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November 22, 2014August 31, 2015

INTERVIEW: Chris Tye – The Paper Grenade

Words by Ed King / Pics by Edward Taylor

*Chris Tye launches his new album, The Paper Grenade, at The Glee Club (B’ham) on Sun 23^rd Nov. For info & tickets, visit http://www.glee.co.uk/performers/chris-tye.htm*

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“…you remember when MySpace used to be big?”

Chris Tye is explaining The Paper Grenade, his old music moniker and name of his new album. “I used to do instrumental music under that name and it was one of those titles that wouldn’t go away. It’s still up there somewhere because I’ve forgotten all my passwords.” Modern footprints; popular culture can become anachronistic quicker than it used to.

We’re sitting on The Glee Club main stage surrounded by a living room familiarity and sound engineer mutterings. Birmingham Review first covered Chris Tye at Folk for Free gig last December, the sheets of winter rain staining the bright lights and backdrop of the open plan Symphony Hall Café Bar, but the snug Glee Club surroundings feel much more appropriate.

There is immediate warmth. I’ve not met Chris Tye before but he’s on the ubiquitous list of respected regional troubadours, and to have never put ‘The Glee Club’ in a sentence next to his name feels oddly incongruous. Now I get to add ‘album’ and ‘launch’.

“I played a gig in Coventry at a pub called The Mordseley,” continues Chris Tye, “and was speaking to someone in the crowd afterwards about people we’d known who’d had cancer. Her mother had died really young and we got talking about how you’ve got to make sure you don’t have too many days that are just a non event, like a paper grenade.” It’s a confident metaphor, original on an old theme. “It struck me a good way of describing that; these non events, these non days, these paper grenades where nothing happens.”

But the journey to The Paper Grenade was not quite as carpe diem, with Chris Tye “spending three years trying to record an album myself,” and embracing every aspect; “writing it, playing most of the instruments with the exception of drums, producing it, engineering it, thinking you know, what works for Prince. Then I realised how difficult it is really is. I did finish an album but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.”

Then just as Chris Tye “was about to knock it on the head” a referral from Fink put him in touch with Tim Bidwell. “I went to visit him (Tim Bidwell) and he has a lovely home studio in a lovely part of Brighton; went out got drunk, and I woke up with a week’s worth of dates in the diary.

It was such an important phase; I could write songs with him the vehicle dragging the ideas out of me.” After knocking out “six tracks in a week”, The Paper Grenade started to take shape – with Michael Clarke (Ron Sexsmith, Dan Whitehouse) coming in later to share production credit and instrumental burdens.

The result is a ten track album that covers the range of faces Chris Tye can bring on stage. “My tendency is to make down beat, melancholic acoustic,” admits Tye, “and I was desperate not to do that with this record. We decided some of the songs needed to be fairly big, a lot of electric guitars and big drums.”

“I wanted to structure it like a good live set; start upbeat to capture people’s attention, run though some of the melancholic bits in the middle, get a little bit psychedelic at the end then finish with the title track.” With a bonus acoustic demo of ‘Vicious Words’ as encore, curtain down.

But The Paper Grenade still feels personal, despite the eventual collaborations – something that can distill or distort a creative endevour. I never write in tandem. Some of the album artwork was even done by Chris Tye’s daughter, Daisy, who has track eight named after and dedicated to her.

“You know when kids paint and you put down a split open cereal packet underneath, so the paint doesn’t go on the table,” explains Tye, “I took up her painting and that was on the table I had load of different ideas but I couldn’t get away from that one.” It’s oddly beautiful too, an oil swirl of watercolours on the back cover. Don’t look at it and think.

Chris Tye seems to have found something else in The Paper Grenade too; a reinforced zeal, new blood to keep moving. “As a starting point, which I really do see it as, I wanted to represent all aspects of what I might do. The next album might be more in depth; I’m thinking me, a piano and a quartet – embrace the melancholic section in the middle.”

As a fan of most things ivory, and melancholic, this sounds good to me. And as Chris Tye confirms, “people like miserable, it makes them happy; it makes me happy.” A sentiment that kept busy with unrequited lust and Tori Amos albums throughout my blotter acid munching teens. But one that would not be unwelcome on The Glee Club programme, should this be the venue to host round two.

But first things first; Chris Tye launches The Paper Grenade on this stage in a full band showcase on Sunday 23^rd November, with support from Sam Redmore and Vijay Kishore.

I look around the room and try to imagine it full of more familiar faces. The sound engineers start to mutter in more obvious tones. The room is no longer ours but I feel comfortable enough to ask the obvious.

“Markus (Sargeant, The Glee Club music promoter) has given me a lot of good support slots here,” explains Chris Tye, as we pack up like the end of picnic. “You know it’s always going to be a quality gig; a good sound, for me and the audience. It’s a quality seal at every turn.”

And as we walk quiet steps out of The Glee Club, I’m gifted a copy of The Paper Grenade. “It just made sense to be here.”

‘The Paper Grenade’ – Chris Tye, live in Cheltenham. Click here or on the image below

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Chris Tye plays at The Glee Club (B’ham) on Sunday 23^rd November, launching The Paper Grenade – with support from Sam Redmore and Vijay Kishore. Ed King will be there for a Birmingham Review.

For gig info & tickets, visit http://www.glee.co.uk/performers/chris-tye.htm

For more on Chris Tye, including online purchases for The Paper Grenade, visit http://www.christye.co.uk/

For more from The Glee Club venues, visit http://www.glee.co.uk/

November 22, 2014November 22, 2014

PREVEW: The Ordinary Boys @ Hare & Hounds, Sun 23rd Nov

The Ordinary Boys return to Birmingham this weekend, playing at the Hare & Hounds on Sunday 23^rd November – with support from Whales in Cubicles + Stubblemelt.

Doors open at 7:30pm with tickets priced at £10, as presented by Birmingham Promoters.

On the road with a new line up, album, and single in the offing – the soon to be released ‘Awkward’, The Ordinary Boys are reforming after ‘a seven year hiatus’. Birmingham Review last saw The Ordinary Boys when they reunited for a farewell UK tour at the end of 2011, to ‘give this band the decent burial that they didn’t get in 2008’, and played at the Birmingham O2 Academy that December.

Now their back, again, with front man Samuel Preston joined by his original drummer, Charlie ‘Chuck’ Stanley, and bassist, James Gregory.

Confused? You may well be. The Ordinary Boys, the Indie-Punk-Big-Brother-Brighton-Rockstars from Worthing, have had a chequered past. Forming, changing, splitting, reforming, small success, small derision, national success, national derision, old members, new members, new old members; times have certainly ebbed and flowed for The Ordinary Boys.

But some things stay constant; the Morrissey homage are still on B-Unique Records, the Atlantic subsidiary who signed them back in 2004, and still have their Ordinary Army of fans.

Plus Preston has stretched his songwriting muscles since 2011, and the new Boys’ album (recorded with MJ, from Leeds’ rising psychedelic noise rockers Hookworms) to be released sometime before Christmas, is reportedly an ‘extension’ of their pre-celebrity status debut. So who knows; perhaps, like fine wine…

But you know, there’s been enough press rhetoric about The Ordinary Boys. Here’s some sock puppets to help you make up your own mind.

‘Awkward’ by The Ordinary Boys – click here

The Ordinary Boys play at the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath) on Sunday 23^rd November. Ceri Black will be there for a Birmingham Review.

For further gig info & tickets, visit http://hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk/event-listings/event/?eventID=10032040

For more on The Ordinary Boys, visit https://www.facebook.com/TheOrdinaryBoysOfficial

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For more from the Hare & Hounds, visit http://hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk/

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit http://birminghampromoters.com/

November 21, 2014

BPREVIEW: Jim Noir @ Sunflower Lounge, Sat 22nd Nov

Jim Noir comes to The Sunflower on Saturday 22^nd November, with support from Glitches + Mike Moloney. Tickets are priced at £10 with doors opening at 7:30pm – presented by Birmingham Promoters.

Manchester multi-instrumentalist, Jim Noir, has been banging his psychedelic Pop/Rock drums since 2004.

His debut studio album, Tower of Love, came out at the end of 2005 on My Dad Records (Manchester, UK) to generally positive reviews – the BBC calling it ‘the debut of the year’ and Drowned in Sound ‘a tasty entrée’.

Not to be outdone (or waste a 50cent metaphor) the BBC further added ‘…a swirling ethereal wonder to soundtrack your dreams and underscore your fantasies.’ Indeed.

A collaboration of his previous three EPs, with some cheeky new numbers thrown in for good measure, Noir’s debut gained pretty ubiquitous comparisons to The Beta Band. His latest and fourth studio album, the syntax mischievous Finnish Line, is also garnering comparisons from another, arguably better known, band beginning prefix/‘B’ – following its release earlier this month.

“Alcohol. Life. Death. Aliens; in that order I think,” reveals Jim Noir – of the album’s themes which, even by his standards, are particularly off-kilter. “It’s a roam around what I was thinking at a slightly hard point in my life. I stopped drinking for two months and had a moment of clarity.

A couple of songs are about Manchester and how weird it is. A couple about myself, girls, how I like to think aliens are just laughing at us and the futility of it all, and a couple about mortality and how, when, if, and why anyone should worry about it.”

Out on the road throughout November, Jim Noir is touring Finnish Line in venues from Glasgow to Brighton, with Saturday’s gig at The Sunflower Lounge marking the halfway cusp.

Self produced and self professed ‘altogether fuller, finer, and downright dandy’, Finnish Line is a hard album to dislike, full of cheeky Pop melodies and wah wahs of yesteryear. Plus the video of the lead single, ‘The Broadway Jets’, has a spandex clad ‘trio of ninja tadpole versions of himself (Jim Noir) who wreak havoc on the house whilst he’s asleep.’ Viddy below:

‘The Broadway Jets’ by Jim Noir, click here

Jim Noir plays at The Sunflower Lounge on Saturday 22^nd November. For further info & tickets, visit https://birminghampromoters.ticketabc.com/events/jim-noir/

For more on Jim Noir, visit http://www.jimnoir.com/

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For more form The Sunflower Lounge, visit http://www.thesunflowerlounge.com/

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit http://birminghampromoters.com/

November 17, 2014November 17, 2014

BPREVIEW: Schizophrenic City – Katie Foulkes, 17th Nov to 1st Dec @ Worcester Arts Workshop

Above pic taken from Schizophrenic City – courtesy of Katie Foulkes

Schizophrenic City launches at Worcester Arts Workshop today, on display from Mon 17^th Nov until Monday 1^st Dec.

An exhibition from photographer Katie Foulkes, using multi-exposure, Schizophrenic City is a series of twelve images from Amsterdam “essentially trying to capture the different elements of being in a big city, the many opposing facets, such as day and night, tourist or local.”

Originally inspired by a Stompin’ on Spiders song of the same name, Katie decided to expand her focus into an exhibition when she “came back from Amsterdam, with much more than was needed for the video. It was such a mad place, and I had a lot of architectural shots that I wanted show – you see so much when you stop and look up.”

Katie Foulkes, aka KFD Photography, has been a professional photographer for the past two years.

Starting out taking shots of events and live music, and having worked several times for Birmingham Review, Katie is using Schizophrenic City to expand her portfolio into subjects including architecture.

Having studied Interior Architecture at UWIC, Schizophrenic City is the realisation of two compelling interests for Katie Foulkes – bringing the focus of her academic life into her subsequent work as a photographer.

“I learnt a lot of the theoretical side (of architecture) at university, such as design and history – having been introduced to photography at Hereford College beforehand,” says Katie, “but photography is where my energies focused once completing my degree. Now I’ve become more proficient and technically aware I wanted to go back to my roots in, and passion for, architecture – to have my cake and eat it.”

Images from Schizophrenic City series will also appear in the music video, of the same name, for Worcester based ‘purveyors of ‘New Tradition’ Blues’ – Stompin’ On Spiders.

A special one off gig will be performed by Stompin’ On Spiders at Worcester Arts Workshop on November 22^nd – entry is £4 on the door, with the event starting at 8:45pm.

For more on Katie Foulkes, visit http://www.kfdphotography.co.uk/

For more on Worcester Arts Workshop, visit http://worcesterartsworkshop.org.uk/

November 11, 2014

REVIEW: Blind @ mac, Sat 8th Nov

Words by Ed King / Pics courtesy of The Paper Birds & Richard Davenport

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall; the tiered theatre seats facing down onto an illuminated archway, Chesterfield armchair, striped curtain and mixing desk. A stage set for one, Grace Savage to be precise, and the hallway of sounds that would help her to see.

Blind is Savage’s exploration of the audio catalysts that shaped her – from the caged jokes of her mother, the loaded advice, to the popular culture a teenager embraces when they want to be heard or feel free. I’ve seen it promoted in two ways, with gender specifics battling against more theatre friendly rhetoric, but the constant is Grace Savage.

And from the off Blind is unashamedly personal; a brave and immediate grasp on the solo show format, as a light shines through the curtains, casting a silhouette of Mother Savage – thick curls and raspy laugh informing her daughter “all men are bastards” and “there is no God”. The words are crueler than the delivery, funny, but damaged none the less.

The bitter wisdom still in my head Savage reveals herself from the backlight and perches on the Chesterfield, a nervous child in front of an impatient camera – “I just want to fit in,” her jaw juts out in a comedic, compliant search for approval.

“I began imitating everything around me,” tells Savage, running through a list of impetus in her life before beatboxing. Her mates, boys, girls, arbitrary sounds and The Spice Girls (if the last two need distinction) all play their part before maturity brings us to holiday guitars, Jazz scatting and the ‘human beatbox’.

We’re invited to participate, with Savage explaining phonetic techniques for the high hat and kick drum. A simple beat is suggested; split into three phlegm fighting teams the audience give it a beginner’s best but last about fifteen seconds – our efforts recorded and ‘mastered’ by our gracious host. Then a bizarrely clichéd segue splits the audience again, into teams that may as well be blue and pink, to record gender specific screaming – before Savage turns what was fun but inaudible, into a firm beat. You could call this a metaphor.

Then back to the diary entries of popular culture as a fifteen year old Grace Savage soaks up everything from TV commercials to Clinton’s back peddling – further explaining how her sense of the world came through sound. And how her evolution came through the imitation and manipulation of those sounds that surrounded her.

It’s not a new concept (oddly one I sat through in pitch black at mac a couple of weeks before, reviewing Glen Neath and David Rosenberg’s second binaural production for Fuel Theatre, Fiction) but to explore it through the experiences of someone to whom sound is so crucial, is much more pertinent.

Across personal and professional, sound has defined Grace Savage’s world in a way those around her may take for granted. And to groin kick this point home, we’re invited to don our blindfolds (ties we were given on entry) and fall into a Max Richter soundtrack with Savage describing a fight she once witnessed on a train. The escalation, from subtle threat to violence overt, is palpable, as Savage hand holds us through an increasingly angry cacophony. It’s a bright sidestep into her world; mine is made up of words on a page, or in my head, but I understand fear.

The formative journey continues, plot pointing personal discussions and discoveries that further illustrate the point; in the world according to Grace sound is gunshot and ricochet. And as chronologically we edge closer to the present, with a few salient points of beatboxing history and cultural references thrown in (if nothing else, Rahzel), there continue the pauses and confidence of an actor’s performance.

But the humour that opened the show now sits, interview style, to play us a pre-record of her mother. All the pantomime disappears as we watch a woman talk to her past, to a deep root; Savage asks questions and mouths the responses, mirroring in reality the evening’s earlier ‘advice’. The rhetoric is no longer funny. The laugh is identical. Someone in this room is likely to cry.

Then following a final, shameful, slideshow through the texts and social media Savage has received from her beatboxing performances – the frighteningly sexual and aggressive responses some people find funny, or empowering – the lights come up for the last time. Some stand, all cheer. Both are deserved.

I knew there’d be beatboxing tonight, and from one side of the promotion a gender political thread, but Blind ends as it always was – Grace Savage alone on a stage. No doubt the brief to this production covered a series of box ticking funding steams, and if that allowed it to live then I have no quarrel or axe, but tonight was Grace Savage; Blind is her world, her honesty, her velvet glove punch.

A one woman show about the show of one woman, Blind is superlative to watch. To present it in any other way is, ironically, perhaps obscuring the vision.

For more on Grave Savage, visit http://www.gracesavageofficial.com/

For more on The Paper Birds, visit http://www.thepaperbirds.com/

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For more from mac, including full listings across the centre, visit http://macbirmingham.co.uk/