Live music

By Eithne Bradley

Welcome back! The skies are getting darker and the work’s piling up, so give thanks that this term sees some really great music coming to Oxford to cheer up your lives.

First off for those rockers and indie kids amongst you, the term kicks off with Spiritualized at the Academy on 13th, Kids in Glass Houses on the 25th, and Does it Offend You, Yeah? at the Regal on the 28th.

Later on we’re graced by the always reliable Funeral for a Friend at the Academy on 1st Nov, followed swiftly by hot new things The Red Light Company on the 3rd and love-them-or-hate-them Danish europoppers Alphabeat on the 5th.

Uber-hip Dirty Pretty Things come to the Academy on the 16th Nov, with The Whip hard on their indie heels on the 20th. Later, as the nights grow darker, band-to-watch The Rifles are making their way to the Academy on 29th Nov, and finally feel-good rock from Iglu and Hartly rounds off the term with sunshiny tunes on 5th Dec.

Some veteran favourites are turning up, like American ska pioneers Less Than Jake (11th Nov, Academy), perky girl-rockers The Pipettes (26th Oct, Academy) and on 15th Oct British Sea Power (right) at The Regal.
If you’re feeling the urge to go urban, The Scratch Perverts are burning a set at The Regal on 24th Oct. If you get your kicks from the dubious delights of Finnish Cello-Metal (and why wouldn’t you) Apocalyptica will be converging on the Academy on 2nd December.

However, if chilling is more in line after missing a couple of essay deadlines, try folk for more gentle tunes; James Yuill plays the Regal on 17th Oct, Seth Lakeman the Academy on 28th Oct, and Jolie Holland plays the same venue on 3rd Dec. Even folk-rock star Martha Wainwright pays Oxford Town Hall a visit on 4th Nov.

If you feel you need more brain cells, but missed out on Bach in the womb, don’t worry; you can get a similar effect at one of the many classical and baroque concerts Oxford has to offer, ranging from the Oxford Chamber Orchestra (Town Hall, 1st Nov) to the String Ensemble who fill the University Church on the 15th, as do the Brass Band on the 21st, up to the grand finale in 7th Week as the Philharmonic play their end-of-term concert at the Sheldonian.

Meanwhile, you are lucky enough to reside in one of the jazziest cities in Britain, with regular Thursday night spots at the Wheatsheaf for some of the best musicians around, from virtuoso flautist Gareth Lochrane to superb improvisers the Jutta Party Band on 16th and 23rd Oct respectively.

Album releases

By Harry Thompson

Whether you love them or hate them, or liked them way back when but now find them hilariously irrelevant, rock giants Oasis return this month with Dig Out Your Soul. Reports of writer’s block on Noel’s part don’t encourage favourable expectations and recent releases hardly hint at drastic change of sound. But maybe, just maybe, the Brothers Gallagher can pull something worthwhile out of their money-soaked fundaments.

In the battle of the Coldplay tribute bands we have releases from piano-abusing balladeers Keane and those emphatic Snow Patrol types. I reckon the latter should easily edge the former out, due to their superior ability in making songs that actually aren’t half bad.

Sticking with British guitar bands for a little longer, Kaiser Chiefs will be dropping Off With Their Heads, undoubtedly continuing their phenomenal success on our fair isles, and seem to have started writing actual songs rather than just glorified football chants.

On the other end of the spectrum is Amadou & Mariam’s Welcome To Mali, which will be attempting to capture the irrepressible joy of their live performances, which feature a potent mix of traditional Malian sounds, rock guitars, Columbian trombones and Cuban trumpets.

Another band offering a unique aural experience is San Francisco’s Deerhoof, who release Offend Maggie, the follow up to 2007’s indescribable Friend Opportunity. I still can’t quite get to grips with their elastic approach to group dynamics and rhythm and ‘Hello Kitty’ vocals, but maybe this will be the LP to change my mind.

Somewhere in the distant midst of November, Kanye West should be treating us to another burst of his world-beating hip-hop-pop hybrid with 808s & Heartbreak. Expect to be hearing every single track in a club near you soon.

Lastly the two I’m most looking forward to; both albums coming a scant year after the respective bands’ previous musical offerings, the quite different sounds of Texan folk-rockers Okkervil River and Cardiff-based indie-poppers Los Campesinos. The former is releasing the second half of what was intended to be a double album, with themes shared between the two LPs, the latter a limited release collection of ten all new, unheard songs written since the release of their debut.

Without going all misty-eyed with fanboy love, I can hardly wait for either.

My first encounter with Krautrock came when my older brother turned up in my room with a nearly new CD. Price sticker on, sleeve untouched, and the considered opinion, ‘This is CAN – Future Days. It’s shit. You have it.’

On looking at the track list, I saw why my brother had rejected the album – wincingly long track lengths and awful titles. In spite of this I gave CAN a chance.

As it turned out, my brother had, in typical first-listen-to-Kid-A style, totally missed the point. Given time to gestate, the unique, hypnotic-surf-music intensity of the album grabs you. It’s a classic, blending ambient, marshmallow-soft guitar and keyboard lines with the relentless, metronomic pumping of Jaki Liebezeit’s drum kit.

It’s an intoxicating mix, and singer Damo Suzuki’s spontaneous vocals, honed through years of busking throughout Europe, mix English, German and Japanese to further confuse and seduce the listener.

It would be easy to imagine CAN as a one-off, but in truth the late 60s and early 70s were a uniquely creative period for the German avant-garde music scene. While their American and British contemporaries were turning to jazz and concept albums to flavour their emergent ‘prog-rock’, German bands like CAN, Neu!, Faust, Tangerine Dream and of course Kraftwerk, chose to become more aurally mechanical. They experimented with minimalism, electronics, and more industrial textures.

At the time, bewildered NME hacks coined the largely derogatory term ‘Krautrock’ to describe the bands, unfairly lumping them together into one group. However, by the late 70s, as Yes and Genesis disappeared up their own arses in a puff of pretension and indulgent keyboard solos, it became clear that, in spite of the music press’ early dismissal, the Germans would have the last laugh.

To describe the Krautrock scene as influential would be an insulting understatement. Along with Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream pioneered the atmospheric, synth-led ‘space music’ which so influenced David Bowie and countless others in the late 70s. Kraftwerk’s distinctively repetitive, robotic sound, made possible the electronic music explosions of the 80s and 90s.

Finally, CAN and Neu!, the latter made up of former Kraftwerk members, produced a percussion-heavy, droning form of progressive rock which predicted much of post-punk and New Wave. Sonic Youth, Joy Division and Radiohead have all cited CAN as a major influence.

It’s hard to imagine another group of bands in all of rock music that could claim to have influenced so many, while remaining in such obscurity. Perhaps, however, that same obscurity was their greatest strength.

Safe in the knowledge that their music would probably be ignored by all but the most open-minded British and American press, they were free to experiment in less fashionable areas than their contemporaries and therefore to produce truly revolutionary music.

Thursday night at the Turf Tavern, and ‘Open Mic Night’ is in full swing. Among the musical hopefuls, Alice Doyne most definitely stood out. Cheeky and refreshingly down to earth, she plays pretty and unpredictable songs as well as studying history at Regent’s Park.

When I asked her about her music style, she explained to me how difficult it is to pinpoint. After a brief pause she decides that the best description is a mix of acoustic pop, folk and rock.

It is abundantly clear when seeing her live that her music is a melody of moods. Her style is at once serious and passionate when delivering lines about changing the world, before, in the very next song, with a mischievous grin, she will offer the audience the line ‘A cider a day keeps the doctor away.’

She explained to me the effort she expends to ensure her words aren’t the weak link in her repertoire. Her unpretentious approach is simply described as ‘just getting people to listen by playing loud and singing the lyrics to them.’

Clearly the reaction her songs receive is something she’s considering while she performs. And the feedback she was receiving from this pub crowd included many a chuckle and appreciative round of applause at the end of each song. Passionate, witty and just a damn good musician, she’s clearly set to be a force to be reckoned with.

Roots Manuva, aka Rodney Smith, is the best British hip-hop act of all time. Admittedly it isn’t a very crowded field. Manuva is one of a handful of artists who have managed to defeat the institutional prejudice that keeps black British music in genre-ghettos. They are ‘grime’ or ‘garage’ while the mainstream is flooded with simpering guitar indie and the insipid, bloodless ‘soul’ peddled by Adele, Duffy, etc.

Unlike in the States, where monster labels like Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella are household names, there is simply no infrastructure to give this kind of music the sort of exposure that will come so easily to the next baker’s dozen of tousled, gobby little neo-Britpop toe-rags to slouch onto the scene.

This frustration is expressed by tonight’s support, Jimmy Screech, a cohort of Manuva’s ‘Banana Klan’ artistic collective. Screech is a prime example of the dilemma facing any young performer trying to make a living from rap-based music on this island. His buoyant reggae-funk is winsome, radio-friendly even, but his lyrics express disbelief at the unrepresentative state of mainstream broadcasting.

Of course, relative obscurity has its benefits. Tonight’s crowd really likes Roots Manuva. The place looks half-empty until, inexplicably, about five minutes before Smith takes to the stage, hordes of hip-hoppers surge to the front in fervent anticipation. A lonely-looking fellow standing in front of me is so good a dancer that it seems to have cost him his friends.

As soon as the reggae lope of ‘Again & Again’ kicks in, he starts skanking so hard it seems that by the end of the gig I’ll only be able to see the top of his baseball cap bobbing furiously like the head of some electrifyingly funky mole.

Manuva is an odd stage presence, sauntering around the stage with an enigmatic, stoned grin, sometimes almost horizontal in his laid-back demeanor, sometimes apparently uncomfortable with his position. His best songs, though, have a gospel-like resilience that more than carries them through with the help of a tirelessly enthusiastic audience. He almost starts a riot when he cuts off his biggest hit, ‘Witness (One Hope)’ after a single squelch of its inimitable space-age beat; when the song begins in earnest, pandemonium ensues.

The sound is an eclectic mix of hip-hop, dub and electronica, operating as a three-pronged assault. The singalong choruses make for the heart, the dense lyrics work their way into the brain, while the weapons-grade bass is aimed directly at the groin. Live, the simultaneous secularism and spirituality of his sound is thrown into sharp relief by the congregation of flailing arms reaching up to the stage in supplication.

Roots is an artist powered by contradiction and ambivalence. The new album, Slime and Reason, explores the conflict between acting according to our conscience and the compulsions of our slimy earthly frames. Manuva’s music has an exultant, gospel quality to it, yet he is also an introspective figure, describing on ‘Again & Again’, one of the new record’s more exuberant cuts, how ‘…the pain that break me is the pain that make me, and the pain that take me is the pain that help me maintain…’

He has a Graham Greene-esque relationship with religion (his father was a preacher), often feeling the need for spiritual comfort, but finding holiness difficult to reconcile with the slimy reality of day-to-day living.

Tonight, he ends with new single, ‘Let the Spirit’, an instant classic that starts with a synth that sounds like the music from some old Nintendo game, building into a euphoric chorus celebrating the transcendent power of shared musical experience. With sermons like this it seems entirely possible that this conflicted preacher could yet obtain the ear of a larger flock.