PREVIEW MUSIC
gigging. .S‘i'lrw' went platinum in Canada absurdly tjtiiekly. and a little more than a year after their first gig Moist had heeome one of Canada's top hands.
Over here. the first single. ‘l’ttsh'. got to Number 35. and should have got higher. lleek. it knoeked spots off Skin‘s dismal ‘Money‘ and Stiltskin's flaeeid yoeal Version of a hitherto exeiting adyeit soundtraek. Just a personal theory. htit it's eoneeiyable that Chrysalis‘s inyentiye method of promoting it --booking a whole eommereial break to show the Video in its entirety might have whiffed a little too mueh of eorpor‘ate hype and dissuaded sotne potential buyers.
Anyway: at the Very least highly approaehable - at best positiyely wondrous r .S'r'i’t'r‘r kieks up a rousingly raueous raeket without reeourse to metallie bombast. grunge sloppiness or eontriyed streetwise posturing. And where most hands might opt for two guitar players. .\Ioist have a seeret weapon in keyboard player Kevin Young. who largely restriets himself to piano. but doesn‘t try to emttlate the Stonesy Nicky Hopkins style that Primal Seream or lilaek (‘rowes aflieionados would seize upon. That would be too obvious.
‘l’eople are always asking how we define ourselves] says singer Dayid L'sher. who has ohligingly risen froin his pit at 8am. on less than three hours' sleep. for a ehat. ‘and we don‘t ever say that we‘re writing undelinable music. we just say that it's hard to define for us. because we‘re inside. I‘m not sure where it sits. it’s kinda strange. It‘s got
Moist: mounting a Canadian rock charge that damn piano in there.‘ 'l‘here is another reason for their inereasing popularity. and that's their
growing reputation as drop-dead hunky ‘
loye—gods. I run this by David Usher. the most lasted—after of them all. and he sounds like he eottld be blttshing. "l'here’s a lot of that stuff going on. bttt it's not something that we. . . we‘re not really all that eomfortable with it.
just ‘eause we're not really sure how to
deal with it. It‘s aside from the musie. \Ve appreeiate it. of eourse.~ he laughs. ‘lt‘s great. l dig it. btit it‘s not sortiething I want the foetus to be on. Wed rather it was somewhere else But ifthat eomes as well. then . . . greatl'
lx’efleeting on their origins. Usher remarks that one of the main points in their fay our w as the faet that the hand. espeeially himself and guitarist Mark Makowy. are ‘eompletely eompulsiye. obsessiye'. liut what. pray. are they eompulsiye about'.’ Writing? Womanising'.’ What are we talking about here'.’
‘All the aboye. (‘ompulsiye
womanisers. eompulsiye writers. eompulsiye drinkers. eompulsiye — you
know. I'iyerybody in the hand. I should say; not just the two of us but all of us. If you're on the road for two years.
you‘re wrapped tip in the lifestyle. You
try not to take it too seriously because it
is a lie. You try to remember that the
music‘s the real thing and the lifestyle's the joke. But at the same time. it doesn‘t hurt to liye it fora whilel'
.llnis‘l play The lent/(I. Ifrli/ibtnylt (HI 'l'liurs In“ and King Til/:1, (ilusgmr ()II Fri /4.
l l l l l
l i l
l
Skirling samba
Inner Sense Percussion Orchestra: Scottish samba
Just over two years ago, The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen presented the first performance of Dick Lee’s ‘The Lemon Tree Samba’, an ambitious attempt to pull together the very disparate musical backgrounds of the Inner Sense Percussion Orchestra and a group of Scottish pipers from
’ Stonehaven. The results were f impressively well integrated and
hugely enjoyable, and all the more so
’ in the prevailing circumstances, as
Lee explained.
‘It turned out that the pipers had not received the music for two sections of the work, both of which were very difficult, so we ended up putting it together as best we could in the two
OPERA ~
Opera on a shoestring
Raising an eyebrow or two: Kathleen Tynan as Susanna
Taking their name from the time of year when they did their first production, even if it was in the pouring rain, the tiny company Midsummer Opera have earned an all- year-round reputation for high-quality performances of a small-scale nature. Their one-off Edinburgh performance marks the company’s first visit to Scotland.
They were founded ten years ago as a result of the enthusiasm of a group
days prior to the performance. They did a fantastic job, but we did have to simplify some of the parts, and this time we will be able to play the piece as it was originally conceived.’
The Inner Sense Percussion Orchestra and members of the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band now bring the work to Glasgow. Lee is well-known for combining and juxtaposing diverse musical elements drawn from jazz, classical and traditional music, but even he might have been excused if he had baulked at the idea of writing a piece which would merge traditional Highland piping with Latin-American percussion.
‘lt’s a question of combining opposites, really. The pipe band world revolves around competition, and around exact interpretation of written music, while samba players are quite the opposite, because although there are established rhythm patterns from Brazil and Cuba to work around, they do so in a highly individual manner, with a lot of room for improvisation and group interplay. There are sections in the piece where I have tried to underline the contrasts, and there are other sections where there is more of a fusion.’ (Kenny Mathieson)
Slices of the Lemon is at The Tramway, Glasgow on Thurs 13 and Sun 16, and The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen on Sat 15. Inner Sense and Dick Lee & Hamish Moore also play in separate gigs at the Edinburgh Folk Festival on Fri 14.
of professional singers. ‘We had no money,’ says administrator Lorelle Skewes, ‘but we wanted to do a single performance of Handel’s “Rinaldo”, so we did it in our garden in Ealing, right under the flight path.’ Two hundred and fifty people turned up and the production was so successful that a repeat performance was inevitable. ‘We have developed aims as far as the performance of baroque repertoire goes,’ she continues, ‘and these are to stick as much as possible to an appropriate style and use period instruments while updating the setting and making it interesting to a contemporary audience.’
In a stock of productions which includes Cavalli’s ‘Erismena’, several Handel operas and Purcell’s ‘Oido And Aeneas’, one of the most acclaimed is Handel’s ‘Partenope’, set in a 19305 casino. The opera they bring to Edinburgh is Mozart’s ‘The Marriage Of Figaro’. Do not expect to see anything like the current Scottish Opera production. ‘We have a band of sixteen,’ says Skewes, who sings Cherubino, ‘and no chorus. We’ve paid a great deal of attention to musical and dramatic detail, which I believe is sometimes glossed over by bigger companies. We also have an excellent new, witty translation by Amanda Holden and I hope that people have a good night.’ People are obviously expecting to as the show is almost sold out. Book right now if you want to go. (Carol Main)
Midsummer Opera present ‘The Marriage Of Figaro’ at Edinburgh Festival Theatre on Wed 12.
The List 7-20 Apr W05 37