Tag Archives: Featured

David Bowie

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Tim Hall

All day my social media feeds have been pretty much nothing but tributes to David Bowie, who died just four days after releasing his final album.

You know you have a seriously doughnut-shaped record collection when one of the giants of 20th and 21st century music passes on and you realised don’t own a single one of their records. But his biggest hits were still stuck in my head this morning, “Life on Mars”, “Space Oddity”, “Starman”, “Heroes”. His standards are part of the air we breathe. And his artistic legacy is woven into the DNA of just about every genre of popular music that came after him. To quote Matt Stevens, he’s in the same league as Miles Davis and The Beatles.

Like Lemmy, David Bowie was a one-off who did it his way without following trends. One thing that made him unique was they way he stood outside and above narrow musical tribes; he simultaneously belonged to nobody and to everybody. He combined both ground-breaking style and genuine musical substance in a way unmatched by anyone else. He left whole genres in his wake; artists who based their entire sound around just one period in his ever-changing output after Bowie himself had moved on to something else. He also had great taste in musicians to act as a foil. Just look at the guitarists he worked with over the years; Mick Ronson, Robert Fripp, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nile Rogers, Earl Slick.

Even though I’ve never been a hardcore fan, it’s difficult to imagine popular music without him. So enough of those who would police other people’s grief, whether it’s a snobbish disdain or some elitist claim of exclusive ownership as a “true fan”. It’s one of those times when if you have nothing positive to say, it’s better saying nothing. Music clearly never touched some people’s souls, even if when some of them started their writing careers supposedly as a music critics. Can’t they even sit on their self-righteous thinkpieces for a couple of days?

David Bowie was one of the true greats, whose work had a huge impact on music and on wider culture. Let us celebrate and remember that.

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Cologne

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Tim Hall

Cologne Cathedral and Rhine Bridge

What happened in the German City of Cologne on New Year’s Eve is extremely troubling, especially if you’re on the liberal left. There was clearly a major failing of policing; the assumption has to be that with a high state of alert over terrorism they paid insufficient attention to other potential sources of trouble. It does prompt speculation over the shadowy hand of Islamic State. It’s been pointed out the perpetrators were drunk and IS are strict about that sort of that sort of thing. But I don’t think we should rule out agent provocateurs making good use of useful idiots. It does after all advance their malign agenda, and it was all clearly orchestrated by someone.

But there are big cultural and political issues for the whole of Europe too. The important liberal values of opposition to racism, and opposition to violence against women come dangerously into conflict. It’s hard to determine what lessons ought to be learned.

You should start by reading Maajid Nawaz’s piece in The Daily Beast. Maajid is both a Muslim and a genuine Liberal, and knows what he’s talking about in a way none of the ignorant blowhards can come close to.

Maajid Nawaz almost certainly knows far more about both radical Islam and Middle-Eastern cultures than you do, and when he talks about important and sensitive subjects you should listen even if you don’t agree with his conclusions. His background means he can speak uncomfortable truths which we white people frequently cannot.

There are also good pieces by Deborah Orr in The Guardian, and on The Rambling Infidel, the latter of which highlights some prominent left-wingers getting it badly wrong. But start with Maajid.

Obviously the white nationalist right will be exploiting this with all their might. It’s Kristallnacht come early for the worst of them. But it also exposes the failure of the iteration of identity politics adopted by large parts of the modern left. If you have to play Oppression Top Trumps before you can decide whether to condemn an atrocity or to blame the victims, your ideology is not fit for purpose and should be discarded. The Tweet from Laurie Penny highlighted in The Rambling Infidel’s blog demonstrates the sort of divide-by-zero error some of the left are experiencing.

The whole topic of immigration is a political hot potato few people other than right-wingers want to talk about. Yes, there have been plenty of pieces extolling the economic benefits, but the conversation we haven’t been able to have concerns the integration and assimilation of people from very different cultures. It’s something that, for all their own problems with structural racism, America seems to do better than Europe. It’s not an easy conversation to have, which is probably why some are so quick to shut it down with accusations of racism. But if we don’t talk about it, the racists will.

Ultimately we all, whether native or migrant, need to uphold the Western values of pluralism, tolerance and individual rights. As a civilisation, we cannot afford not to.

Comments are disabled on this post because I don’t have the resources to moderation the sorts of comments it risks attracting.

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Cambridge Rock Festival announces first bands for 2016

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Tim Hall

The Cambridge Rock Festival, which takes place over the weekend of 4th to the 7th of August, have announced the first few bands for 2016.

Bands confirmed so far include Cregan & Co, The Mentulls, “who play the blues with a progressive twist, inspired by Camel and Focus”, Doris Brendell and Malaya Blue on Friday.  Saturday’s bill will include Carl Palmer, Hazel O’Connor, Hekz, the legendary Pink Faries, and local band Derecho. Sunday sees Focus, Curved Air, Purson and Anglo-Argentine band Yossarian.

There are quite a few more bands still to be announced, and hopefully we’ll see a few of the “regulars” added. It’s an interesting-looking bill so far, with what looks like a greater emphasis on both blues and progressive rock. There are a few regulars who have played CRF several times in the past, but there are also plenty of new names, including one or two who are long overdue.

Tickets are available now from the Cambridge Rock Festival website.

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Carbon Fibre is Misogynist!

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Tim Hall

Just when you thought Goldsmith’s College couldn’t get any weirder, here’s an academic paper claiming carbon fibre is misogynist. The link surfaced on Twitter after its author got into an online fight with Richard Dawkins, which sounds like the sort of fight you want both sides to lose.

It’s been suggested the whole thing is a Sokal-style hoax, but I’m not sure. Poes Law and all that.

In this paper I am concerned with instances in which carbon fiber extends performances of masculinity that are attached to particular kinds of hegemonic male bodies. In examining carbon fiber as a prosthetic form of masculinity, I advance three main arguments. Firstly, carbon fiber can be a site of the supersession of disability that is affected through masculinized technology. Disability can be ‘overcome’ through carbon fiber. Disability is often culturally coded as feminine (Pedersen, 2001; Meeuf, 2009; Garland-Thompson 1997). Building on this cultural construction of disability as feminine, in and as a technology of masculine homosociality (Sedgwick, 1985), carbon fiber reproduced disability as feminine when carbon fiber prosthetic lower legs allowed Oscar Pistorius to compete in the non-disabled Olympic games. Secondly, I argue that carbon fiber can be a homosocial surface; that is, carbon fiber becomes both a surface extension of the self and a third party mediator in homosocial relationships, a surface that facilitates intimacy between men in ways that devalue femininity in both male and female bodies. I examine surfaces as material extensions of subjectivity, and carbon fiber surfaces as vectors of the cultural economies of masculine competition to which I refer. Thirdly, the case of Oscar Pistorius is exemplary of the masculinization of carbon fire, and the associated binding of a psychic attitude of misogyny and power to a form of violent and competitive masculine subjectivity. In this article I explore the affects, economies and surfaces of what I call ‘carbon fiber masculinity’ and discusses Pistorius’ use of carbon fiber, homosociality and misogyny as forms of protest masculinity through which he unconsciously attempted to recuperate his gendered identity from emasculating discourses of disability. Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

Ok, so I added the last line :)

But surely if H.P.Lovecraft was writing today, his equivalent of The Esoteric Order of Dagon wouldn’t be a Presbyterian sect that had gone off the rails, but would be located deep within the humanities department of a second-rate university.

Has the author wandered so far down the postmodernist rabbit-hole that many, many, SAN rolls have been lost?

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2015 in Live Music – Ten of the Best

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Tim Hall

Touchstone Farewell Gig

It’s harder to rank gigs in any kind of order than it is for records, since you can’t relive a one-off experience. These ten are those which have particularly stuck in the mind, and there is probably a bias towards the end of the year since those are freshest in the memory.

The Marillion Convention

There is nothing else quite like the fan conventions Marillion hold every other year. They see the band perform seven hours of music over three nights including a lot of rarely-played material, all before an audience of fanatical hardcore fans. This year’s was no exception, the highlight of which was the double album “Marbles” played in full on the Saturday night.

The Session at The Swansea Jazz Festival

One cannot live on prog alone, so The Swansea Jazz festival is always a good opportunity to explore something outside of the usual comfort zone. Some sets had far too many bass solos, but this New Orleans-based quintet were the undoubted highlight, with a frontline of sax and trumpet. The first solo from trumpeter Steven Lande was like hearing a really good blues or metal guitarist cutting loose.

Ramblin Man Fair

My first open air festival since High Voltage in London a few years back took place in leafy Maidstone. Saturday saw great sets in the sunshine from Touchstone, Blue Öyster Cult and the legendary Camel, the only disappointment being the lacklustre phoned-in set from Dream Theater. But the musical highlight was much of Sunday, with a bill beginning in the rain with Anna Phoebe, Knifeworld (“Excuse me while I towel down my guitar”), The Pineapple Thief and Riverside, and ending in a mesmerising set from headliners Marillion after the clouds cleared and the moon came out.

King Crimson at Hackney Empire

The unexpected emergence of a new incarnation of King Crimson didn’t disappoint in the slightest, and the seven-piece lineup with three drummers went from intense improvised jazz-metal workouts to fresh interpretations of the stately magnificence of their 70s classics. Some too-cool-for-school mainstream critics just didn’t get it at all, but it was their loss; the set included superb performances of some of the greatest music of the 20th Century, and that’s not something you say lightly.

Steven Wilson at The Royal Albert Hall

In terms of profile, Steven Wilson stands head and shoulders above any other contemporary progressive rock act, able to sell out venues that are otherwise the preserve of the 70s legends of the genre. I made the mistake of booking for just one of the two nights rather than both, for the sets were completely different. So I didn’t get to see the bulk of “Hand. Cannot. Erase.” played live, but did see Porcupine Tree classics and an intense “Raider II”. It was still an amazing experience.

Gazpacho & Iamthemorning at Islington Academy

I got wind of this gig via a fan of Iamthemorning who was wondering aloud if headliners Gazpacho were worth seeing live. Both bands turned out to be mesmerising; the way you could have heard a pin drop during the acoustic support act really says it all, and the headliner’s absolute mastery of atmospherics managed to outdo even Marillion. Progressive rock needs more violins.

Gloryhammer at Islington Academy

One support band of 2015 deserve a mention. Scotland’s heroes were special guests to Finnish power-metallers Stratovarious, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a support act so completely outclass the headliners. They has better songs, better stagecraft, and a level of fire & passion that the headliners completely lacked.

Public Image Limited at Reading Sub89

The artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten has still got it, and his singing style is totally unique. The other three quarters of PiL are tremendous musicians; a tight rhythm section and always inventive guitarist in Lu Edmonds meant that you spent as much time listening to the bass grooves or the guitar lines as the vocals. It’s a long way from classic rock, but it’s got more in common with the avant-garde end of progressive rock than you might think.

Touchstone & Magenta at Leamington Assembly

The farewell show for Kim Seviour and Rob Cottingham pulled a packed crowd to the magnificent central England venue. Because Kim had suffered a throat infection days before they gig, they added former Mostly Autumn singer Heather Findlay to the band as cover, and the band turned into a kind of heavy metal ABBA. It certainly brought a triumphal close to one chapter in the Touchstone story. And that’s before any mention of special guests Magenta, with a performance strong enough have been in this list in its own right.

Mostly Autumn at Leamington Assembly

Rather than their customary multi-date Christmas tour, Mostly Autumn decided to end 2015 with a single showcase gig in a central venue, what an event it turned out to be. Five hours of music included remarkably varied acoustic set that featured Angela Gordon singing lead at one point, a mesmerising but all-too-short set from violinist Anna Phoebe, what was probably the last full performance of “Dressed in Voices”, a Mostly Floyd set that was far, far better than any sceptics expected, and those traditional Christmas covers. And stunning versions of the rarely-played “The Night Sky” and “The Gap Is Too Wide”.

Those were just some of the many highlights of a great year of live music. Honourable mentions to Panic Room, Karnataka, Chantel McGregor and Luna Rossa, which have featured in this blog a lot, and to New Model Army and Lazuli, both “new” to me in terms of seeing live.

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Is this the end of Readers Recommend?

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Tim Hall

Sad news that, barring a last-minute reprieve, The Guardian is calling time on the weekly Readers’ Recommend column.

For those not familiar with it, every Thursday evening the Guardian website puts up a post containing the week’s subject, for example “Songs about mountains“, and readers are asked to nominate songs in the comment section. It will always run to several hundred comments. The “Guru” of the week must read all the comments, listen to as many of the nominated songs as possible and assemble a playlist which will be published the following week.

It has been running for a decade now.

For the early years the Guru was one of The Guardian’s own writers, beginning with Dorian Lynskey who frustratingly never chose any of the songs I nominated. More recently there have been rotating volunteer Gurus selected from the community itself under the stewardship of Peter Kimpton, and that appears to have given the whole thing a new lease of life. It’s certainly drawn me back in and I’ve seen significantly more of my nominations make the playlist, including Panic Room and Mostly Autumn songs.

It’s spawned a remarkable and unique sub-community within The Guardian’s site. I cannot think of any other long-lasting music community that hasn’t been based around a shared love of particular band or genre; the tastes of the RR community is all over the map, and that is its greatest strength. It has one and only one cardinal rule, “thou shalt not rubbish anyone else’s taste“.

I have no idea why The Guardian have decided to pull the plug. It’s may be that The Guardian just don’t know quite what to do with something that’s a bit of an outlier compared to the rest of the site. Perhaps we don’t fit the 25-45 age group demographic that Guardian Music wants to target. Perhaps they just don’t like something they can’t gatekeep? Look at the disgraceful way they arbitrarily disqualified things from the Readers’ Album of the Year poll because it was the wrong sort of music nominated by the wrong sort of fans. RR just doesn’t back the mid-life-crisis consensus groupthink of too many of the paper’s own writers, so it has to go.

It’s being suggested that Readers Recommend doesn’t fit because Guardian Music is more interested in celebrity lifestyle reporting than in expressing deep passion for actual music. If you look at their writer’s picks for their best articles of the year, what appears to be the top two are both awful clickbait thinkpieces about Taylor Swift and Kanye West which are all about identity politics with little to say about the actual music. I’m sure there is a place for that sort of thing, but not at the expense of actual music writing.

It’s a shame. Readers Recommend is something unique and special, and I hope the extended community survives in some form. As I’ve always said, online forums and social media platforms come and go, but what endures and what really matters is the relationships you make through them.

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Lonely Robot, The Scala

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Tim Hall

The album “Please Come Home” by Lonely Robot, the solo project from John Mitchell of It Bites, Frost* and Arena fame was a definite highlight of the early part of 2015. He had previously performed some of the material live as an acoustic duo with pianist Liam Holmes, but the full-band showcase gig with an array of special guests at The Scala in London a few days before Christmas promised to be an Event.

The capable support band, Helz deserve a mention. Their highly melodic twin-guitar prog-metal relied on solid composition rather than technical showboating, though they still found room for a few bursts of fluid lead guitar. They succeeded at exactly what what a support band is supposed to do, setting the scene for the main event.

Lonely Robot’s stage set featured an array of pop culture detritus; Star Wars and Dr Who toys, a Space Shuttle, an 80s 8-bit computer and a big old-fashioned television. The show began with a NASA astronaut removing his helmet and turning on the TV to show imagery from the early days of space exploration, before the band came on and launched into the spiralling guitar-shredding instrumental “Airlock”.

For this gig and one earlier show in Holland John Mitchell put together a four-piece band featuring drummer Craig Blundell, who had played on the album, plus Caroline Campbell on bass and Lauren Storey on keys. While you shouldn’t expect a band put together for a couple of one-off gigs to display the onstage chemistry of a band who have been touring together for years, they lacked a coherent visual image; the stage outfits made them look not only like members of completely different bands, but completely different genres.

Musically, though, it was an altogether different matter, and for a progressive rock audience that’s the important thing. They were exceedingly tight and the entire album came over powerfully live, going from the industrial metal of “God vs Man” to the 80s pop of “Boy in the Radio” within the first few songs. Craig Blundell in particular was a force of nature on drums. Peter Cox, Heather Findlay and Kim Seviour all reprised their guest roles from the album and enhanced the show without stealing the spotlight, as did Mitchell’s partner-in-crime with Frost*, Jem Godfrey. The sound quality was excellent down the front, though reports from further back suggested the mix had too much drums and not enough vocals.

Lonely Robot

The consistent quality of the material made it hard to single out highlights, but “Oubliette”, the duet with former Touchstone singer Kim Seviour with the chorus “Don’t Forget Me” was particularly poignant given that it might her last appearance on stage for a while. In contrast, “Why Do We Stay” with Heather Findlay foretold John Mitchell adding yet another band to his CV, as he will be joining her band for their tour in April.

With the album “Please Come Home” forming the whole of the main set, the encores began with an absolutely epic drum solo from Craig Blundell. Jem Godfrey returned for the intense swirling tapestry of notes that was “Black Light Machine” by Frost*. Finally came a progged-up cover of Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” with Kim and Heather joining on backing vocals.

As the last significant gig in progressive rock’s calendar, it made a great finale to the year. John Mitchell has already said that there will be a follow-up album to “Please Come Home”, which made this less of a one-off showcase, more the start of something bigger.

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Heather Findlay Band to tour in 2016

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Tim Hall

John Mitchell and Heather FindlayHeather Findlay has announced a tour in April 2016, to support the album “The Illusion’s Reckoning.

Because Dave Ketzner and Dave Kilminster are both unavailable due to other commitments, the tour is billed as The Heather Findlay Band rather than Mantra Vega, though they’re promising that they’ll be playing the album in full along with a few selected older favourites.

For this tour it will be a six-piece band including Angela Gordon on keys and flute, and John Mitchell on lead guitar alongside Chris Johnson and the rhythm section of Alex Cromarty and Stuart Fletcher.

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2015 Album of the Year

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Tim Hall

Riverside – Love, Fear and the Time MachineIt was extremely hard to choose just one single record as album of the year. Even after I had begun publishing the first few instalments of this rundown I hadn’t been able to make the final decision of which record out of at least three was the best of them all. Karnataka and Amorphis in particular have both made astonishingly good records this year.

But in the end, there can only be one, and it’s from Poland’s finest band.

Riverside – Love. Fear and The Time Machine

Riverside get compared to Porcupine Tree a lot. That’s both a fair comparison and an unfair one. They are the ideal band for anyone still missing Porcupine Tree, it’s true. But they are far more than a derivative copy. Imagine, if you can, a Porcupine Tree with Jon Lord on keyboards, Alex Lifeson on guitar, and a rhythm section with a sense of groove that few bands under the progressive rock banner can match.

Love, Fear and The Time Machine might just be their best album to date. They’ve taken a step back from the dense hard rock sound of the preceding “Shrine of the New Generation Slaves”, taking a pared-back less-is-more approach that gives everything more space to breathe. There are a host of 80s rock references; a guitar figure evoking early Marillion here, a post-punk bass riff or a bridge recalling The Stone Roses there. But it’s all anchored in Mariusz Duda’s distinctive understated approach to melody, Piotr GrudziÅ„sk economical guitar work and and MichaÅ‚ Łapaj’s evocative keyboard playing. One highlight is the shortest and most minimalist song on the record, “Afloat”, which sees Mariusz melancholy vocal accompanied by a simple guitar figure and some atmospheric organ chords. But the whole album is superb, with restrained instrumental virtuosity and masterful use of dynamics.

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Mostly Autumn – Leamington Assembly

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Tim Hall

For their final live appearance of 2015, Mostly Autumn came to The Assembly in Leamington Spa, scene of that emotional farewell to Heather Findlay five and a half years ago. With a four o’clock start they promised a very long evening for what was to be their only Christmas show of the year.

Things began with an extremely varied acoustic set. It started out conventionally enough with unplugged versions of regular live standards “Nowhere to Hide” and “Never the Rainbow”. We had a couple of Olivia Sparnenn vocal showcases in the shape of “Rain Song” and a spine-tingling “Silhouette of Stolen Ghosts”. Far more unexpected was Angela Gordon stepping up to the microphone to sing lead on a spellbinding cover of Christy’s Moore’s “Ride On” which showed a new side of her as a performer. There were also solo performances from Alex Cromarty with a song about superheroes, a piano number by Hannah Hird, and Chris Johnson singing “Gaze”, a song he’s often performed solo but did appear on the bonus disk of “Heart Full of Sky”. To end things off the band regrouped with a very rarely-performed song, “Through the Window”.

Anna Phoebe

Next was an all-too brief set from violinist Anna Phoebe. Seeing her accompanied by a classical pianist rather than an electric rock band it was a quite different experience compared to her festival appearances earlier in the year. As anyone who has seen her will know, her playing was both fiery and lyrical, the piano accompaniment giving it more of a classical feel than the folk and rock flavour of her full band. The only thing wrong was that her set was over far too soon.

The main event of course was Mostly Autumn’s two electric sets, Dressed in Voices and Mostly Floyd. The songs were the same as at the Grand Opera House a few weeks earlier, although this was an even more powerful and intense performance of both. One thing which did become clear was that Mostly Autumn have a better rhythm section than Pink Floyd did and that makes them a rock’n'roll band in a way Pink Floyd never really were. The original version of “Sheep” never grooved quite like their version. And Bryan Josh was very clearly enjoying himself during that Comfortably Numb solo.

The first encore of “The Gap is too Wide” was probably the high point of the entire evening, especially when they hit the choral section. The triple vocals of Olivia Sparnenn, Angela Gordon and Hannah Hird comes close to replicating the full choir and more than do the song justice. They followed that with a really powerful “Questioning Eyes”, which replaced Evergreen (When did Mostly Autumn last play a full set without playing Evergreen?).

After the obligatory “Heroes Never Die” they bought out the Christmas covers; “A Spaceman Came Travelling” with Chris Johnson singing lead, “I Believe in Father Christmas”, and “Fairytale of New York” with Anna Phoebe on violin, which seemed to work far better than a couple of years back. They finished an extended and largely improvised “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” with everyone playing a solo, including an impressive country & western style guitar solo from Chris Johnson. Those final songs had the atmosphere of an end of term party, a contrast to the emotional intensity of the earlier part of the evening. It was past ten o’clock, which meant the audience had been on their feet for six hours. Not that it seemed anything like that long.

Alex Cromary

So ended Mostly Autumn’s 2015. Playing a single Christmas show in a central location rather than a tour of half a dozen dates appeared to have paid off in terms of turnout. In a year when too many gigs by too many bands had depressingly low attendances, it was great to see a big crowd in a larger venue. And the band rose to the occasion with a performance that’s a candidate for gig of 2015 in a year that’s included Steven Wilson and King Crimson.

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