D'Angelo

By Joel Stagg

February 3, 2012

Back last autumn when I purchased tickets to see D’Angelo at the slightly generous price of £40 a pop, the normal feelings of excitement and anticipation rubbed shoulders with some less usual ones. D’Angelo’s so-called sabbatical since the year 2000 when he dropped Voodoo, inhabited by well-publicised dalliances with drugs, alcohol abuse, rehabilitation in Antigua and dalliances on the wrong side of the law, led to a certain morbid curiosity and also a sense of trepidation. It seemed I wasn’t alone when the comedian Kojo, who hosted the evening, asked of the audience – “How many of you came just to see if he still looks the same?”

There were a few bad omens. The tour had been somewhat opportunistically labelled the ‘Occupy Music’ tour, the announcement of the gigs around the same time as the Occupy movement’s peak media coverage obviously setting off a few lightbulbs in the D’Angelo camp. Secondly, the tickets came emblazoned with ‘D’Angelo for One Night Only’ across them, surely designed to lure in as many fans as possible, but somewhat optimistic and contradictory considering the ‘3rd & 4th Feb’ sign on the front of the Brixton Academy. And at the gig itself, the crowd grew restless after two warm-up segments from Kojo, a spritely three-song opening slot from Bluey Robinson, and a public service announcement calling for more black bone marrow donors, all seemingly leading into an imminent D’Angelo appearance which eventually took over an hour more to happen.

But needless to say, within seconds of gracing the stage, all doubts, morbid curiosities and restlessness were obliterated. In what remains in my mind one of the most intense and exciting opening sections to a gig I’ve ever witnessed, he and his band tore through a Voodoo heavy-set featuring the likes of ‘Playa Playa’, ‘Devil’s Pie’, ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’, ‘The Root’ and a particularly high-powered ‘Chicken Grease’. D’Angelo struck an enigmatic and energetic figure, yelping and wailing and getting the crowd in hysterics, one removed item of clothing at a time, whilst still managing to sound like one of the most powerful and competent soul singers of our time. It’s for good reason that he can disappear for so many years and come back like this. The band was tight as they come, the man himself was electrifying, and the crowd were in raptures.

Momentum like that would always be hard to maintain for an entire show, so around the point in the gig where it dawned on those in attendance that the 20-minute breakdown flitting between drum solos, space organ funk-outs and bass jamming was actually still part of ‘Shit, Damn, Motherfucker’, it seemed we had descended into the perhaps-expected overindulgent side of things. Or, as my accompanying friend pointed out, it was also plausible that D’Angelo had just wandered off for a bit, as he was noticeable by his absence for a short while. Similarly indulgent moments of D’Angelo attempting some solo blues guitar jams upon his return also detracted from the initial, blistering energy.

But the closing section of the show, with D’Angelo sat alone at a keyboard perched on a raised platform, restored the equilibrium. He played one continuous piece, easing effortlessly in and out of numerous hits like ‘Me And Those Dreamin Eyes of Mine’, ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Africa’, ‘One Mo’ Gin’ and ‘Jonz in My Bonz’. With the crowd firmly in the palm of his hand, he theatrically hit the opening chords of ‘Untitled (How Does it Feel?)’, but just before he opened his mouth to sing, stood up and away from the keyboard, gazing out into the crowd and looking playfully nonchalant. He sat down moments later and picked straight back up where he left off, and needless to say, the crowd sing-a-long that ensued was deafening.

The OST Presents: We Are One

Something for those of you without weekend plans: The Open Source Transmission is a monthly music podcast presented by producer/DJ Triangulator and rapper Lixx (one half of Undercurrent). Through our varied musical interests and different backgrounds we bring you a whole range of great sounds – from old to new, uplifting to melancholy, classic to obscure – but always quality!

We Are One celebrates the O.S.T.’s first birthday with DJs on the night, Zap Em, James Hall, Jepordise, DJ Massacre and, of course, The O.S.T., playing old-school hip-hop, funk, dnb, dubstep, electronica and a whole lot more juicy eclectic goodness – all the musical variation you expect from the O.S.T. podcasts, without losing touch of the Friday night party vibes. If you’re in London, be there – it’s gonna be big!:

Friday 9th December. 9pm-2am
Downstairs @ El Paso, 350-354 Old Street, London EC1V 9NQ
4 pounds on the door, free before 10

Head over to facebook for more details.

Zola Jesus

By Robert Freeman

November 23, 2011

She may look like a little Legolas borrower, but when Nika Danilova sings it’s like watching a hurricane. On new album Conatus, her operatic vocal stylings act as a focal point for the listener, even if at times one could be forgiven for wishing that the style didn’t obscure the content quite so much. As she belts out her vocals they come from the very back of her throat, and at times it’s a wee bit tricky to actually hear what she’s singing.

However in a live context, Danilova’s vocals slot into place a lot more cleanly than on record. Rather than existing within the eye of the storm, her voice is more of a counterpart to the other aspects of the music. The echo and reverb are still present, but rather than overshadowing the other parts, the effect is complementary. Synths rush about and the drum machines click like teeth, and each layer of the music has a real personality on the stage. And this personality mitigates what at times on record can feel like coldness (borne predominantly from her Xtina vocal tics). The warmth in the music is more prevalent, and offers a viewer more of a connection to the songs one feels is missing when listening to the record.

Dramatic electronic pop music is not everyone’s cup of tea though (one suspects that the phrases ‘goth’ and ‘industrial’ are fairly large turn-offs for your average Florence + The Machine fan [you bloody are, you liar]). It’s hard to pin down an artist that writes songs that could soundtrack Blade Runner, and as is always the case with any female artist, drawing upon the slightly small pot can lead to lazy comparisons. Nika Danilova has a bit of a Kate Bush fascination with the dramatic, and watching her on stage one assumes also shares her interests in RUNNING AROUND WITH NO SHOES ON. But she is also small like Anna Calvi, and has a uterus – like PJ Harvey. What Zola Jesus are mainly concerned with though, is making a drama out of a song – making melodies operatic, big. The aesthetic is as important as the content of the song, and watching them onstage is a performance worth forking out for.

Oneohtrix Point Never

By Greg Salter

November 24, 2011

A church seems like an appropriate venue to hear Daniel Lopatin present the music he’s been making as Oneohtrix Point Never over the last few years. His albums, particularly the sci-fi ambience of 2010’s Returnal and the more fractured, abject tracks on this year’s Replica, are meditative, insular, cerebral things, best heard all the way through, on your own. What’s more, it seems kind of fitting that an artist who has just created an album out of samples from television adverts from the late ‘80s and ‘90s (long forgotten, useless artefacts) should be performing in a relic of a building – though St Giles is still very much an active church, you sense that Lopatin might have enjoyed performing in a space never intended for his strange, haunting experiments.

Before Lopatin’s set, however, came Helm – the solo project of Bird Of Delay member Luke Younger. Walking in on the start of Helm’s set was disconcerting – you could hear what sounded like someone relentlessly pummelling a piece of metal echoing through the church, but were greeted only by the sight of Younger, head down, over his equipment. His set tended towards the abrasive – what sounded like samples of thick metal bars rolling and scraping, heavy machinery on the brink of collapsing, and human voices distorted horribly. Over time, however (and I don’t know whether this is the intention), you found yourself adjusting to the droning, shuddering elements and they became ambient – a booming, all-encompassing ambience admittedly, but still ambient. There were even some more delicate, shimmering moments buried in the mix there, I’m sure.

Lopatin’s set took a less abrasive path than Helm and a less immediately energetic turn than, according to other live reviews I’ve read, he’s taken in more traditional venues on occasion. The setting, with rows of us seated respectfully in uncomfortable pews, suited this, however. His set was cut roughly into two halves, beginning with the more ambient pieces from Replica and Returnal. Accompanied by a typically OPN-style series of projections that looked like they were built out of retro-futuristic adverts and vintage video games, you could just sit back and allow the layers of synths and samples to wash over you.

The second half of his set saw Oneohtrix Point Never turn to the more out-there material on Replica, disrupting the ambience with the warped video game violence of ‘Child Soldier’ or the chopped-and-looped-into-submission samples on ‘Sleep Dealer’ (watching, from the back of the church, a couple of people trying to bob along to these strange beats was pretty weird). Even the gorgeous piano chords of Replica’s title track were continually interrupted and cut up by noisy bursts of sound. For all the talk of Replica being concerned with memory and re-imagining lost sounds, this is music that sounds completely new and surprising – it transports you but also unsettles you with its strange turns and contrasts of sounds, while still having this mournful, emotional core. As Lopatin unassumingly shuffled off the altar when his music stopped, it felt like coming to, back to where you’d started.

Memphis Industries presents Lucky 13

As part of celebrations for their 13th birthday, indie label Memphis Industries are taking over Koko in London on Wednesday 30th November 2011 for one special night. A few of the label’s bands will be performing – expect sets from The Go! Team, Field Music, Dutch Uncles and ColourMusic. On top of all that, the label’s giving away an exclusive 13 track compilation of “past, present and future Memphis Industries tracks” to everyone who buys a ticket from their website. To get you in the mood, you can stream a selection of tracks by Memphis Industries artists below.

Lucky Thirteen: 13 years of Memphis Industries by memphisindustries

Anna Calvi

By Robert Freeman

November 1, 2011

Seriously, you’ve never seen an audience so quiet as when Anna Calvi plucks at her guitar strings. Eyes closed, head up, she looks for all the world like she’s riffing in the desert (and, to be honest, there is a picture of a desert behind her). Considering how quiet she is in between songs and how much she looks like a borrower, Anna Calvi has an impressive ability to open her mouth suddenly and SCARE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF YOU. Whipping between loud and quiet, the sudden swelling of sultry whispering to a tumescent line of gothic vibrato can be a fairly palpitation-inducing experience. The word ‘rapt’ would be appropriate.

Dealing in the lyrical currency of lust, death, possession (in all in its senses), shuffled in between tracks from her ten song debut are various aptly chosen covers – apt because although they might originally sound markably Edith Piaf or Elvis Presley, in theme and style they also sound so perfectly Anna Calvi. ‘Wolf Like Me’! Of course she covers ‘Wolf Like Me’! The tremolo of her guitar can at times be so menacing, the reverb so powerful that one can feel quite overwhelmed, before she calms down and gets back to crooning sweet nothings over soft finger picks, the aural equivalent of a satisfied cat pawing up and down.

While one wouldn’t be surprised to see her on a BBC4 documentary dislocating her jaw and swallowing an antelope, there is a real tenderness to the music, and a softness that for all her red-lipped alter-ego posturing can still come across like a bare nerve. Comparisons have also been made to Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, Lynch being a fellow purveyor of eerie desert guitar music and ethereal pop balladry. But the effect of watching Anna Calvi is more like Rebekah Del Rio’s show in Club Silencio, switching between unbearable pathos and obvious performance. The alter-ego can sometimes be the easiest way to express the inner self, and one gets the feeling when watching Anna Calvi that the dream is almost more real than the reality.

Marissa Nadler

By Greg Salter

October 4, 2011

Marissa Nadler has stated that her current European tour will be her last for some time – it seems like a combination of stage fright, a few unhappy gig experiences recently and the desire to record some new material has encouraged her to step out of the spotlight for a while. If she does decide to avoid live shows for the time being then it’ll be a shame as, during her engaging and frequently moving set at Bush Hall, her songs were at their most immediate and, occasionally, devastating.

In a live setting, Nadler’s voice is as subtly powerful as you would expect from her records, though the way she sings with delicacy and attention to detail makes it seem as if she’s telling these song stories for the first time. She seems almost to disappear into her music at times, which is unsurprising when you consider not only the fairly complex narratives that make up her songs but also her nerves. She remains a little rough around the edges between songs, though she clearly thrived on the incredibly warm reception from the London audience. Besides, hearing her chat between songs, and hint at some of the meanings behind them, brought her music, which can seem dreamt up from another time on record, a little closer.

Nadler releases her own records now and, worried that the majority of the audience may not have heard her most recent, self-titled effort, her set drew on material from throughout her career. While she needn’t have worried about people being unfamiliar with her songs, it was enlightening to hear old and new compositions together and themes, characters and stories overlapping. From early on in her career, she brought out gems like ‘Virginia’ and ‘Annabelle Lee’ alongside tracks like ‘Diamond Heart’ and ‘Silvia’ from her breakthrough Songs III: Bird On The Water. You could hear the way she’s developed from an early obsession with literature and Nick Cave to weave narratives drawn from her own experiences into her music.

It was on her more recent material that Nadler looked most comfortable – ‘Daisy, Where Did You Go?’, the poignant ‘In Your Lair, Bear’, and the almost cheerful ‘Little King’ (she stated that the latter was one of the few non-miserable songs she’d ever written) all suggest that she’s quietly developed her own unique sonic world, with a depth that could be easily missed. An encore of a Leonard Cohen cover (the phenomenal ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’) and ‘The Sun Always Reminds Me Of You’ closed out a triumphant show, and had you hoping that she’d back from her temporary retirement as soon as possible.

Marissa Nadler

A few months ago Marissa Nadler released her fantastic self-titled new album, which we rather liked. She’ll finally be over in the UK next week for two shows – a small instore gig at Rough Trade West on October 3rd, and a full show at London’s Bush Hall on October 4th. These are the first dates on an extensive European tour – you can check out the rest of those shows below. To mark the occasion, she’s made her cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Winter Lady’ available to download for free – it is planned that this song will feature on a second collection of home-taped cover versions to be released in the near future. You can listen to ‘Winter Lady’ below.

4th Oct – Bush Hall, London, England
6th Oct – Comet, Berlin, Germany
7th Oct – Uebel & Gefährlich-Turmzimmer, Hamburg, Germany
8th Oct – Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
9th Oct – Debaser, Stockholm, Sweden
10th Oct – Hendriksberg, Gothenburg, Sweden
11th Oct – Revolver, Oslo, Norway
12th Oct  - Perfect Sounds Forever, Bergen, Norway
14th Oct – Klubi, Tampere, Finland
15th Oct – Dynamo, Turku, Finland
16th Oct – Kuudes Linja, Helsinki, Finland

winter lady by marissanadler

Chapel Club

Having released their debut album Palace earlier this year, Chapel Club are closing out the year with a series of special UK shows. At each gig the band will play twice each night – once with a main set featuring songs from Palace and 2010′s Wintering EP, plus an earlier, special set made up of entirely new material. Having started debuting new material in their festival sets over the summer, the band are keen to continue to develop their new ideas in a live setting. You can win two tickets to see the band at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire – their biggest gig to date – on 18th October by answering a very simple question. All you have to do is enter on our competition widget below.

Want to win two tickets to Chapel Club's show at the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on 18th October? Just answer the following question.

What was the name of Chapel Club's very first single?

The rest of Chapel Club’s October UK tour dates are below:

10th Manchester Sound Control
11th Edinburgh Cabaret Voltaire
12th Sunderland Independent
13th York Duchess
15th Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
16th Brighton Komedia
17th Oxford O2 Academy
18th London O2  Shepherds Bush Empire

Emmy The Great

By Jiten Karia

London’s Cecil Sharp House screams intimacy. Or at least it would scream were it not the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, a slight irk for tonight’s leading lady, Emma-Lee Moss aka Emmy The Great, who by self-admission has been trying to escape allusions to folk music for the past four years.

Instead, the walls whisper and coddle you into a very folksy warmth.

Screaming would ill fit this tiny venue with its foot-high stage, polished wood flooring and tastefully decorated walls. It is so quaint and the atmosphere so polite that you’d fear raising your voice would be offensive. Indeed, it is folk-ish to the extreme.

Though that fact may not sit very well with Ms Moss, the charms of folk music (there is no charm to folk dance) have some resonance with her, particularly considering the mythological overtones of Virtue and the acoustically-driven First Love. Therefore, Cecil Sharp House should be an almost perfect setting for the night.

Before the first track can even begin though, a hidden problem makes itself apparent as the tiny stage can barely contain the entire band’s equipment and guitars crash to the floor the second they are touched. Sadly, it is an omen of sorts for the night. Whilst the venue is atmospherically incredible, it becomes clear that a fully-electric band was not what it was made for. During the course of the set, feedback crops up intermittently and the close proximity between the amps and snare causes unwanted rattle during acoustic tracks.

The result is an unpolished set.  Ms Moss appears constrained at times and while part of this has to do with a bass drum being less than half a yard behind her, a pattern reveals itself as she mixes between older and newer material. Tracks like ‘We Almost Had A Baby’, ‘MIA’, ‘24’ and ‘First Love’ are impeccable, honed to live perfection after years of performance. The pacing and vocal delivery show a performer at ease with her material.

However, there is noticeable flatness with some songs from Virtue. At times tracks sound hurried and lack much of the emotional tone reflected on album versions. ‘Iris’ and ‘Exit Night’ are two such examples where the sprightliness of the album fails to come through quite as well on stage. However, tracks like ‘Trellick Tower’ and ‘Creation’ are better on the whole, even though the former suffers hugely much from bass-afflicted snare ratter.

The highlight of the night however, is a cover of Weezer’s ‘Island In The Sun’. The assured yet carefree attitude Emma-Lee Moss gives off during the song reflects the positives of the gig. When she is at comfort with the track, she is nothing short of Great. After a little more time refining Virtue for live performance, consistently strong sets will be the norm.