Tag Archives: London

2010 Retrospective

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As the year draws to a close it’s common to take stock. Best albums, films, gigs, personal experiences. For me it’s been an important year. Strictly speaking I moved to London and started my current job in Autumn 2009 but this has been my first full year in the capital. It seems I’ve spent about £1000 on gigs, you can see a partial list on Songkick. Highlights have included Ben Frost setting fire to the equipment at The Luminaire, Carla Bozulich lying on top of me during a set at Cafe Oto, the reactivation of Swans, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Richard Youngs, Oneohtrix Point Never, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Throbbing Gristle, Cafe Oto’s Japanese New Music Festival and a huge number of improv sets involving the likes of John Edwards, Evan Parker, Tony Marsh and Chris Corsano to name a few. On top of that I’ve eaten at a bunch of awesome restaurants visited numerous galleries, exhibitions, pubs and a bunch of other stuff I went on about in a previous post.

Japanese New Music

At the start of the year I bought a record player and have been doing my best to keep up with what’s available from Volcanic Tongue. Some of my favourites have been Call Back The Giants, Autre Ne Vuet, Ducktails – Landscapes, Forest Swords – Dagger Paths, Vulcan - Meet Your Ghost, Tashi Wada - Alignment, Flower-Corsano Duo - You’ll Never Work In This Town Again, Part Wild Horses – Blew in the Face, MV & EE – Liberty Rose, Bill Orcutt – Way Down South, a few Heather Leigh Murray releases and a couple of awesome Richard Youngs LPs.

Not everything great was new though. I got acquainted with Kate Bush by listening to Hounds of Love on loop for a few weeks. London punk poet Patrik Fitzgerald was brought to my attention and Grey Echoes became one of my favourite tracks. On top of that I’ve been listening to pretty much every album mentioned as I read through Rob Young’s excellent history of British folk: Electric Eden. Some awesome reissues I’ve picked up include: Doug Snyder & Bob Thompson - Daily Dance, Vertical Slit - Slit And Pre-Slit, The Dead C - Clyma Est Mort/Tentative Power, Lula Côrtes - Rosa De Sangue, Nihonjin – Far Out, Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord and Crass – The Feeding of the 5000. Simply put I’ve listened to so much awesome new music this year I can’t even remember it all! That’s not even counting films. I signed up to LoveFilm and watched a bunch of them too, old and new. To top it all off The Wire will publish their end of year list next month and as usual I won’t have heard half of it and will spend the next month or two catching up.

On the down side I spent a little too much money on gadgets and didn’t get the holiday to Tokyo I dream about. However I now have a shiny 13-inch Macbook Air which I love, a Kindle and my prized Nikon D90. Unfortunately I failed to become a great photographer in my first year but I did get contacted by an agent asking to hire me and a venue wanting to use some photos in their press-pack so I must be doing OK. My personal life hasn’t exactly gone to plan either but hopefully I’ll survive.

Now I need to find a new place to live in London before I head back to Glasgow for Christmas. Wish me luck!

Richard Youngs – Ultra Hits

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I found myself in Kilburn on Sunday night, enjoying the local park and pubs while waiting for the Richard Youngs gig at The Luminaire. Richard performed a “greatest hits” set followed by a full performance of the newly reissued Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits, which Richard called the “ultra hits” set.  Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits is ostensibly a Richard Youngs pop album, with gorgeous melodies and sing along choruses. Richard even makes attempts at soliciting crowd participation but unfortunately, with a few exceptions, most are too shy to sing along. Regardless, the music is awesome and Richard’s voice is as beautiful as ever.

The set ends all too soon, leaving us hungry for more but Richard simply replies there are only ten ultra hits. That may be true but there is still plenty of Richard Youngs goodness available at Volcanic Tongue.

By The Throat

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Part Wild Horses Main On Both Sides kick off proceedings at The Luminaire taking us to another place with flute, drums, sampled birdsong and bells. The crowd sits on the floor meditating as we are pulled into Part Wild Horses’ ritualistic free-jazz. The audience was then asked to stand to let more people in as the next act, Teeth Of The Sea, prepared to begin. Teeth Of The Sea increased the tempo with a kind of prog/punk rock. The drums providing a primal beat on top of which the guitars, keyboard and trumpet created a feedback heavy sonic landscape. Nothing, however, could prepare us for what was to come.

Ben Frost at the Luminaire

Ben Frost took the stage in his bare feet, guitar around his back. As he built the first sounds of the performance he rocks back and forth before his laptop as if charging it with his energy. He then turns his back on the crowd to play guitar before the two massive amps at the back of the stage. The sound is so intense the whole venue is shaking. Glasses slide across the floor and audience members clutch their heads for fear of exploding. The music shakes us and I find myself moving with the beat. The closest reference point I have is the work of Burial et al through some of London’s loudest club sound systems. Between tracks Ben trades remarks with the crowd telling a fellow Scotsman by my side to “just be quiet” and later announcing “here’s the hit single” before commencing a performance of Killshot. The whole of London seems to be crumbling around us as I begin to feel the title By The Throat is incredibly appropriate. Then we start to smell burning. The set continues as smoke pours from one of the monitors. When I get outside I feel like my entire body has been shook to its core. Nothing will ever be the same again.

The Fall at Shepherd’s Bush Empire

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I last saw The Fall on the tour of Imperial Wax Solvent in Cambridge only a few days before I moved to London. Mark E Smith was wheelchair bound at the time and gave an awesome but rather strange performance, at one point singing from behind a door off the back of the stage.

I arrived a little early after work so wandered around the nearby Westfield shopping centre which on two separate occasions has been described to me as a likely site of any future “zombie apocalypse”. Shepherd’s Bush Empire isn’t much better, a medium-sized venue run by O2 with a rather soulless atmosphere. The opening act is inexplicably a teen pop-rock outfit who get complete silence from the audience with the exception of a few hecklers. They are followed by a laptop performance which irreverently mixes video and sound sources from the likes of Elvis and Michael Jackson. A similar performance was given on the last tour and I was somewhat taken aback by the intolerance of the Cambridge audience to anything that didn’t involve guitars; Shepherd’s Bush seems more appreciative but their attention starts to wane about 10 minutes into the set. Not long after The Fall storm the stage and launch into Y.F.O.C Showcase.

Tonight’s set draws mainly from Our Future Your Clutter and Imperial Wax Solvent with Mark E Smith giving the kind of performance he is famed for. The band ploughs through the material as Smith snarls fragments of lyrics which loosely resemble what’s on the album. He wanders the stage turning the volume on the amps up full and when that’s not enough presses his mic against them to give the sound an extra boost. The only quiet moment is when the band perform Weather Report 2, towards the end of which Smith seems to be talking to the audience. As I strain to make out the words all I pick up is Smith stating “This song, Weather Report, is the worst song I have heard in my entire life” before he turns his back on the audience and laughs dementedly into the microphone. The band return for a rampaging encore of Sparta FC and when I reach the underground platform the fans are still chanting its lyrics.

Carla Bozulich

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On a cold Monday night we migrate from nursing a pint in The Kingsland pub for over an hour to the short line outside Cafe Oto. After some grumbling about the doors not being opened fast enough we’re on our way in. In the absence of a stamp my wrist is scored with a marker pen and we make our way to a small table right in front of the stage.
The night starts with Jack Shirt who plays a kind of sinister fairground music on a guitar and an array of effects pedals. The music is hauntingly beautiful but the feedback often spirals beyond his control and he finally apologises and gives up. The crowd applaud warmly in support, and Jack looks a little dejected as he packs up. We decide to grab his CD-R, nicely packed in a felt pouch and wait for the main event.

Carla BozulichSimilar technical difficulties occur near the start of Carla’s set as Francesco Guerri’s cello falls silent and he frantically unplugs effects pedals to try locate a fault. Thankfully with two on stage Carla happily jams away on her guitar until the problem is solved and they launch into the first song. One of the highlights of the night is when Carla lays down her guitar to perform Baby That’s The Creeps. Carla wanders through the audience, brushing past audience members and knocking over furniture, captivating the room with her intense performance. When I start to shiver I’m unsure if it’s really because of the cold.

As the set ends Carla asks if she’s played a good amount, gesturing the length of the set with her hands. After shouts of “more” and rapturous applause Francesco and Carla return for an encore. I’ve put a handful of my photos on flickr.

Life in London

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After nine months living in London I’m finding myself in an increasingly reflective mood. Life in the capital is pretty amazing. A trip to one of the many markets always has me returning with something cool like the Stylophone I picked up last week at Brick Lane Market or the yummy cheese and salami we grabbed at Borough Market the week before. The city is full of restaurants serving food from all around the globe and if I had a bit more money I’d probably try and eat through as many of them as I can. However, probably my favourite thing in London is music. Gone are the days when I flicked through the listings at the back of The Wire and lamented the number of cool gigs that I would be unable to go to. I’ve also discovered Cafe Oto and its amazing programme of new music which makes me think about moving to East London more and more each day.

Chelsea, London

It’s cool to just take the tube somewhere random and go for a walk and see what you find. Quaint little lanes in Chelsea, an independent record shop at the end of Portobello Road, stunning views on the South Bank or the awesome Dalston Peace Mural.

There are downsides to life here too, rent is ridiculously expensive and the quality of housing very low. It seems the demand is so high that landlords can be pretty much guaranteed a particular price based on area and don’t need to bother maintaining their property. My commute, although thankfully brief, usually involves being crammed into a smelly metal tube with a few hundred fellow Londoners. The hectic nature of life and work here can be tiring and a little stressful at times. Despite all this, I think it’s worth it to live in a place where I have the chance to discover something new every day.