MUSIC PREVIEW
um- World beat
Heartbeat’s autumn season of roots music in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms brings, in the first instance, Iza, a taraf or village band from the Maramures region of Romania. On Saturday 15 October, they aim to create the Edinburgh equivalent of a hora, the sort of village party that spins the night away in dance, music and song. All seven members sing, four are dancers and three play the cetera or fiddle, the zongora, a type of guitar, and the drum/cymbal or doba. Loud, enthusiastic, good-humoured and authentically-costumed, the band are well-remembered from a Scottish tour a few years ago.
More dance is on offer four days later when a top london-based band of African dancers and percussionists arrives under the tutelage of Nigerian choreographer Peter Badejo. ‘The Living Circle’ is representation in sound and motion of the continuum of African village life.
In contrast, lliomenka Bi and the II’ lllaxas Band play at the end of the month. Based in Bordeaux and led by Senegal singer Souleyman Sarr, whose lyrics are in his native Wolof tongue, the eight-piece band and its music are completed by Jamaican, Senegalese and French musicians playing an innovative, energetic and passionate reggae/rock.
Later in November 3 Zimbabwean
double-bill brings back the hypnotic thumb-piano-and-song maestro Stella Chiweshe with her percussionist, teamed with the vibrant dance beats and chiming guitars of Harare’s Four Brothers. The final concert of the season was to have been atop new wave bhangra band, but the cancellation came too late to delete them from the printed programme. Heartbeat, however, promise to slave over a hot telephone and fill the date with a great band for their world music Christmas party. (Ilorman Chalmers)
lza plays on Sat 15 and Badeio Arts on Wed 19, both at The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh.
:— Baby, you’re a
Corduroy
If overheard conversations in pubs are any barometer of a nation’s cultural leanings (and they are), then the recent round of repeats of ATV’s 605 and 70s detective shows has captured the public imagination. The general opinion goes like this: ‘Randall And llopklrk (Deceased)’ - fab, ‘Danger Man’ - exciting, ‘The Saint’ - suave, ‘The Persuaders’ - kitscherama. Corduroy’s last album, a concept release called ‘lligh llavoc’, could have provided the soundtrack to almost any of them, with its speedfreak jazzy instrumentals and tongue-in-cheek cappuccino-guzzling air of continental sophistication. lts
accessible grooves showed the upside of Tindersticks’ urban atmospherics, connecting specifically with images of swinging 605 London street culture. Unsurprisingly, the group’s Scott Addison is tickled by this suggestion. ‘I would have loved the opportunity to
‘: write music for any of those series. All
that stuff has completely fascinated
Ben [his twin] and l since we saw it for
the first time when our mum just
plonked us in front of the TV to shut
us up. I’m particularly fond of Jason King because of the camp qualities to his character. I would like to have injected a bit of that into the music.’ There’s never been any intention on the part of the sharp-dressed quartet to ape any particular style, or at least to stick with one when it gets comfortable. According to Scott, if ‘lligh Havoc’ was their soundtrack, their debut was their baptism into acid
um- Animal magic
A meeting of minds now, as Jonathan Trew huddles down with Hooligan from These Animal Men (having slipped into his Adidas top beforehand, of course).
Short. sharp shocks are what we need to rid this fair land of the blight of yob culture. So we‘re told. Unfortunately for supporters of this idea. Hooligan of These Animal Men has got his hands on a guitar and is dishing out a few short, sharp shocks of his own. The opening riffs of their debut album.
( Come On. Join) The High Society. delivers an aural clip round the ear to
the mainstream and tells it to lace up its
2 Adidas trainers and look sharp. boy. E Staring out from the back of the album
are four bright young things. eyes wide with make-up and amphetamines. skin pallid from too little daylight. faces framed with pretty boy. indentikit. feather cut hairstyles.
These Animal Men are in the middle of a 60-date tour around the British Isles. half of it on their own and halfof it with Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. Despite a gruelling schedule. their enthusiasm remains keen and. besides. it's good for their figures. ‘If we sit around. we'll just start getting fat.‘ explains Hooligan. who obviously hasn‘t considered the rapturous chant of ‘You Fat Bastard' which used to greet Jon Beast every time he ambled on stage to introduce Carter.
They bounced out of Brighton two years ago. played a New Wave of the New Wave showcase gig at the 100 Club with S*M*A*S*H and Echobelly and immediately cut a niche for themselves. ‘That gig created this new elite scene.‘ Hooligan says. ‘Thcre was
3 only indie or dance music. and we wanted to make everything a bit tnore
: tribal and split off from the indie thing.
3 create our own sort of scene. a more
underground thing. We're definitely a
band that likes being part of a movement. If we said that we wanted
: everyone to like us. then you may as
well have that indie ethic. We're much
jazz and their latest album attempts to i i movement is a bit more problematic — ‘lt‘s kids who dress up to go out and
5 it's very anti-anything new. We'd
be more vocal-orientated.
‘We started off with the intention that if we were going to do any vocals that we didn’t want to do straight- ahead singing,’ explains Scott. ‘We wanted to make our voices sound more like instruments, so we were trying to do a lot of “ba-ba-das” and “ooh-oohs” and it’s stuck. We can’t get rid of it now!’
With thoughts of that Parisian Rolo advert in our heads, Scott addresses the question of whether or not Corduroy are connoisseurs of kitsch. ‘I don’t know about connoisseurs - maybe apprentices,’ he decides.
(Fiona Shepherd)
Corduroy play The Venue, Edinburgh on Thurs 13 and King Tut’s, Glasgow on
:Fri 14.
more into people being a bit more discerning than that.‘ Actually defining the scene or
probably rebel against anything new at all. We‘re not into indie/dance crossovers or anything like that. We like our music from the second-hand record shops and we always will. We‘re very stylised and if you don't like your Who or Jam or Clash or Small Faces then you're not going to like us very
’ tnuch. We’re not very interested in any
1 form ofbroad appeal.‘
Around the start of this year the national music papers sat up and began to hype These Animal Men and their like-minded peers. heralding the debut of a new youth movement that had the attitude and record collections of their older siblings but with the cynical
mindset of those who had grown up in the 80s. shunning the offer of mind- nurnbing McJobs without succumbing to the apathy of slacker culture. Unhappy with the hype and the responsibility of being perceived as spokesmen. These Animal Men released their Ten Commandments exhoiting the joys of speed, onanism. adolescence and a Catholic education while warning you should never trust a crusty and that respect is earned. A rag- tag bag of contradictory guidelines that were designed to retain their exclusivity and the tribal appeal ofthcir following. A kind of ‘If you don‘t understand. you're too old’ get-out
32 The List 7—20 October I994