March 2015
The Scope
It was a lovely false spring evening walking down to The Caroline of Brunswick. I seemed to spend most of the setup with Dan scouring Jody’s cupboard for leads, but eventually we managed to deploy near every single one of them.
Nad Spiro
Nad Spiro played first and quite early, she apparently has a tinnitus variant that means it gets worse as the evening progresses, so in spite of her having travelled the furthest was on first. I can see exactly why Dan was keen to get her to play, she plays a kind of detailed processed improv based on guitar and voice all put through a laptop for clicking and munging. There are precise glitches and smeared warps. She plays about five pieces.
Leo Chadburn
Leo Chadburn has a different approach, he’s come down with a band:
Laura Moody (cello)
Chris Branch (keyboards)
plus himself on voice and a Casio CZ101 that he doesn’t take off the first setting. It doesn’t sound like the Brass Ensemble sound, so I assume its driving a rather nice looking white box with a set of black knobs on top.
They’re a serious bunch and play through a set of composed pieces selected by Leo for their textual content.
Peter Ablinger – “TIM Song”
Leo Chadburn – “X Chairman Maos”
Jennifer Walshe – “A Folk Song Collection”
Travis Just – “Paul Pierce”
Leo Chadburn – “Trainwreck / Raincheck” (excerpt)
It’s an interesting set of pieces from austere through to very funny. “X Chairmen Maos” has Leo singing in a high pitched voice that puts me in mind of ‘Kangaroo’-era Red Krayola, although that may just be the soviet realist style of the piece. I think its “Paul Pierce” that has sections that disappear into noise it’s not quite as brutal as Duncan Harrison’s similar episode a couple of months ago, even though as effective.
Freedom Frampton
Finally; Freedom Frampton. David K is usually a pretty nervous performer, but he’s looking really relaxed for this tonight, which considering how exposed it is, is pretty something. He stands at the back near the mixer with two mics and a small table with his phone on it. His set is probably about a third a cappella and two thirds vocal with minimal drum machine/ synth baking tracks off the phone. I’ll apologise for the poor sound from the mics as I mixed it, but drowning in muddy reverb gives a very human scope to some very personal songs. They’re mostly pretty short, some (e.g. Spaceman Three cover) are introduced, but many just seem to spring unbidden from his lips.