Music
EXPOSURE SILK FLOWERS
Formed in a Manhattan art gallery, electronic experimentalists Silk Flowers – Aviram Cohen, Ethan Swan, Peter Schuette – make music which is artful but uncategorisable, and have released on No Age’s Post Present Medium label. Think Throbbing Gristle, Suicide or Joy Division remixed by Gary Numan and then played in a wind tunnel: both frightening and frighteningly good. Cohen attempts to explain himself.
How did the band form?
Peter and I met working in a big art gallery called Metro Pictures. We started a band called Soiled Mattress and the Springs which was more of a proper band, more about musical ideas, but I realised I wanted to move into a realm where I was being conceptually expressive. How so? One of Peter and I’s real commonalities was a liking for krautrock bands like Neu!, Cluster and Harmonia, so that’s the kind of music we decided to make. I used to make experimental music on my own and I was interested in returning to it, but in a less abstract and more approachable way, with pop elements. It’s not like we work stuff out on guitar or piano, though, we don’t write with chords. It’s simpler than that, what we do is very sound based. How is the name related to that?
It’s an interesting representation of what we do. It’s a synthesised object which is supposed to represent beauty, but may not. It might just be a little bit cheap. (David Pollock) ■ Cry Parrot Presents, The 13th Note, Glasgow, Thu 22 Jul.
REVIEW PUNK-POP COHEED AND CAMBRIA ABC, Glasgow, Thu 22 Jun ●●●●● REVIEW LIVING LEGEND PAUL MCCARTNEY Hampden Stadium, Glasgow, Sun 20 Jun ●●●●●
REVIEW FOLK/ POP/ ROCK OLYMPIC SWIMMERS Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Fri 25 Jun ●●●●● REVIEW GOD FEARING HARDCORE SONIC TAPAS 13th Note, Glasgow, Fri 25 June ●●●●●
The bigger, the better they say. Coheed and Cambria embody this saying well. Tonight they’ve got rollercoaster riffs that loop and lurch, an expansive and dreamlike video display in the background, and yes, they’ve brought along the massive hair too. Frontman Claudio Sanchez’s
notoriously nest-like hair is draped over his face as they open with the brooding ‘One’, but as their kinetic pop-punk side comes out, the hair is tied back into bunches as if to shield it from any flying debris. But as is often the way, it’s with the
hits that frenzy ensues. ‘The Suffering’ – one of few tracks in the world that could easily have two choruses – is this band at their very best, with progressive nuances, singalongs, and well, plenty of fun too.
‘Welcome Home’ however is foam- at-the-mouth material, played as the closing track after willing chants from the crowd. It’s a lurching end to a tiptoed night
but it’s a succinct example of this band’s big sound – and you know what they say about big being better. (Chris Cope)
Much anticipated by young and old alike, this show provided the altogether anticipated sight and sound of an ageing rock star going through the motions. Albeit an ageing rock star who also happens to be one of the greatest pop composers of all time, with a fifty-year wealth of great songs (and also ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’), and a quite touching eagerness, over a whopping three-hour set, to please his live crowd going for him.
Such a lengthy show could afford to borrow from all facets of the braces- wearing, thumb-brandishing ex- Beatle’s musical psyche. There was unabashed sentimentality (early Fabs hit ‘And I Love Her’; a version of George Harrison’s ‘Something’ for ukulele; McCartney’s most famous collaboration with John Lennon ‘A Day in the Life’ becoming the latter’s ‘Give Peace a Chance’), breakneck excitement (Wings’ ‘Jet’,’Live and Let Die’, ‘Day Tripper’) unashamed anthems (‘Let It Be’, ‘Hey Jude’, and an unexpectedly sweet version of ‘Mull of Kintyre’ backed by Musselburgh’s Loretto School Pipe Band). Everything you might have expected, in other words, which really was quite a lot. (David Pollock)
Twenty-five minutes in and Olympic Swimmers’ singer and keyboard player Susie Liddell nervously declares, ‘we usually finish here.’ But this is a headline set, and you can almost feel the pressure of the very peak of the bill threatening to give the band nosebleeds. So the blonde Liddell and her boys soldier on gamely for a few more songs (although they’re hardly beginners, featuring members of Take a Worm for a Walk Week and Piano Bar Fight in their number) and are rewarded with a reception that’s warm and welcoming. The Glasgow quintet are among friends, so much so that the parents of Liddell and her brother Simon, also in the band, were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary here. Such homeliness suits them.
Liddell’s voice isn’t powerful but is rich and reassuringly folky, while the music is entrenched in the band’s local indie heritage, from the rising guitar chime of ‘A Curse or a Blessing’ to the delicate twinkle of ‘Fights We Lost’. ‘We’ve got no more songs,’ apologises Liddell as they leave without encore. They’ve got enough. (David Pollock)
The subjects of a documentary on the North American Islamic punk scene known as ‘Taqwacore’, bands Al- Thawra and The Kominas were fresh from playing Sufi folk-rocker Richard Thompson’s Meltdown festival at the South Bank Centre; a curiously civilised setting for such rabble- rousing acts. Al-Thawra’s doomy crust-punk
thrash is enlivened by Middle Eastern melodies, while The Kominas offer a more commercial, upbeat sound, complete with trumpet and terrace chant choruses. Their take on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘I Will Worship You My Love’ is pretty righteous: Qawwali recast as a hardcore rave-up. With instruments made from bicycle parts, Levenshulme Bike Orchestra’s (pictured) junkyard racket transcends novelty. Wheels jangle and chains rattle, while a demented vocalist jabbers and growls, and a grimy synth adds monstrous bottom end. They’re the highlight, although Glasgow’s twisted post-punkers Gummy Stumps run them close. Rob Churn’s battered guitar channels The Fall and Pavement in a glorious cacophany of skewed riffage, while his yowling vocals clash joyously. (Stewart Smith)
66 THE LIST 8–22 Jul 2010
:
I N O S D V A D R E T E P
l / q t s o m a / s o t o h p / m o c . r k c
i l f . w w w