes of Andy Hamilton, Bashy, Goldie, Lady Dynamite, Akala, and Goldie all headline The Flyover Show (plus a jaunt across the world to hold The Flyover Show in Johannesburg) The Flyover Show took a break after 2012.

Now, four years since around 6,000 people turned up to see Maxi Priest headline, The Flyover Show is back – with the renowned jazz/reggae guitarist, Ernest Ranglin, sitting at the top of the bill.

Ernest Ranglin has played with an absurdly sexy portfolio of artists, and was music director for both Island Records and Studio One back in the days when you would really, really want those jobs. Plus this is part of Ernest Ranglin’s farewell tour – a globetrotting series of goodbye gigs that reads Glastonbury, The Barbican, Montreux jazz festival, Istanbul Jazz Festival, The Flyover Show… erm, I think that’s pronounced ‘SCORE’.

Next on the line up is Eska, who if you’ve not heard of before just stop reading… click on Google (or our links)… type in ‘Eska Music’ and start reading again. Eska grew up with The Flyover Show, is generally quite spectacular, and her set at the recent Mostly Jazz festival was one of the highlights of the weekend. Now you can see her FOR FREE at The Flyover Show.

Also this year event sees the welcome return of Basil Gabbidon, a Birmingham reggae legend and founding member of Steel Pulse, who will be playing with his own band and possibly someone else’s… but you’ll have to be at The Flyover Show to see this in all its mystery and glory.

Then there’s top some draw jazz from Reuben James, Alex Wilson and Soweto Kinch himself. Whilst in the home grown cooler we have Juice Aleem, Call Me Unique, TrueMendous, RTKal, Deci4life, Affie Jam, Amerah Saleh, Aliyah Hasinah, Alisha Kadir, Jae Sosa and Trope.

Oh, and did I mention it’s free..?

The Flyover Show runs from 12:30pm to 9pm, on the concourse inside Hockely Circus – underneath the Hockley flyover. Entry is free all day.

Here’s a few helpful online links to find and find out about The Flyover Show:

Google Maps (to Hockley Circus/event site): https://goo.gl/maps/2JzEPdR2jZ92

The Flyover Show on Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheFlyoverShow/

The Flyover Show on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Flyovershow