Unless you’re the most jaded and cynical old hack ever to have had any connection with the music business, then surely an email with the header ‘Slovenia’s ShadowIcon to release Symphonic Metal EP’ has to grab your attention. I mean, we know that symphonic metal exists, so why shouldn’t it exist in Slovenia? It’s easy to dismiss the genre as clichéd, over-the-top and predictable, but if you threw Paramore, My Chemical Romance and 1970s Queen into a blender you’d probably end up with something very like ShadowIcon (or a few litres of very messy genetic material).
The EP opens with “(Now I See) Through a Mirror Darkly”, a duet between Ana Prijatelj Pelhan and Helloween’s Sascha Gerstner and blasts in with a high-speed guitar riff and strings which break down briefly for the entry of the vocal, but carry on at 100mph (sorry 160kph) for the rest of the song. “If I Was the One”, the lead track from the EP is up next; slightly slower with loads of keyboard arpeggios under the vocal and a synth solo at the two-thirds mark which doubles up with guitar before the final chorus comes in. Here’s what the video looks like:
“The Edge” (and it isn’t about the guitarist from U2),opens like a Phil Spector classic, breaking down briefly again for the entry of the vocal before building to wall of sound climax with strings and bells. Of course it’s over the top, but isn’t that the point? “The Beauty of a Rose” starts with slow solo piano and voice, but it doesn’t take long before it becomes a big production number, trading string and guitar riffs before the obligatory impassioned guitar solo and epic finish with massed choir vocals and a plaintive synth line. “My Plea” again opens with just mid-tempo voice and keyboard but doesn’t even make it to the end of the first verse before the rest of the band starts to pile in, building up to an epic final chorus with the usual massed backing vocals, guitars and keys all turned up to eleven. The final track is a non-duet version of the opening track which doesn’t really add anything, but it doesn’t take anything away, so I guess the decision was easy; just put it on there and the fans can decide which version they prefer.
In addition to Ana, the band comprises Tomaž Lovšin (guitars), Bojan Kostanjšek (guitars), Matej Ravšelj (bass), Peter Smrdel (keys) and Žiga Ravšelj (drums) and they’re all good musicians. It’s easy to criticise bands like ShadowIcon but the music’s dramatic and dynamic; the drums thunder, the guitars scream, and the lyrics stand up to scrutiny pretty well. If you like your metal melodic and melodramatic, then you’ve come to the right place.
Out on March 16th.
As ways to start the night go, having a chinwag with Joe Brown in the toilets at The Half Moon is a pretty good, if slightly surreal, one. So what’s he doing there on a Monday night? Perfectly obvious really; both Mollie Marriott and her support act Mo Evans are family and Joe’s there to support them. And he’s not the only one. Judie Tzuke (one of Mollie’s writing partners) has shown up as well. There’s a bit of a buzz around this show because it’s the debut for Mollie’s full band, and most of the audience is anticipating some new material as well.
But before we get to that, there’s a short set from Mollie’s nephew, Mo Evans, who’s a singer-songwriter in the confessional mould. Armed with only an acoustic guitar, a capo and some interesting tunings, he manages to grab the audience from the start. It’s a difficult job at the best of times, particularly when your songs don’t have too many happy moments, but they’re a pretty good crowd and he gets them onside. There’s a particularly nice moment at the end of the set when his guitar amp gives up and he reacts by jumping down from the stage and gathering the audience around him to finish the set completely unplugged.
Mollie’s been doing acoustic gigs and radio appearances recently with Johnson-Jay Medwik-Daley (guitar and backing vocals) and Izzy Chase-Phillmore (backing vocals) and this line-up is augmented for the album material by Sam Tanner, Alex Reeves and Henrik Irgens (keyboards, drums and bass). There’s an assurance about the band’s performance that only comes from putting in the hours in rehearsal; there should be some nerves showing on the first outing with new material but they’re well hidden. The band are all great individual musicians but this is about working together to showcase the songs and Mollie’s voice. Oh yes, that voice; it’s powerful and pure and strong (which you would expect from someone who’s worked extensively as a backing singer) but when she pushes it towards the limit, there’s a raw emotional edge there that you only find in the truly great blues and soul singers. On top of all that, she’s a genuinely engaging stage personality who has a great rapport with her band and the audience.
The set features the two singles “Ship of Fools” and “Transformer”, the Alanis Morissette cover “Mary Jane” and a selection of new material from the album, including “Give Me a Reason” which features some lovely harmonies from Izzy and Johnson-Jay; the audience loves it. There’s a huge amount of love and mutual respect on stage but also between the band and the audience, which all helps to create a perfect live music experience. The Half Moon isn’t full by any means, but anyone who was there will be spreading the word.
So, is 2015 the breakthrough year for Mollie Marriott? It certainly looks like this is the right time for the big push; she’s been around the music business for a few years now and she’s highly respected as a backing vocalist, but she now has an album’s worth of songs, a tremendous band behind her, a label and a good support team. And, in case I hadn’t mentioned this already, a phenomenal voice. “Transformer” is already generating media attention and picking up local radio playlistings, and with the album coming out later this year, this just might be Mollie’s time; I really hope so.
It’s nearly two years since Klare Stephens reviewed a Coco and the Butterfields gig at The Blind Tiger in Brighton for MusicRiot and it’s fair to say that the Canterbury band have grown (in more ways than one) since that gig, although they’ve managed to stay true to the busking ethos that underpins their music and has helped to create their truly dedicated fanbase. So now they’re headlining at The Jazz Café in Camden on a Friday night and it’s a good opportunity to see how far they’ve come in such a short time.
But before CATB take the stage, there’s a support set from singer-songwriter Mario Lottari who (despite a few technical glitches) wins over the mass of CATB fans crowding the front of the stage with his well-crafted songs and a versatile band backing him up with a huge variety of instrumental textures. That’s another one I’ll be watching out for this year.
CATB don’t so much hit the stage as engulf it; I have to do a headcount because there are so many of them. On top of the core line-up of double bass, banjo, fiddle, guitar and beatbox, there’s also trumpet, sax, a string section (two violins and a cello) and a drummer; I ran out of fingers and had to rely on a smartphone to keep count. By this time, the ground floor of the Jazz Café (and most of the staircases) is a seething mass of bodies and this isn’t a scenester crowd; these people are all here to see Coco and the Butterfields do their stuff. So what is it that inspires such fanaticism?
Well, the band has a pretty good repertoire of original songs now, including “King of the Corner”, “Astronaut”, “Scarecrow” and the anthemic “Warriors”, but they’re equally good knocking out their own take on a song that you might not expect, like “Hard Knock Life” tonight, for example. CATB is not about individual musicianship; it’s much more of an ensemble thing where everyone has their own part to play, but there’s another, more important, difference between this and any other ordinary gig. This isn’t a performance where the band play at the audience and the audience passively soak up the show; it works because the band and the audience enjoy a symbiotic experience. The band feed off the audience reaction and it pushes them on to an even higher level; if every gig was like this, we wouldn’t have any problem filling live venues and maybe more musicians could make a decent living.
This is the fourth time I’ve seen CATB and each time it’s been a step up the London gig ladder. I haven’t seen them play a bad gig, and this time they were superb. Their roots may be in busking and they look as if it’s all a bit of fun, but they take the music very seriously indeed. They seem to be moving at the moment towards a more conventional (by CATB standards) stage line-up, with the addition of a drummer to augment beatboxer Jamie’s percussion and the brief appearance of a couple of electric guitars during the set and it’s shaping up to be an interesting year for them; they seem to be at the point where they can break out from the Kent scene and build their following nationwide. The way their audiences are reacting at the moment, I think the band can still go a lot further (if they want to) without losing the fanatical following they have at the moment.
The bottom line is that you really should go and watch this band.
Here’s someone we reviewed live a few weeks ago with his electric live band stripping things back down to basics with his acoustic version of the Mississippi John Hurt classic “Payday”.
What’s not to like about one man, a resonator and a stompbox?
Well, it’s been a while but it’s great to finally hear some new material from Natalie Duncan. I’m guessing that the last couple of years haven’t been a bundle of laughs; after the superb debut album, “Devil in Me”, the hype which surrounded her can’t have been easy to deal with. You can call this an inspired guess if you like, but I have a strong impression that what Natalie really cares about is making music and the music business hoop-la surrounding it is something she can happily live without. Anyway, following her split with the Verve label last year she’s had the chance to do her own thing and the “Black and White” EP is her first commercial release in over two years.
The blindingly obvious difference between “Devil in Me” and the new EP is that the traditional instruments and production techniques used by Joe Henry on the album have been replaced by more contemporary electronic techniques, resulting in a very different overall sound, where the distinct voices of the instruments are often blurred by heavy reverb to create an almost ambient background for Natalie’s vocals to cut through.
The title track opens with mournful keyboard chords (harmonium, maybe) leading into sampled backing vocals (more of those later) and builds up steadily with straightforward percussion and very heavy bass as a story of style over substance unfolds (‘They’re gonna love you in black and white’). “Oh my God” has a lo-fi feel using retro samples and surface noise effects to create a backdrop vocal samples pitched up and down to form part of the overall arrangement with Natalie’s voice thrown further back in the mix, becoming just another part of the arrangement; very atmospheric.
“Elysium” begins with conventional instruments; the long, melancholy keyboard chords and a detuned guitar and what sounds like a heavily-reverbed steel pan. There’s also some more huge, rumbling bass. The theme of pitch-changed samples runs through this song as well, as a counterpoint to the close-miked lead vocal. It’s a very personal song, particularly in the double-time middle section and is simultaneously disturbing and uplifting.
“Ripples” opens with percussion samples and steel pan again, and that familiar vibrant bass which you feel rather than hear. It’s another bitter-sweet relationship song which is probably best summed-up in a line from the coda: ‘Holding on to an empty hand, the world moves past us as we stand.’ It’s another haunting performance.
It’s difficult to say if this is a new direction for Natalie Duncan or if it’s a period of experimentation; either way, the combination of trip-hop samples and ambience with twentieth-first century percussion and sampling techniques works really well with the songs on this EP. Whether her flawless voice is front and centre or being warped as part of the backing track, these four tracks show that the songwriting is still of the highest quality and, despite a couple of years out of the limelight, Natalie Duncan is still a prodigious talent and any new material she releases is worth listening to. Welcome back.
“Black and White” is out now on Spotify.
OK, so it’s Shoreditch on a Friday night. Normally I would rather eat my own body weight in guitarists’ nail clippings than visit a Shoreditch venue on a Friday night but, in this case, I’m making an exception because the venue and the artist are a little bit special. Rich Mix is a charity and social enterprise comprising a cinema, performance space and food outlet in a building which at one time was a garment factory (when we made garments in the UK). John Fairhurst is a bit special as well; his style is predominantly blues, but don’t expect third or fourth generation, ironed-out gutless blues because this guy taps into the feel of the original mid-twentieth century originals with a little side order of Indian classical tradition and some Hendrix and Neil Young for seasoning. His songs are featured in two films to be released in 2015, “The Beat Beneath my Feet” and the Scorsese-produced “Tomorrow” and his latest album “Saltwater” (highly recommended by MusicRiot) was released in late 2014. So we’re looking forward to this one.
To start up the evening, DJ Chris Tofu warps and bends blues with electronica and samples to build up the atmosphere before the John Fairhurst Band really kickstarts the event. The “Saltwater” album has some fairly big productions, but the live set is a power-trio affair delivered by John, Pete Episcopo (bass) and Toby Murray (drums). While the focus is always on John Fairhurst’s playing and vocals, this set-up only works if the rhythm section is at the top of their game and Pete and Toby certainly don’t disappoint, providing a solid foundation for the songs and John’s extended solos. The set leans heavily on “Saltwater” material, featuring the Mississippi John Hurt classic “Pay Day”, the Hendrix-inspired “I’m Coming Home” and an astonishingly powerful version of the album’s title song to close the set. John Fairhurst’s playing is raw, loud, phasers-set-to-stun blues; it’s not for the faint-hearted 70s-era Clapton and Joe Bonamassa followers, but it’s a glorious earthy noise and the quality of the playing is stunning. I’ll certainly be having more of that later in the year.
As a bonus (well, this is part of the London Remixed Festival), the final live set of the evening is a collaboration between producer and live remixer Reverend Rockwell, John Fairhurst and Boxcar Joe Strouzer. You can’t argue with the performances and it’s an interesting experiment, but the programmed beats really aren’t a match for three great musicians playing together as a unit. Nothing wrong with it, but it just wasn’t the highlight of the night.
Things are looking good for John Fairhurst this year. He has a newish album to promote and, on the evidence of tonight, he’s going to win new fans every time he plays. The fact that his music is featured in a couple of new films as well is probably more valuable than radio plays in the current climate; I’m really hoping that things work out for him.
And how do I feel about Shoreditch now? Well, it would be great if it was all like Rich Mix, with a diverse audience and staff that make you feel that they actually like having you in their venue. It makes a huge difference to the entertainment on offer and the people who pay to see it when profit isn’t the only reason for opening the doors on a Friday evening. Fair play to Rich Mix.
Click here to see some of our great photos from the gig.
There’s a lot to like about this first studio piece from Mama Moonshine, certainly enough to hint at interesting possibilities for the future. But, first things first, the band members are: Ruth Armitt (vocals), Phil Taylor (guitars), AB Benson (bass) and Mark Buckwell (drums) and they’ve been playing around London for a while now, building up a live following and “Sisters” is the first single.
We’re eased in to the song with a languid bass riff and some clipped, toppy funk guitar before Ruth Armitt makes an appearance with a very distinctive voice which is part Billie Holiday and part Carleen Anderson; it certainly got my attention immediately. The theme of the song is growing up, moving on and finding new friends and the lyrics work well with the melody and the band’s sound, but there’s something that doesn’t quite work.
It feels like the band have tried to cram several styles all of their dynamics into one three-minute song and the effect is a bit like cramming a three hundred page novel into two paragraphs. In the second half of the song there’s a series of two-bar passages where the instruments drop in and out which, for me, doesn’t really work at all. It feels a bit like an attempt to cram in a little bit of everything into three minutes when the song might have been better served by simplifying the arrangement or stretching things out a little to extend the song and escape the claustrophobic feel that the series of sudden changes in dynamics and arrangement create.
I’m certainly not saying it’s a bad song, but I think it needs a little more room to breathe than it’s allowed here.
Available now on Soundcloud.
