Festival Music REVIEW DAVID FERRARD: SCOTTISH FOLK ROOTS & OFFSHOOTS A homecoming Transatlantic session ●●●●●
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PREVIEW BENBECULA RECORDS – THE FINAL VINYL One last electronic adventure from Porty’s finest When Benbecula Records blew out of Portobello in the final year of the twentieth century, it provided an overdue outlet for the Caledonian wing of the then relatively new wave of laptop-based electronicists inspired by Warp Records’ pioneering mix of leftfield dancefloor cut-ups and twinkly-eyed ambience. Over the next decade Benbecula released work by a multitude of wilfully individualistic and largely homegrown artists. On 1 November, 2009, alas, label founder and driving force Steven McConnell, aka Phase 6, will pull the plug on Benbecula.
To mark the occasion Benbecula will host ‘The Final Vinyl,’ a last zap live Pigeonhole this duo at your peril: their
package of label mainstays Christ and Araya, recent signing female singer/songwriter Plum and a couple of very special surprise guests thrown in as the grandest of finales. But with such an embarrassment of riches on offer, why shut up shop now?
‘I’m very tired,’ McConnell confesses, ‘and I thought ten years would be a good time to shut up shop and call it a day. The underlying thing, though, is that I’m just not blown away by a lot of music that’s around, or even stuff I’m being offered. We rode the wave of electronica that started in the late 90s, but I don’t think that really progressed. But we’ve never sold out, and only released stuff we really believed in While there are Benbecula releases by Layton and Wood, Plum, Talvihorros
and an album of back-to-basics four-track extrapolations by Christ still to come, for the foreseeable future McConnell will be concentrating on the label’s publishing arm, licensing material for use in films, games and TV. McConnell hints too that The Final Vinyl might not be a total full stop.
One thing you notice when you meet young David is his cheery, cherub-faced features, positively unravelled by his folklore tales of poet Burns, slavery and the Highland Clearances – oh, and he’s the youngest person in a tightly packed pub room of 20.
Born in Edinburgh – his mother is ‘We’re still selling the back catalogue,’ he says, ‘so it’s not the end of
from the States, hence his half’n’half accent – and back from a folk fact- finding mission in the Appalachian mountains, the softly-spoken Ferrard sings his way through a guid Scottish traditional song, while popping out a few of his own, similarly-inspired songs. David’s polite, monologued interludes are full of anecdotal history lessons, enough to please the odd tourist or wayward pub reveller. At times a bit of a sing-a-long-a-chorus, David encourages his audience to participate in such gems as ‘Ye Jacobites’, ‘Parcel Of Rogues’, ‘Green Grow the Rashes- O’ and ‘Peg in Awe’ – even the seagulls throw in their ugly squawks by way of an open fire-escape window.
Of his own songs, ‘Hills Of Virginia’ (about the Iraq War) and ‘The Slave’s Lament’, give a good account of his folk knowledge. Reminiscent of 50s/60s pioneers such as Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl, Ferrard closes the show with a song (‘One Hell of a Ride’) about folk’s favourite subjects: murder and trains. (Martin C. Strong) ■ The Royal Oak, 557 2976 until 27 Aug (not 18), 1.30pm & 6.30pm £7 (£5).
PREVIEW WOMEN IN HARMONY Out of the Kitchen Women in Harmony is a self-described ‘girly trio’ consisting of three well- established Scottish singers and instrumentalists, Karine Polwart, Annie Grace and Corrina Hewat. The trio grew out of an informal get-together in Corrina’s kitchen back in January 2006,
Benbecula as an entity. ‘I’m closing the door, but I’m not locking it.’ (Neil Cooper) ■ The Wee Red Bar, 229 1442, 21 Aug, 7pm, £8. Christ.
to knock together a short slot for a Celtic Connections concert that year. Prior to that they had all taken part in several shows in which vocal harmony played a prominent part, including the Scots Women touring package and The Unusual Suspects.
‘Through these collaborative
encounters we discovered our mutual love of inventive vocal harmony and before we knew it some of the arrangements we’d assembled spontaneously in buses and back rooms hit the stage. And they actually worked. So we decided to run with it a bit further.’ They have continued to develop the relationship when time allows in their busy schedules. This Fringe show follows in the wake of their participation as the featured vocalists in Dave Milligan’s Burns project Sylvander & Clarinda for the Edinburgh Festival Jazz
Orchestra earlier this month. (Kenny Mathieson) ■ Queen’s Hall, 668 2019, 21 Aug, 7pm, £13.50 (£10).
REVIEW THE INCOMPATIBLE OTWAY & BARRETT Otway or any way possible ●●●●● One’s waited 30 odd years to see the John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett experience, therefore their arrival on stage ten minutes late was easily forgotten. Like some adolescent kid accompanied by his grumpy grandad, jester John and Wild Willy playfully spar between each track, suggesting their alliance has had a fair share of musical ups and downs. A punk-poet of his generation (or so he tongue-in-cheekily likes to tell us), Otway is a master of the quip, always best served up live and in- yer-face.
50 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 20–27 Aug 2009
old 45s come thick and fast through cow-punk (‘Louisa on a Horse’), manic- metal (‘Jet Spotter’), disjointed disco (‘Body Talk’) and even pop (through Otway’s squeaky attempt to conquer Eurovision).
Otway’s facial expressions and bare- chested antics while playing theremin, his lyrical genius on ‘Beware of the Flowers’ and on sole hit ‘Really Free’, and broken mic antics on ‘Cheryl’s Going Home’, remind us why the late 70s were such a hoot. Barrett, meanwhile, delivers his dead- pan humour by utilising a brown bin lid for wah-wah effect, while also sawing into and hammering at his acoustic guitar. Amazing. (Martin C Strong) ■ The Spaces on the Mile@The Raddison Hotel, 0791 732 1772, until 29 Aug, 9.45pm, £12–14.
PREVIEW VALERY PONOMAREV QUINTET Sharing A Global Language
It’s late August, it’s The Jazz Bar, so it must be time for Valery Ponomarev. The hard-hitting Russian has been coming to Scotland on a regular basis since the early 90s, and this Fringe residence for Bill Kyle has become something of a staple at The Jazz Bar, and at the old Tron Jazz Cellar before that. The trumpeter will be hoping to make the visit without a repeat of the incident in which he sustained a broken arm in an altercation with security at Charles De Gaulle Airport in 2006, after he refused to consign his precious trumpet to the hold.
Ponomarev famously defected from his native Russia – then still part of the Soviet Union – in 1973, and made his name in his new homeland of America when he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Some were surprised to hear a Russian musician playing canonical American hard bop like a native, but Ponomarev’s extensive touring around the world has confirmed his contention that jazz is now a global musical language. (Kenny Mathieson) ■ The Jazz Bar, 226 0000, 24–30 Aug, 11pm, £8 (£6).