Rocket Juice and the Moon is the eponymous debut from the latest in the long line of Damon Albarn’s side-projects. Initially formed in 2008, the project, consisting of core members Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, etc.), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Tony Allen (Fela Kuti), had been set aside whilst its various members got on with their day jobs. This lack of attention is perhaps the reason why Rocket Juice and the Moon sounds a bit undercooked.

The album draws on the African influences familiar to Allen’s past ventures and which featured on Albarn’s latest Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, the driving force behind its songs coming in the form of afrobeat, funk baselines. The main problem with the album is that it feels like a side-project; one in which nobody really takes control. Albarn only sings on two of the twenty tracks comprising Rocket Juice and the Moon and, as such, the album lacks a definitive voice. There are many solid guest performances from the likes of Erykah Badu, Fatoumata Diawara and M.anifest but the result is a record which sounds more like a drop-in session for whoever may have been hanging around at the time.

The high points consist of songs like ‘High Shooter’, ‘Lolo’ and ‘Poison’ where melody and lyrical drive take over from the otherwise meandering instrumentation but these instances are too few and far between to give the album a consistent energy. This is an album perhaps best enjoyed in the live arena where the relaxed party atmosphere that fails to excite on record will be displayed to its best advantage. Sadly, for whatever reason, this hasn’t been achieved with the recorded version and what might have been a really interesting project has ended up sounding more like the Gorillaz tracks which didn’t quite come together for Plastic Beach.

TWO STARS

Don’t be misled by the daunting cover of Visions by Montreal based Grimes, aka Claire Boucher. The 24 year old Canadian born musician and music video director is currently garnering international praise as she makes waves with her bewitching electropop/chillwave/witch house music repertoire.

Rather than a dark treacherous musical odyssey, Visions presents a surprisingly fresh and craftily textured revelation wrapped in surreal, edgy, space-like foam. 

The album brazenly kicks off with a short introductory track entitled ‘Infinite Love Without Fulfilment’. “I’ll leave you if you want to”, the insouciant lyrics taunt playfully, treating love in a detached, indifferent yet obedient manner. This is followed by ‘Genesis’, a tense polyphonic piece with rich instrumentation and crisp beats. The sound is refreshing: an interplay between arpeggio like flutes, tinkering electronic piano, synthesised sounds and a sweet concoction topped with a lightly thudding bass. In a similar vein, ‘Oblivion’ is built upon the application of hypnotic electronic loops that form the underlying languid platform of the song.

Stand out tracks include ‘Vowels = Space and Time’, ‘Be a Body’ and ‘Skin’. Again, the apt use of synthesisers on these tracks, coupled with catchy melodies, create soundscapes that are hallucinogenic, dreamy and unrefined. ‘Be a Body’ and ‘Skin’ follow the formula of offbeat chord patterns touched with piano riffs that insinuate mystery.

However, I cannot pin Grimes down. Often I would be fleetingly reminded of Ladyhawke and Prince, whilst some tracks are also reminiscent of Goldfrapp and Hot Chip in their pensive, wistful delivery and hypnotic, persistent beats.

The album ties the knot with ‘Know the Way’, perhaps the most calm—inducing song of the lot. It waves a tender goodbye to an exotic, beguiling infusion of electro, chillwave sounds. Grimes does not fall under the mainstream category but, if her Visions are anything to go by, then conversions to this exhilarating genre will undoubtedly follow suit. Boucher’s ethereal Visions need no correcting.

FOUR STARS

On OUJO’s Facebook page, it states that their various accolades include ‘supporting headliners…[for] The Streets on the Oxford ball circuit’. After seeing them perform a wonderfully executed 90 minutes of driving big-band jazz to an adoring crowd, I can now reveal that they are categorically better than The Streets. Partly because I don’t imagine Mike Skinner’s silky-smooth vocals would go down well at Montreal Jazz Festival, the next stop for this razor-sharp orchestra in the summer.

While many big bands produce a mass of indeterminate horns drowning everything in their wake, OUJO are crisp, precise and brilliantly clear, trading off virtuoso solos and dense group harmonies with effortless ease. Whether swerving between the up-tempo swing-time of Buddy Rich’s ‘Big Swing Face’, or providing gentle washes of sound for a ballad, there is always a satisfying balance between the richly complex arrangements and the punchy accessibility of the melodies and rhythm section.

The orchestra were at their best when gradually building up layers of sound, giving individuals breathing space before swelling to a huge crescendo. One of the standout tracks was ‘Aha’, where a moody, sparse groove from bassist Richard Longdon and drummer Alex Blackwell, supplemented by the low growl of baritone sax from Magnus Rowbotham, built up by blocks of sound from alto, tenor, piano and trumpet to a complex, powerful conclusion worthy of David Axelrod. Equally good was a rousing rendition of Gordon Goodwin’s ‘Count Bubba’ – perfectly choreographed horn stabs and solo bars from all three brass lines keeping up a driving rhythm, rising to something euphoric enough to soundtrack winning the top prize on every single game show in the world simultaneously.

Highlights also included ‘Stella By Starlight’ and ‘Always and Forever’, two superbly understated and tender performances led by band president Michael Dunne. Dunne’s trumpet playing radiated professionalism, channelling as much into the perfectly judged spaces between the notes as the arrangements themselves, refusing to hog the limelight in favour of a quiet, subtle style that only enhanced a sense of passion, energy and intensity. Similarly, Francesca Aquilina’s vocals were wedded perfectly with the band’s subtler side – the performers knowingly altering volume and technique to foreground fantastic renditions of ‘At Last’ and ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’, amongst others. Though it’s traditional for a jazz chanteuse to make dweeby, misty-eyed audience members fall in love with them, by the end of her performance of ‘At Last’ I was considering asking her to elope to Tuscany.

Fantastic drumming from Blackwell throughout, and some very endearing compereing from stand-in host Rory Robinson (‘This one’s quite emotional. Well, I dunno, maybe not. See what you think’) got the crowd behind them for the duration of the show. The only thing that didn’t go in OUJO’s favour was the size of the stage, making sightlines difficult and cramming them next to each other with little elbow room, and an unfortunate anchoring of most of the venue’s seating a disorientating distance from the front. Hopefully, when they take to Montreal in the summer, they’ll have difficulty pushing crowds away.

4 STARS

Bill Heine orders ‘just a little, just a taste’ of the South African house white as we sit down by the stove in the conservatory of the Rickety Press in Jericho. There’s an atmosphere of studied gentility in the pub, as patrons sip their drinks besides walls, shelves and window ledges piled high with books. My guest fits the place like a good book in a well-fitted dust jacket.  

I open with a couple of questions about the origins of the much beloved Headington Shark and can’t keep a note of laughter out of my voice when I ask what his thought process was.  He is evidently used to this question and sits back to ruminate, observing that he still hasn’t come up with a  tried and tested ‘patter’ to help him out in these situations and worries that his answer might descend into ‘chaos’.

But Heine’s story is anything but chaos as he spins a tale which ranges from the 1986 bombing of Tripoli as he lay awake listening to the aircraft flying from their air base above Oxford on his first night in his new home; to evening drinks, perched on a wall, with the artist John Buckley, discussing how to make his house look ‘interesting’; and finally to the installation of the shark on the 15^th August, 1986, the forty-first anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Clearly the theme is destruction, and a certain ‘shock value’: the invasion of something forceful into a place that one feels is as ‘safe as houses’.

I ask Heine whether he thinks that art’s ability to shock is a pre-requisite of great contemporary art. ‘I wonder if I would say shocking,’ he begins. ‘I think most of the important art does have this quality. It jolts people; it shakes them up and it asks new questions. That’s the area I’m interested in: the asking of new questions so that people will settle down again.’

I wonder whether Heine can identify a particular work of art which he experienced in this way. ‘It’s interesting,’ he muses, ‘in the sense that it’s not really a piece of art, but I consider it to be. I used to live in Peru and I lived in a place called Cuzco in the Andes. It was the centre of the Inca Empire and there was a lot of poverty. There were people who were pretty close to the breadline and they wore clothes that were very shredded and old, and sandals, in this harsh terrain. But I remember seeing this one man in particular and he was a campesino – he worked in the fields for a subsistence living – and he was wearing a poncho that he wove himself. This poncho was ablaze with the most intricate weaving of reds and the images were from his life: the birds; the condors, and the alpacas. He was standing there, stooped over a little, and he didn’t have a bean. But he had dignity. And he was just simply covered in something that he had made which was resplendent. So I think that’s my work of art.’

Heine believes art should always be publically available; he explains that his shark was a form of homage to the public spirit of art. In crash-landing the shark ‘way out in lace-curtain land’ Heine avers that he took art out of a certain ‘elitist’ area of Oxford ‘as a kind of gift’ to everybody. The shark can be seen by anyone who takes a trip out to Headington; it can even be seen on the main road going out of Oxford. And, after all, it is the public who saved the shark. After years of debate, raging through the council and even the law courts of Oxford, the question of the shark’s fate ended up at Westminster where a public inquiry was held, requesting the opinions of local residents. No matter that the shark hadn’t had planning permission, no matter that the shark was an ‘eye-sore’ (according to certain members of the council); the residents of Oxford loved it. Heine tells me with a satisfaction still alive after twenty years that his lawyer told him that 95% of those asked wanted to keep the shark.

So that was that. The Headington shark passed its twenty-fifth birthday in 2011, and Heine hopes that it will last another twenty five more. Structurally, the shark is ‘stronger than it’s ever been’ as Heine confesses that he spent £250,000 re-figuring how the shark and the house meet. He admits that now the shark and the house do not technically converge, as the shark now crash lands into a ‘steel structure’ hidden inside the roof, but ‘it looks the same’ and that’s what is most important.

Harbouring a penchant for socks and sandals? Partial to the odd tankard of home brewed ale?

If so, it’s time to dust off that Morris dancing outfit and whack out the accordion (don’t pretend you don’t have both) ahead of the return of the Oxford Folk Weekend on 20th-22^nd April 2012. Taking place at the newly refurbished Old Fire Station in addition to various venues across Oxford, the three day festival promises to be a colourful riot of ceilidhs, craft fairs and folk infused concerts.

With organisers eager to cast off the perception of folk music as the reserve of fusty, grey-haired, ale-swilling eccentrics, headlining the Sunday will be Mawkin, the (comparatively) youthful three-times-BBC Folk Award nominated five-piece following in the footsteps of Seth Lakeman and Dry the River et al. Describing themselves as ‘folk rebels’, (N.B Cherwell can find nothing more dissident than a lack of beards) Mawkin look set to liven up the traditional folk canon and reinvigorate Oxford’s underground folk music scene.

Performing alongside Mawkin will be artists including Ian Giles, Telling the Bees, Emily Spiers and the Tunesmiths and Jamie Huddlestone. Oxford’s self-proclaimed ‘glam-folk legend’ James Bell will also be taking to the stage on the Saturday, no doubt providing blessed relief for those bemoaning Oxford’s current spate of glam-folk legends. Still, while it’s easy to poke fun at the idiosyncrasy of folk festivals, their influence on today’s music industry is unarguable. With the meteoric rise of neo-folk artists such as Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling, arguably folk music is instrumental in tapping into a wider rejection of the commercialism of mainstream music. At a grassroots level, this has seen a resurgence in local community-led festivals across Britain, spearheaded by the ever- popular Cambridge Folk Festival, celebrating traditional folk music at its most basic and intrinsic level.

So best forget the looming essay crisis, start cultivating that facial hair (applies to both sexes) and prepare to embrace the unbridled folk revelry that the Folk Weekend Oxford 2012 promises. Clog dancing optional.

http://www.folkweekendoxford.co.uk/