Merry Blogmas!

If you are reading this a Happy Christmas and a New Year to you.

I hope your nearest, dearest and loved ones where ever they may be are safe and sound.

Every year I write a blog post about music, and my favourite tracks of the year. This year I thought I’d try something different. Music can take you to new places and introduce you to new people. So here’s a list of the live music I’ve seen this year (with illustrations):

February 5th:

Artiste: Slapper.

Venue: A pub in London.

Also featuring Bruno and the Outrageous Methods of Presentation and Scrotum Clamp.

It’s a source of great shame that I have not seen Slapper until now, bearing in mind I’ve known my good friend Sue who is their guiding spirit for more than 30 years. Slapper are an experience: performance art punk rock theatre? In French? And Spanish? An evening that will stay with me… Thanks for Sue and Hally for their ongoing moral and creative support (“making big things on zero budgets”).

March 12th:

Beethoven’s 6th Symphony (Pastoral) performed by The Sutton Philharmonic Orchestra.

Venue: Guildhall School of Music, London

A delightful, zesty performance of this classic. Heart warming…

April 2nd:

Artiste: Lyagas and Mutsumi Abe

Venue: a performance space somewhere in Tokyo.

Folk music from Eastern Europe and Greece played by fine Japanese musicians Lyagas. Thanks very much to fiddle player supreme Mutsumaki-san.

May 3rd:

Artiste: Otoboke Beaver

Venue: London

The best riotgrrrl act in Japan and the hardest working band on the planet. Fabulous!

21st July:

Artiste: Mariza

Venue: the Royal Albert Hall

The Queen of Fado in complete command…

16th August:

Artiste: WITCH FEVER

Venue: The Craufurd Arms in Wolverton.

Still my favourite UK band. Everything you want a rock band to be. Perfect venue too. I will return to Wolverton!

24th August:

Artiste: Rosalia‘s “El Mal Querer” at Pitchblack Playback.

Venue: The Riverside, London

Not really a concert, but it’s a great album…

3rd September:

Artiste: Tina Martini and Wayne Champagne

Venue: private event

Reunited… and it feels so good…

18th September:

Artiste: Shawn Colvin

Venue: The Stables

Shawn has written a lot of great songs and she played many of them this evening. I agree with her about electronic guitar tuners… away with these vile boxes!

30th September:

Handel’s Semele performed by Black Heath Halls Opera.

Venue: BlackHeath Halls, South London

Enjoyable and very slickly staged. Great work from the chorus!

21st October:

More traditional Greek folk music at a church hall in Shepherds Bush, London. Mutumaki-san is in charge once again.

26th October:

“9 to 5 The Musical” performed by the Mill Hill Musical Theatre Company

Venue: a Church Hall in Mill Hill London

Dolly Parton rules. The show must go on!

11th November:

Artiste: The Zemlinski Trio

Civic Centre, Berkhamsted.

Mendelssohn, Brahms and of course Beethoven

28th November

Artiste: CLT DRP

Venue: the Lexington, London

Dramatic, provocative feminist electropunk. Wild and exciting. Album of the year.

Here’s a live performance from CLT DRP earlier in the year:

Congratulations were also very good.

My idea of a good night out!

3rd December:

Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana

Venue: the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Just a couple of everyday tales of lust, rage and slaughter. With a superb orchestra.

P.S. In August my great friend Simon Hopkins once again facilitated our annual session. This isn’t really a public performance as only neighbours, passers by and Simon’s nearest and dearest might have heard it. Thanks as always to him. I particularly liked this one, which is an accurate distillation of our approach…

Angelica Garcia “El Que”

angelicagarcia.bandcamp.com/track/el-que

Angelica Garcia “El Que”

https://spotify.link/Y1V8UGPWEDb

Weekend listening: “Fujiyama”

The third track from my August session with Simon Hopkins.

A lovely tune from Dave Brubeck’s “Jazz Impressions of Japan” album and written by the great man himself.

I wasn’t entirely happy with my playing on this one, so I’ve edited this so there’s more Simon and less me…

Fuji-san

Rosalia at #pitchbackplayback @pitchblackplayback

I caught up with Rosalia’s El Mal Querer album this year, 5 years after everyone else.

I got a CD for Christmas and played it constantly after that (alongside Dave Brubeck’s Time Further Out from 1961 but that’s another story).

El Mal Querer is a fabulous, beautiful and inventive album which seems to come straight from the heart. It’s the reason why I went to my first Pitchblack Playback on Tuesday.

Judging from the gentleman at the front making the announcements I wasn’t the only one. He said this was their best attended Playback so far.

A number of sonic issues were raised by listening to music in the dark with strangers in a cinema with a superior sound system.

Is this the right kind of album to be listened to loud in a movie theatre? El Mal Querer is a very intimate record. Like a lot of the music of these days it feels designed to be listened to on headphones on a phone, not in a large room in the dark with a lot of other people. The volume in the room was probably louder than its creator ever heard it when making it. I doubt if Rosalia mixed it in a movie theatre on a surround sound system.

So that intimate quality gets lost. It’s like taking a small beautiful photograph and blowing it up so it covers the whole wall. You see and hear the grain. You hear more detail, but do you really want to hear it and did its creator want you to hear it?

Bass sounds in particular started to sound oppressive and heavy and a bit rough whereas on smaller speakers you don’t notice them. Maybe they are meant to be felt and not heard.

I was surprised to hear how much gunk there was in the sound. Effects and samples I’d not noticed before.

Surprisingly MotoMami sounded better in this space, possibly because the overall mix is cleaner.

But El Mal Querer is still the better album. MotoMami is just a bit too long with one too many Reggaeton tracks, and it also loses points for featuring The Weeknd*.

Don’t get me wrong; El Mal Querer is still thrilling, while my favourite track on Motomami (Bulerias) sounded like a million dollars in this space.

The sound systems in movie theatres is designed for movies. Would other types of music work better in the Pitchblack Playback format e.g. rock music, which be both clean and loud?

For all that, if you’re dating and like music @pitchblackplayback could be a good date night. I noticed many couples in the audience and some spirited arguments as I left…

*The Weeknd divides opinion. Some think he’s a genius, others find him annoying. I’m in the latter camp. His celebrity cameo on Motomami adds nothing except running time.

It’s dark in here…

Weekend Listening: “If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy”

So I was sitting there thinking “popular music has changed a lot since the days of If You Were The Only Girl In The World (And I Was The Only Boy)... hang on… that gives me an idea…”

I really like the overall design of this piece, although my playing is pretty ropey especially in parts 3 and 4 (see “chart” below).

Thanks to Simon for making it happen.

Weekend listening: “Floating World, Brutal Powerplay”

My good friend Simon Hopkins has already written extensively about our annual music get togethers on his own blog.

Suffice to say that these “sessions” are a highlight of my year. And thanks to Simon for his patience in realising some of my stranger ideas. As I once said to someone else to explain my creative approach: “you might not understand it, but the meaning is completely clear to me”.

My favourite track of this year’s recordings is this one. It’s a “commission”, based on a tweet (!).

Floating World, Brutal Powerplay

This is what we do!

Image from: “Coisa Mais Linda” drama series.

“Soap Bubbles And The Forces Which Mould Them”

First fruit (low hanging soapy fruit?) from this year’s session with my good friend Simon Hopkins…

His blog can be found here. Thanks to Simon as always for a lovely time…

Translation of the day

“completed misconstrued” = reported accurately

Diggin’ the sound of “Long Promised Road” by the Beach Boys