Mohammad Syfkhan / E the Artist (Bello Bar)

This was a launch concert for Mohammad Syfkhan's I Am Kurdish album. It was taking place in the Bello Bar, which is one of Dublin's pokiest venues but also somewhere that hosts a lot of forward thinking music put on by Vinnie Dermody's Enthusiastic Eunuch organisation. The venue's annoying feature is that there are very few good seats giving you a reasonably clear view of the stage, so if attending you need to get down early. My friend "Eoghan" and I were in the queue when doors opened but we still weren't able to nab seats right at the front of the raised bit, but we were at least able to grab stools in front of the stage. From here we had an unobstructed view of E the Artist, who did laptop stuff (and occasional guitar stuff) while also using his voice as an instrument. I am generally a bit wary of laptop musicians but this guy seemed to have something and I hope we see more of him. He has a short record on Bandcamp that might be worth investigating.
Mohammad Syfhkan himself is a smartly dressed Kurdish fellow who used to live in Syria but has left there for a country where he is less likely to be killed. He plays the bouzouki and sometimes sings, while a programmed instrumental track accompanies him. I found the sound of his bouzouki fascinating… it had a quality that made it sound like it might have been electronically treated, but maybe that is just the way bouzoukis sound when played Kurdish-style.

In some ways he is a bit like Omar Souleyman, in that they are both Kurds, the music is also from the world of Dabke and they both played lots of weddings. Nevertheless they are still different: there is a definite groove to Syfkhan's music but it's nothing like as frenetic as Souleyman's. This is maybe music for a wedding of respectable older people who still like a boogie, not for completely mad for it young people who've drank too much sugary tea and are now buzzing their nuts off. Nevertheless, by the end of the set everyone was up and grooving.
And he kept playing and playing. Eventually I felt that I could only take so much music so I slipped away into night, stopping to buy a copy of the album and the Under the Island compilation. "It's past my bedtime," I commented to Vinnie Dermody as I was going. "It's past a lot of people's bedtime," he replied.

Check out Mohammad Syfkhan's album on Bandcamp.

Live music: Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500 (Whelan's)

As you know, Dean Wareham was the singer and guitarist in American indie three-piece Galaxie 500. Galaxie 500 split up after three albums. They were never massively successful commercially but they inspired a fierce devotion among their fans, something that has only grown over time. I think it is probably the case that Wareham enjoyed greater success with Luna, the band he formed after Galaxie 500, but the songs from Galaxie 500 remain the ones that inspire intense devotion, so it is not too surprising that he embarks on tours like this where he plays loads of songs from the band to ecstatic audiences.

Support was provided by Cian Nugent. It turned out this was not some random pairing, as Wareham and Nugent had encountered each other previously in the United States. I am not fully assimilated into the ways of Mr Nugent, for all that I am a great admirer of the first Aoife Nessa Frances album, which he produced. So I enjoyed his set (him playing guitar and singing a bit) while feeling I need to engage more with his music. I'm sorry that union commitments prevented me from attending the launch of his album some weeks after the concert.

And so to Dean Wareham himself. He was not playing solo but was joined on bass by Britta Phillips (Wareham's long-standing musical and life partner, and also former voice of the title character in 1980s cartoon Jem and the Holograms) and two others on drums and other guitar. He started off with a couple of more recent songs from the Dean & Britta album Quarantine Tapes, which seemed very likeable. And then he unleashed "Blue Thunder", the opener to Galaxie 500's On Fire. After that it was all Galaxie 500 songs (or songs Galaxie 500 covered, which means we also got "Ceremony" and "Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste"). And it wasn't just the songs that Dean Wareham sings on record: room was also found for two tracks originally sung by Galaxie 500's bassist Naomi Yang, "Another Day" and a cover of Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling". Britta Phillips sang these.

The show's reception was pretty rapturous, with cries of "Dean-o!" from the crowd by the end. That said, it did not reach the levels of near ecstatic devotion that I witnessed last time Wareham was playing Galaxie 500 stuff here, at which concert people were being shushed if they applauded too loudly.

The concert itself and the listening I've been doing since has had me thinking about what exactly was so great about Galaxie 500. When you listen to them the two most striking things are Wareham's guitar lines (alternatively delicate and soaring) and his angsty strangulated vocals. The bassplaying by Naomi Yang (basic but effective) and the drumming by Damon Krukowski (non-standard, jazz-influenced) also impress, but it is Wareham's contributions that stand out. And Kramer's production, obviously, which makes great use of the music's sparseness. And the songs, with their evocation of alienation and isolation, something that will always appeal to sensitive indie kids, and maybe that is where the group X factor comes in. The original songs are all credited to Galaxie 500 rather than to individuals, and there might be some alchemy to them working together here that made the band more than the sum of its parts (I don't think any of its members reached those heights in their post break-up careers). I found myself curious as to how the songwriting actually worked in practice: did Wareham produced the lyrics and melodies on his own, to which the others added rhythm stuff, or were they more of a group effort? From looking at Pitchfork's oral history of the band, it seems like they all contributed elements, with it not being the case that Wareham came up with all the guitar lines. The lyrics seem to have been his though.

So yeah, great gig. At this stage it might be a bit of a pain for Wareham that people are more interested in seeing him perform music from 35 years ago than whatever he is doing now, but such is life. It must also be a bit strange that Galaxie 500's music still inspires such intense fondness, but only from a relatively small group of people (Whelan's is not a big venue; nor was the Workman's, where he last played his Galaxie 500 tunes for us). While I enjoyed the show immensely, I did find myself wondering will we ever be blessed by Dean & Britta performing the music they wrote to accompany Andy Warhol screen tests (appearing on the album 13 Most Beautiful Songs).

More amazing gig photos

Live music: Orbital (National Stadium)

The National Stadium is where they hold big boxing matches in Dublin. I am not known for my fondness for pugilism, but I have actually been to a boxing tournament there. However, when I was there on the most recent St. Patrick's Day it was not to watch the Hartnoll brothers batter each other but to see them play techno music together. And it was first time seeing them play in an absolute age. The spur was an "are you going?" message from one of my 1990s Orbital mailing list buds, with whom I reconnected during the pandemic, without whom I would probably not even have heard of the concert and would have spent the evening at home with my pipe and slippers.

The concert was not sold out (speculation abounded that the young people had been lured away by something called Bicep in the Point) but it still felt pretty full, with the crowd profile feeling like it was a mix of some young people and an older crew who remember Orbital from the 1990s and were out for their one big ravey gig of the year while also wondering if they still knew anyone who could source them some disco biscuits. And it was a lot of fun, with the moment the brothers bounded onstage in their funny glasses reminding me of how enjoyable their sets can be.

I was impressed by how they mixed a lot of newer tunes into their set instead of turning into a rave nostalgia heritage act playing a set of 1990s classics. It is great seeing long-running bands who aren't afraid to play the new stuff, provided of course that it is any good. In Orbital's case the newer songs seemed pretty strong and were not the product of some radical new direction. It was still the old tunes that excited the biggest response (though there was a lot of singing along to the one from the new album featuring yer man from the Sleaford Mods).

After the concert I made my way home, wondering if I had made a mistake not sourcing a ticket for the aftershow party (at which one of the Hartnolls was joined on the decks by his son (probably a grown adult, given that like us the Hartnolls have also been getting older, though I would like to think the son is some 6 year old from a recent temporary liaison)). Maybe I would have been too *tired* to really enjoy it but it is after all better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done.

More amazing gig photos

Concert: Lust for Life

This was a kind of weird supergroup affair at which an odd collection of musicians got together in Whelan's to play the songs from Iggy Pop's 1977 album Lust for Life and some other tunes of the era. It was originally meant to feature Tony Fox Sales, who had played bass and some guitar on the album, but he had to drop out. This meant that none of the musicians present had any direct connection to the album, though some of them did play with Iggy Pop on other occasions. But who were they? Well let me list them:

• Kevin Armstrong, guitar: he played with Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the 1980s and onwards, but is most famous to me for co-writing Morrissey's "Piccadilly Palare"
• Clem Burke, drums: formerly of Blondie and The Ramones, he is regarded as one of the great drummers of the new wave era
• Luis Correia, guitar: a previously unknown quantity for me, he is based in London and has played with various people
• Glen Matlock, bass: holy fuck, it's Glen fucking Matlock, bassplayer with the Sex Pistols, the man who wrote "Pretty Vacant"; he has also played with and written at least one song for Iggy Pop
• Katie Puckrik, lead vocals: a bit of a leftfield choice, as Ms Puckrik is best known to people of my generation not for her singing but for presenting The Word in the 1990s. Back then she was also something of a doppelgänger of my sister, while more recently she has flown the flag for yacht rock to a worrying extent
• Florence Sabeva, keyboards: another figure of mystery, she is another London based musician who has played with various people as well as recording her own music and composing soundtracks.

So what was it like? Well, what do you think it was like? It was a load of solid musicians fronted by a surprisingly impressive American lady banging through some top tunes. For all that Iggy Pop's Lust for Life was billed as the gig's focus, to me it felt like it really went into overdrive in the second part of the set, when they were playing various other punk tunes as well as some older Stooges classics. That put me in mind of a fundamental problem with the whole Don't Look Back thing of bands playing their classic albums, separate to the whole debate around whether there is a kind of artistic bankruptcy to playing songs in album order: basically, on albums, the big songs tend to be towards the beginning, so that the record makes an initial impact on listeners, but at a gig you want to put them further back so that the set builds up to them (careful readers may notice that I am contradicting what I said about the performance of Faust IV I attended at Le Guess Who in 2021). Opening with the song "Lust for Life" when the audience are yet to warm up is a waste of a tune and not something you would do if you were not playing the songs in album order. I also had the embarrassing problem of realising that I do not actually know Lust for Life that well (it is years since I listened to it) and was continuously afraid that I would be burned at the stake as an unbeliever.

One of my great grumbles these days is that crowds aren't as up for it as they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s when people moshed to everything (not always in a good way), so I was a bit disappointed by the Lust for Life attendees. OK so yes they did show their appreciation between songs, but there was a definite "standing there with their arms folded having a great time" energy when the band were blasting through the punk classics. I accept that many of the audience were a bit on the old side, but that makes it even worse: they should be able to remember the way things were in the old days, and if they are out for their one gig of the year they should be going hog wild. I could not face being stuck at the back behind these people indefinitely, and when the opening chords of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" rang out I took my chance to charge to the front; I was irked that more people did not follow me.

Some actual moshing kicked off by the gig's end, with a storming version of "Pretty Vacant" making for a great highlight to the evening, for all that the band were somewhat inexplicably joined for this by B. P. Fallon (who did not seem to do anything bar stand there while Matlock looked after the vocals). Crowd reaction suggested we seem to have reached a point in human history where Fallon is now regarded as cool. I suppose if you wait long enough anything is possible.

And then the gig ended and I went home. It was a hot sweaty concert and it took me weeks to shake off the cold I picked up.

More amazing gig photos

Concert: Byron Wallen's Boards of Canada

I know Boards of Canada are very famous but their music largely passed me by and I am almost completely unaware of what it sounds like. This concert was meant to be jazz trumpeter's tribute to their famous album Music Has A Right To Have Children, but not the kind of tribute where he slavishly reproduces the tunes. He also had some gamelan players in his line-up, which was what pushed me over the line up into picking up a ticket for this National Concert Hall event.

But first the support act. These were local outfit the Glasshouse Ensemble and they were performing the music of the Aphex Twin. Their core seemed to be a small string section, but they also had a drummer and someone doing stuff with electronics. They were reproducing tunes by the Aphex Twin, which for me made the presence of the synther problematic: creating a simulacrum of electronic music on acoustic analogue instruments (plus drums) is impressive, but if you are also using electronics I am not going to be quite so impressed. Still, it never felt like the synth was doing the main work here, with the concert coming across pretty much like it was an arrangement of the Twin's work for strings. Most of the tunes seemed to be from the Selected Ambient Works albums but I think they also threw in one or two from Drukqs. The drummer put in great service reproducing the beats from the records, to the extent that I had to keep reminding myself that they had not just sampled the Twin's programmed drumming. And they finished with "Windowlicker", impressively realised on the strings.

As noted above, Byron Wallen's Gayen Gamelan Ensemble included some gamelan musicians, playing on the National Concert Hall's own set. His gamelan group was relatively small, however, and they did not play prominently on all of the tracks (and they skipped a few entirely). It was also quite striking that Wallen himself abandoned his trumpet and took to playing one of the gamelan instruments on the pieces that were the most gamelan-heavy. The gamelan stuff was the highlight of this for me, both the Javan piece and the couple of new compositions. What I liked about the new compositions was the way they served up what I most like about gamelan (lots of people playing at once in unison), when it often happens that when I see people playing new western pieces on gamelan they go all experimental and just have one or two guys dicking around instead of playing to the instruments' strengths.

Wallen himself comes across as an amiable gent, which is half the battle, and I also enjoyed his jazz parpings. I must get a copy of Music Has A Right To Have Children now, and indeed explore Byron Wallen's own work.

images:

Music Has the Right to Have Children (Wikipedia)

Byron Wallen's Gayan Gamelan Ensemble (Trinity Centre, Bristol: "Byron Wallen's Gayan Gamelan Ensemble")

Some short gig reviews

I'm a busy man so I don't have time to review every concert I go to in great depth, but maybe if I throw together several unsatisfying short reviews (with pictures I took myself) they will add up to one semi-satisfying big thing.

Sparks (Vicar Street)

I took no pictures of the popular Mael Brothers, whose concert I was only able to see because Covid struck down successive owners of a ticket. "So May We Start" from Annette makes for a great opener, while the best songs of the night were either "The Number One Song in Heaven" or "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us", the latter very much gaining form having a full band performing it (last time I saw Sparks it was just Ronald and Russell).

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets (Convention Centre Dublin)

It was great being back for the first time since Worldcon. This saw early Pink Floyd tunes played by Nick Mason (as you know, drummer and founding member of Pink Floyd) and some of his musical buds (Guy Pratt, Gary Kemp, Lee Harris, and Dom Beken). The setlist featured songs from early singles and1967's Piper at the Gates of Dawn up to 1972's Obscured by Clouds. Like proper oldarse musicians they took a break in the middle of the concert, with things really ramping up in the second half as they opened with the double whammy of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Domine". The light show etc. was all amazing. The tunes were great too. I have a considerable fondness for Pink Floyd, but I maybe go in different directions than other people, tacking considerably towards the early stuff (Wish You Were Here is the latest I go, and I've never really warmed to Dark Side of the Moon), so the selections here were right up my alley. It is worth noting however that the music of Pink Floyd seems to have a negative effect on men's hair. And I was unfit to operate heavy machinery for a long time after the concert concluded.

Luzmira Zerpa (Cafe Oto)

She came from Venezuela to play music in Cafe Oto, which I saw with my bud Colin while I was over for that Nigel Kneale centenary thing. Everyone loved the Latin grooves of Ms Zerpa and her band, which reminded me of music I heard in Cuba for all that Venezuela is a completely different country with its own musical traditions.

Low (Vicar Street)

A date with the new crunchy music iteration of Low. Top notch stuff. I did hear the outlandish claim advanced that the bassist on this tour is one of their sons, but cursory research revealed that the bassist is in fact one Liz Draper. She acquitted herself well, though I do wonder about how many former Low bassists there now are.

More concert photos

Concert: Tangerine Dream

This took place in Dublin's Liberty Hall about a week after Putin invaded Ukraine; sitting in my seat enjoying the electronic sounds I felt like I was Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The concert was billed as being centred on Tangerine Dream's years with the Virgin record label, so a bit outside my own main area of familiarity with the band's oeuvre (which is centred on Alpha Centauri and Zeit, though I do admittedly have a copy of Phaedra, which I have not listened to so much). Before the concert I did some investigations and discovered that Edgar Froese, the main guy from Tangerine Dream, died some years ago, leading me to wonder what class of gig I was going to. What I got was a performance of electronic music by a band consisting of three people: a woman on violin, a guy on electronic stuff, and a younger guy on other electronic stuff. There also were lights and images projected on a screen. The music was a bit more full-on than the early Tangerine Dream stuff I am familiar with, at times heading towards what might appeal to young people in a "night club". That was funny because the concert was all seated and you got the impression that many of the attendees were in such a relaxed frame of mind that they would have been unable to dance even if they had wanted to. I think I recognised a track from Phaedra, but apart from that it was all new to me. I have no idea whether they were actually playing tunes from the Virgin era (possibly jazzed up) or pieces from their career to date, but it was all very enjoyable and I would be happy to see them again at a future concert. Afterwards I carried out some further investigation into the band's current line-up and discovered that the older of the electronic musicians is a fellow named Thorsten Quaeschning, who was not even born when Tangerine Dream formed and is in fact a good bit younger than me. He has been Tangerine Dream's bandleader since Froese's death. He has a side project called Picture Palace Music, who among other things do scores for old silent films that they perform live and release on record. And I have one of those records, Three Easter Nights at the Babylon - Music for Bunnies and Fallen Capitals, with tunes composed for soundtracks to Metropolis, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which I bought when I saw a screening of the latter with live musical accompaniment in Berlin once. Small world.

Concert: A Ritual Sea (Workman's Club)

A Ritual Sea are Dublin's very own Hiberno-French gothgaze sensations and this February concert saw them launching their debut album. When I arrived a support act was already onstage, a woman who played a mysterious stringed instrument (later revealed to be a balalaika) while she sang and fiddled with electronics. I think at least one song was about her cat. There was a definitely appealing quality to her sound but it was a real struggle to find out who she was, with people I asked not knowing or not remembering the name she was trading under, or else they did know and said it to me but the ambient noise meant I was unable to pick it up. Eventually research revealed that she records and plays as Cormorant Tree Oh and is on Bandcamp ( https://cormorant-tree-oh.bandcamp.com ). I recommend checking her out.

A Ritual Sea themselves I have seen a few times supporting other people and once playing as headliners in a small venue with problematic sound. This was my first time seeing them in all their glory and they have really flowered into an impressive live band. On record they tend towards the ethereal end of shoegaze but live they are a good bit more muscular, with a lot of this down to the powerful rhythm section. However the shimmering guitar action keeps the shoegaze faith, with the delightful interlocking tones of guitarists Florian Chombart and Nina Ruminska counterpointing the vocals of Chombart and Donna McCabe. Ruminska's playing in particular is stunning; she seems to be one of those people who are ridiculously mutli-talented, as investigation reveals her to be a gifted creator of visual art.

So this was a great concert and the crowd responded in kind. However, there was a note of sadness to proceedings. The band had already said that this would be their only concert this year, but now from the stage McCabe intimated that it could be their last concert ever, without going into the reasons for this possible ending. This struck me as most unfortunate. After releasing their likeable album last year and then delivering such a strong live performance it's hard not to see A Ritual Sea as a band really hitting their creative stride, so it would be a shame if they were to disappear just as they are showing such promise.

More concert photos

Concert: LoneLady (Grand Social)

Join me in a journey back to February for what was my first proper gig post-lockdown: you know, a gig where you stand up and buy drinks from a bar and people dance a bit and stuff. But unfortunately I found that I had largely forgotten how to do gigs properly, crucially failing to recall that you really don't want to be bringing too much clothes along with you. It's better to be a bit chilly while walking to the venue than stuck with a mountain of stuff at it, particularly as it turned out that either the Grand Social was not operating a cloakroom or else had decided to carefully hide it away where none might find it.

LoneLady you will recall is the edgy electronic retro dance music sensation from Manchester whom I discovered via Tim Burgess and his listening parties (notably the one for her brilliant 2021 album Former Things). But before her there was a local support act: a chap called Chósta, who turns out to be from the picturesque locality of Donabate, which is the next place along on the train from where I grew up but somewhere I have never really explored properly, making it a zone of mystery and danger (accentuated by it being adjacent to an enormous but now largely derelict Victorian asylum). Mr Chósta was one of those laptop guys, so I was expecting him to be a bit boring, but actually his set was very enjoyable in a low key glitchy electronic kind of way. Consider checking out his material on Bandcamp: https://chosta.bandcamp.com

Although her records are all her own work, LoneLady (real name Julie Campbell) was playing with two other people: James Field, who bashed away at electronic drum pads while standing up, and Kendra Jane Frost, who played electronic keyboards and other instruments. The performance was great but I think maybe the other attendees were a bit like me and so were trying to remember how to do gigs. Audience responses seemed a bit muted, only really ramping up by the concert's latter stages. By the time members of Dublin's LoneLady fan community had remembered how to enjoy themselves it was time for LoneLady and her friends to bid us farewell. Still, it was great hearing the edgy electronic tunes from Former Things live, together with the tracks from her earlier albums, at the time still new to me. I hope that Ms LoneLady returns to these shores now that we have all remembered how to do concerts.

LoneLady's music can be found in record stores and on Bandcamp: https://lonelady.bandcamp.com

More concert photographs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/inuitmonster/albums/72177720298580159

Two Hugh Lane Gallery concerts: William Butt and the Spero Quartet

These are concerts I went to back in January and February. They were on in the Hugh Lane Gallery and because Covid-19 was still a big deal then they involved both a degree of social distancing and mask wearing, which was a bit weird.

The first concert was by William Butt, who is a cellist. I had seen him previously at those greatly missed Santa Rita concerts that the Ergodos lads had put on. He is an impressive performer, with the physicality of his playing being particularly striking if you are able to see him close up. For this concert he was performing two pieces by Bach (Cello Suite no. 1 in G and Cello Suite no 4 in E flat). I don't really have much to say about this but that it was great, the perfect combination of musician and work. But sadly I was a little bit puppy tired and may have nodded off at one or two points.

And the concert can actually be watched on YouTube, should you want to see William Butt in action.

For the second concert I made sure to knock back an espresso beforehand to ensure there would be no embarrassing sleepy moments. This time the performers were the Spero Quartet. They are a string quartet made up of young people, three of whom are women. Like a rock band they were travelling around Ireland playing this show, with the Hugh Lane concert being the final date of the tour, which meant there were some hi-jinks. The programme was an adventurous one, with the initial Mozart Quartet in D major being the most conventional piece on offer, a genuinely beautiful piece that would have been worth the price of admission on its own.

Then there was Satellites, a three movement piece by composed by Garth Knox, who introduced the piece before the Spero people played it. The first part of this, "Geostationary" was based around the idea that a geostationary orbit is in constant motion while remaining fixed relative to a point on the Earth's surface, with the music attempting to reflect this. More easily recognisable was the second section, "Spectral Sunrise", which was inspired by how people on the International Space Staton experience some 16 sunrises a day, with the music evoking several of these from their first tinges to the full on appearance of the sun (and then because why not, an attempt to render in music some astronaut doing a space walk). The last section of Knox's piece, "Dimensions", was a musical exploration of multiple dimensions, but sadly only the three spatial dimensions. Part of this was done by having the players use their bows in non-standard ways, including as whips (on the air, not each other).

The last piece was Shostakovich's String Quartet no. 9 in E flat major, a late composition of his from 1964. Things were finally going well for the composer at that point. He was finally basking in some sustained official favour and no longer in danger of being sent to the Gulag for making music Stalin deemed tuneless. And also he was now happily married to his third wife, Irina Supinskaya. For all my love of Shostakovich, his string quartets are a bit of a blind spot for me, but it was interesting how there was a bit of an edge to this piece, with it not having the complacent feel one might expect from the work of a composer whose life was now one of relative contentment. The piece contrasts interestingly with the ones from Mozart and Knox: less avant-garde than the latter but edgier than the former, with its composer's characteristic refusal to just serve up beautiful music typifying his 20th century modernist approach.

This concert can also be re-watched on YouTube:

images:

William Butt, cellist

The Spero Quartet