People Like Us: Magical Misery Tour

Ergo Phizmiz’s The Third Policeman

Wednesday and Thursday, 9 and 10 November 2011

What strikes you with a lot of spoken word, or poetry, in music is that rarely do the words and the music act as more than counterpoints to each other; each exists on its own terms, often to great effect, but one tends to drive the other, to dictate the direction of the whole.  Not so with Enablers.  Pete Simonelli’s prose positively sings, see-sawing back and forth and in and out of his bandmates’ astoundingly tight, complex music.  Veterans of a host of intense, cathartic and bloody-toothed hardcore, post-rock and alt-rock bands, they rein in the volume as Simonelli slows to a whisper and swerve into bruising post-hardcore as his protagonists’ tales become evermore terrible, desperate and hopeless.  Shellac or Fugazi would be lazy reference points, if you need them, but the tales Simonelli essays are more personal, poetic and vivid than an Albini or a Mackaye.  They’re the American dream gone sour, and the men left cut adrift and contemplating their fate.  If listening to Enablers is like being in the eye of the storm, seeing them close up in a setting as intimate as the Cube should be incredible.

Support comes from Salisbury’s Adam Varney, aka Finglebone, whose 23 takes the intricate, dusty melancholia of his earlier ambient guitar manipulations and knots it with harsher electronic textures, drone and field recordings.  Highly recommended for download at the bandcamp address below.

ENABLERS / FINGLEBONE

Cube Cinema, Dove Street South, Bristol BS2 8JD | 20:00 15/10/2011

(Sat 15th / 8pm / £7 door, £6 advance)

Enablers return to the West Country after incredible gigs at The Croft and down the road at ATP a while back. We’re very excited to be putting these fellows on again,probably one of the best live bands out there full stop!

‘The sound has evolved since the last full LP release ‘Tundra’, still with the intense dynamic guitar play between Joe Goldring and Kevin Thomson and the weaving in of Pete Simonelli’s words, but now featuring Doug Scharin (Codeine, Rex, Him, June of 44 …) on drums! This is a confident record still with the distinct elements of musicianship and imagination that made the previous releases so engaging but one that is moving forward into new sounds, new realms. Not to be missed – go listen!!!’ (http://www.theliminal.co.uk)

Finglebone
23″ is a collection of experimental layering of field recordings and ambient sounds is interwoven with light and sparkling acoustic guitar melodies. All in all, this results in a very organic sound structure. This is a great one for headphone listening, as many of Pan, EQ and other effects details are buried deep in the mix. Contemplative, meditative, sunny and peaceful – like a walk in the woods”. – Klangverhaltnisse Ambient blog.

http://enablers.bandcamp.com
http://myspace.com/enablers
http://www.lancashireandsomerset.​co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21008098333
http://finglebone.bandcamp.com/

To my great regret, I never got my shit together sufficiently to attend Bristol’s ambitious, pioneering Venn Festival during its five-year tenure. Its spirit is one that’s lived on locally, in the venues it inhabited and in promoters like Qu Junktions; insanely consistent hand-picked bills of inspiring experimental music, presented with remarkable frequency in all manner of locations. It’s great to see like-minded groups of people around the country wringing all they can out of local authorities and their own wellsprings of enthusiasm to put on similar events, too. Brighton’s way-out Colour Out Of Space sound and art weekender, the heroic Supernormal near Oxford and this weekend’s Tusk Festival in Newcastle are just a few examples, and this cracking Qu Junktions line-up is part of a touring arm of the latter.

BILL ORCUTT is one of two musicians playing both festival and tour, and his appearance in the UK can justifiably be called long-awaited.  His improv style is possibly unlike any you’ve heard from an acoustic guitar before, at times intense and mantra-like, other times unhinged, chaotic, seeminly out of control.  Formerly guitarist in confrontational 90s noise outfit Harry Pussy, Orcutt’s solo work has on the surface some of the primal atonality of his old band, but listen closer and the lulls in the frenzy reveal blues and minimalist influences.  Coupled with the almost out-of-body wailing that surfaces from somewhere within him on a few tracks, it’s pretty haunting stuff; calling his album How The Thing Sings seems appropriate, like he’s letting the guitar play itself, and him.

By comparison, Dubliner CIAN NUGENT’s own acoustic explorations would seem almost conventional, but the tumbling complexity and alternating patterns of calm and storm on his VHF debut Doubles are actually a pretty apt counterpoint to Orcutt.  There’s much in the two 20+-minute tracks that echoes the familiar likes of James Blackshaw, John Fahey etc, but also subtle detours into jazzy improv and synth noodling with a full-band accompaniment.  It’s by turns challenging and head-spinningly accessible, and very lovely stuff.  He’ll be playing with a band at these gigs, should be stellar.

Joining Orcutt on the full tour is JESSICA RYLAN.  A label owner, synthesiser builder and sound artist, her unique analog creations have been showcased in sound installations across North America.  Meanwhilem her playful, uncompromising sound explorations, bending and warping synths, sung and spoken vocals and other electronic detritus (most commonly under the name Can’t) have seen release on Ecstatic Peace! and Important amongst other vanguard experimental labels.  2007′s Interior Designs invested her bracing noise with a daft humour and an awkward, arrythmic near-danceability; don’t go expecting much other than a testing but rewarding time here, mind.

Finally, POSSET represent Tusk’s home city of Newcastle and open the night with mischevious sampledelia, found sound and curious nuggets of junk shop pop.  Nothing to fear here, embrace the oddballs, marginals and freaks.

 —————————————————————————————————————————-

Qu Junktions present:

BILL ORCUTT

CIAN NUGENT BAND

JESSICA RYLAN

POSSET

Thursday 13 October 2011

Cube Cinema

Dove Street South, Bristol BS2 8JD

7.00pm – 11.30pm | £6 adv | Buy Tickets

A night of high-end acoustic guitar thrill and more cerebral lush tones, bent and unimaginable sound worlds of static, flows and analog synth modules from the 4 artists making up this killer bill.

Bill Orcutt: etch the name into your subconscious. The man vanished from the seminally sick Miami trio Harry Pussy only to appear again to astound with limited LPs. Bill lets loose on acoustic guitar with ridiculous chops, his style deeply philosophical, free and joyously spewwy. A splatter/flicker montage of guitar sounds and vocalisations that make your hairs bristle and blood thin. SERIOUSLY Qu cant wait.

Cian Nugent has that tender touch. A young guitar player from Dublin who draws on a rich mix, suburban/coastal blues, traditional musics, late 1960s & ’70s singer-songwriters, jazz ambitions, 20th century composition and the Takoma school into a deeply personal style.

Jessica Rylan runs Flower Electronics, producing her own line in compact analog synth modules and noise flingers of various models, and as Jessica Rylan and also as Can’t, she has produced a string of often very personal and liberated/liberating releases that can hurtle from caustic sound projectiles to blissful, sometimes childlike a cappella experiments and back. Again Qu has been DYING to see her live.

Newcastle’s Posset flesh out collections of miniature collages, dictaphone rants and blends noise and non-music components into captivating oddball songs. However odd they may sound, there’s an easiness and an everyday feel to these folks.

Part of the touring end to Tusk Festival.

http://palilalia.com/

http://www.myspace.com/ciannugent

http://www.irfp.net/

http://www.myspace.com/iamposset

http://www.tuskfestival.com/

http://www.qujunktions.com/

http://www.cubecinema.com/

If you believe the retrospective articles and career crate-diggers, every town in Northern England and North America had its own great lost folk talent during the late 1960s and 1970s.  There’s a kind of boundless enthusiasm for uncovering these one- or two-album wonders, virtuoso songwriters who got lost, or walked away, or just fell off the radar.  You can probably trace it back to the reappraisal of Nick Drake, ultimately; although the efforts of US ‘freak folk’ (ugh) types  like Devendra Banhart to connect with their forebears – and the slightly irksome insistence of UK ad-makers to soundtrack their cutesy visuals with sweet-voiced folk songs – certainly helped.  Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Anne Briggs and more have all found far wider audiences thirty years after the event, too late for some, and KATH BLOOM’s reappearance is a further welcome example.

Blessed with a showstoppingly intimate, fragile voice and a singular style of cracked folk-blues songwriting rich with longing but often immediate and memorable, it’s a surprise to learn the extent of her songwriting partnership with veteran experimental guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors, but also surprising that these songs weren’t re-evaluated sooner.  2009′s two-CD tribute Loving Takes This Course – one disc of Bloom originals, one with the same songs covered by Banhart, Bill Callahan, Scout Niblett, Mark Kozelek and Bloom’s closest contemporary equivalent Josephine Foster among others – coincided with her first widespread public performances in over 20 years, including End of the Road festival.  Tours are still fairly rare though, so this one, promising suitably loose interpretations of her beautifully idiosyncratic catalogue, shouldn’t be missed.

 —————————————————————————————————–

KATH BLOOM
MEN DIAMLER
DON MANDARIN

Cube Cinema, Dove Street South, Bristol BS2 8JD

Thursday 28th July / 7.30pm / £6 

For fans of the song and how to feel it. Kath Bloom (USA) is some kind of legend. She comes from a special place where country, blues and folk are made beautifully translucent and emotive. She has a special gift – her delicate, tender voice yet she retains that raw emotion and hard worn truths that allows each sung word to be felt. Kath is touring with Levi Strom and Jim Reynolds and they most likely will cut loose too.

Local poet souls Men Diamler and Don Mandarin bring their beat songs and rich voices to the table too. Some special night.

The more you hear of Kath Bloom, the more you notice it’s not just the arresting voice, but the power of the songwriting. “Beautiful” is the typical response—the kind of beauty that comes from truth, musical and the deeply lyrical. There are no good comparisons, but if you like the deep well of Emmylou Harris, the more poignant lyrics of Lou Reed, the joy of Maher Shalal Hash Baz or even Joni Mitchell you kinda in the right zone. In reality, she’s simply Kath Bloom: vocalist, songwriter and person.

Her albums recorded with Loren Mazzacane Connors in the 70′s/80′s are rare things, full of songs that float and melt into the ether. Impossibly beautiful. In the 90′s Kath’s music was famously featured in Richard Linklater’s film Before Sunrise. Since then she has been busy writing and recording to great acclaim. Two new albums in the last few years and she and her songs where also honoured on a tribute album featuring Bill Callahan, Scout Niblett and Mark Kozelek.

“Bloom sounds like a woman who has spent years in the wilderness… An earthy, unpretentious presence, she can snap a heart like a twig”
Pitchfork

Read this great interview for more background/insight:
http://thisrecording.com/today/tag/kath-bloom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpYHiB0k6k
http://www.myspace.com/kathbloomchapter

A QU JUNKTIONS proud presentation

Tue 5th July // 8pm // £5 adv/£7 door

SANDRO PERRI (Constellation/Thrill Jockey), aka Polmo Polpo and Glissandro 70, has been working out variations on folk, electronic, dance and experimental music for the last decade. Since playing London’s ATP in 2004 he has moved in unpredictable directions, setting aside his instrumental work as Polmo Polpo to explore the intersection of song and improvisation, culminating in the wonderfully supple, liquid folk of 2007’s Tiny Mirrors. His newer material sees a merging of his interests, erasing distinctions and reaching further into what the BBC calls his “twilight world somewhere between dusk and dark.” He will play solo with synth, sampler, guitar, percussion and voice.

Originally a home-recording project, MANTLER (Chris A. Cummings – Tom Lab/Blocks Recording Club/Tin Angel) has in recent years become a regular presence on the Toronto live music scene. Playing a wurlitzer electric piano accompanied by a 1970s Rhythm Ace drum machine, Mantler has made many fans among Toronto’s music community.

Support comes from Bristol’s own ALEXANDER THOMAS, of Boxcar Aldous Huxley & Anta fame. “Alexander Thomas coaxes delicious ripples from his Theremin. This serious man and the first electronic instrument are a luscious spectacle together. His eerie soundscapes are full of pathos and seem to call up ghosts of our electronic past, from Edison to Aphex.” – QuJunktions

“Um, he’s sort of… doom folk…”

“Sold!”

Thus went the exchange between Former Housemate and Prominent Local Musician prior to the first time I saw ALEXANDER TUCKER play live.  That was in 2007, the year before his beautiful, bewitching third album proper Portal and a tour with Fuck Buttons that saw him play Clwb on Valentine’s night to a crowd of grinning singletons and slightly tense couples.  Former Housemate’s summation was pretty accurate, in fairness; Tucker’s work to date had sprung from a preoccupation with tape loops, fx pedals and decaying, manipulated improvised drones, dank and mossy of texture and dark of mood.  The finger-picking, tinkling percussion and soaring, glassy vocals that emerged through the murk, on Portal in particular, were complemented by doomy riffs and cheese-wire string loops, the influences of extra-curricular collaborators like Stephen O’Malley and Mothlite knotting with Tucker’s own to create a gorgeous hybrid of freak-folk haze, Six Organs psych picking, Acid Mothers wig-out and Hood’s downbeat, melancholic beauty.

This tour accompanies Dorwytch, Tucker’s first album proper since 2007, though he’s found time for a mini-LP as Decomposed Orchestra, myriad collaborations and a side-project (Imbogodom) whose excellent full-length of ambient disquiet was another cracker.  This time the string arrangements are to the fore, there’s unobtrusive, effective drumming for the first time, and the songs are stronger than ever.  Previously a solo live performer, it’s pretty exciting to imagine how he’s going to interpret this live.  Don’t miss it.

RATATOSK is so blatantly right a support that it’s almost head-slappingly obvious, but it’s still kind of thrilling to see promoters outside Cardiff cottoning on to one of our best-kept secrets.  Rhodri works from a similar palette to Alexander Tucker, but with more of a tip to the audience perhaps; where you’re plunged into the latter’s swirling epics wholesale there’s a stately, considered build-up of the core elements to a Ratatosk song that renders their fabulously emotive crescendos even more effective.  Two great companion albums down this year, with a third promised, it’s a treat to see him at work.  Also appearing here is SKJøLBROT, aka Dan Graham.  A Bristol native, Graham builds incredibly intense walls of drone, piano, field recording and bracing, disorienting electronic noise, alternately subtle and chillingly abrasive.  Sounds like a handy enough way to sum up a night that ought to be scrawled right at the top of your to-do list this weekend.

Alexander Tucker + SkjøLbrot + Ratatosk

Sat 11th June / 8pm / £6 adv

English folk outsider Alexander Tucker is a songwriter with a difference. His deconstructed folk songs are a mesmerising blend of delicate string
arrangements, electronic manipulations and haunting, lonesome vocals. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Tucker layers guitar, cello and mandolin to create eerie, woodland soundscapes, and a huge orchestral sound.

“symphonic textures and miasmic chord changes that will grab your attention…a hybrid between ancient sounds and the psychedelic capacities of one man.” – Pitchfork

“his guitar work hints at everything from Led Zeppelin’s most stately to My Bloody Valentine’s most cryptic, no bad place to be.” – Plan B

Tucker’s recorded material has been released to critical acclaim, including three albums for ATP Recordings, and one soon to be released on Thrill Jockey. He has also branched out into other projects, including the avant-rock of Ginnungagap (with Stephen O’Malley of SunnO)))/Khanate etc) and the tape loop experiments of Imbogodom.

Support tonight comes Skjølbrot, aka Hunting Lodge’s Dan Bennett, with his beautiful collection of sound collages, combining electro-acoustic techniques with field recordings and electronics, plus the immense talents of Cardiff based musician Ratatosk providing minimal, ambient folk songs.

DISAPPEARS (featuring Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth)
W/ Sleeping States
Thur 2nd/ 8pm /£10 adv

Hailing from Chicago, Disappears play minimal rock music. Drawing on a combined reverence for reverb, heavy tremolo, distortion, delay and repetition. Playing off a contrast between rhythmic drive and space but with more noise and a shouted staccato vocal style. Where their mix of Velvet Underground scuzz and krautrock propulsion on debut Lux was pretty melodic, on Guider they’re more interested in being hypnotic. Meshing the post-punk approach of Wire with drug rock grooves of Spacemen 3 and some solo Brian Eno moments in a kind of aggressive cosmic rock style. Loud and raw.

Following the departure of drummer and cofounding member Graeme Gibson, Disappears will be performing tonight with their new drummer, Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth).

Support comes from Sleeping States (Bella Union).