Music
EXPOSURE
IAMAMIWHOAMI Last December iamamiwhoami posted a video on YouTube, which quickly spread virally. This and 12 subsequent videos feature a woman interacting with trees in a manner which would raise the neck hairs of a tree fetishist. The music is a dreamy, cinematic electro – think Roisin Murphy meets Liz Fraser meets Kate Bush. Kinda. So who are they?
There were thoughts that it was Christina Aguilera (really?), Björk, Swedish electropop duo The Knife – there’s definitely a Nordic vibe – and suggestions that it was Alison Goldfrapp. It’s now accepted that the woman in question is Swedish singer-songwriter Jonna Lee (although her management company denies her involvement). The producers remain unknown, as do those behind the stunning videos, which echo a cross between David Lynch and a particularly dark Tim Burton in their levels of surreality. I’m totally confused.
A Wikipedia entry gives a detailed description of the project so far. Visit iamamiwhoami’s YouTube channel and see if you can resist being utterly enchanted while a little freaked out. The latest video (‘y’) was posted three weeks ago amid speculation as to whether more will follow, what it all means, and who exactly is behind it. (Carine Seitz) ■ www.youtube.com/iamamiwhoami
REVIEW ONE-DAY MUSICAL TOUR A WEE JAUNT Various venues, Glasgow, Sun 22 Aug ●●●●●
Ten artists over nine hours in six locations. Hello Wee Jaunt, you may want to rethink your name. Starting at 3pm, Detour organisers explain the plan. ‘It’s basically a mystery tour,’ David Weaver shouts. First stop is the Dixon House, where three-piece noise-masters Carnivores are on the stairwell: bass on first floor, drums on second, guitar and vocals on third. Amazing. Next, Ryan Burns of the
Seventeenth Century plays pop-folk with bags of heart at the Arches, but The Parsonage Choir are just a little too wet and overlong. After Urban Outfitters for the riff-tastic Holy Mountain, understated highlight RM Hubbert follows on the steps of the old Avalanche. A bus trip to Rouken Glen Park follows, and Ross Clarke plays songs while standing in a stream. After Ariels Up (beautiful ditties under a midgie-infested tree) and Make Sparks (covering Eminem’s ‘Without Me’), we head to Bloc, where Blochestra perform. Their covers of Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ make everyone giddy with joy. (Aimi Gold) ■ See www.list.co.uk for full version of review. www.detour-scotland.com.
REVIEW FLUTE, DRUM AND CLARINET IMPROV PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES / WHITE DEATH Leith Dockers Club, Edinburgh, Sun 22 Aug; SunBear Gallery, Edinburgh, Mon 23 Aug ●●●●●
Manchester-based duo Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides made the most of their weekend away-day in Edinburgh to show off the full range of their avant-primitivist activity. At Leith Dockers, flautist Kelly-Jayne Jones and drummer Pascal Nichols headlined a packed programme organised under the Bandita Trails banner. Even in the spit ‘n’ sawdust temple of a working man’s club, Nichols’ busy martial clatter and Jones’ echo-treated trills produce a sacred and dramatic series of sound poems. The next night at the artist-run
SunBear Gallery, Jones teamed up with Helhesten clarinetist Hannah Ellul as White Death, while Nichols gave percussive ballast to the hiss and miss sound cartoons of Edinburgh duo Usurper in this Winners Don’t Shiver promotion. With a strong whiff of incense billowing from the centre of the room, Jones’ gossamer-light meditations and Ellul’s dark rumblings criss-cross mid-air to make an appositely English form of chamber improv. (Neil Cooper)
REVIEW FRENCH POP PHOENIX HMV Picturehouse, Edinburgh, Sun 29 Aug ●●●●● REVIEW ALTERNATIVE COUNTRY THE LOW ANTHEM Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 30 Aug ●●●●●
Despite a decade of history behind them, it’s 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix that has given French quartet Phoenix the ammunition to advance from special interest to mainstream concern. Now their delicate but euphoric pop – forging The Strokes, Daft Punk and ELO, but underpinned with melancholy – is soundtracking everything from CSI to BBC football. Hitting their songwriting stride has earned them a bigger audience, and as this Edge Festival show proves, their showmanship is up to the challenge this presents. With an expanded live line-up and some killer lighting design making for a proper spectacle, they capture the sound of the album, and look effortlessly stylish while doing so. Highlights ‘Girlfriend’ and prog pop epic ‘Love Like a Sunset’ (parts I and II) are received like anthems by a loving audience. When frontman Thomas Mars makes it from the stage to the Picturehouse balcony, passing through the audience with a long neon microphone cable during encore ‘1901’, it’s testament to their combination of the anthemic and the feminine that he gets caresses, not bear hugs. (Hamish Brown)
Will there be many better live moments this year than Ben Knox Miller crooning his way through opener ‘To the Ghosts Who Write History Books’ as a theremin gently howls in the background? Or his gruff, determined exhortation to ‘Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around’ later in the set? Or his pin-sharp cover of The Band’s ‘Evangeline’, recreating a little of The Last Waltz’s atmosphere before us in the Queen’s Hall. The Rhode Island quartet are a special band, and this was a very special show. Playing for a little over an hour to accommodate supports Avi Buffalo and Mountain Man (the latter group would reappear for some harmonising later in the show), The Low Anthem condense the spirit of contemporary Americana into one heart-bruising set, first with a series of delicate and fragile acoustic tracks and then with some louder but not necessarily more upbeat full band numbers. ‘Cigarettes, Whiskey & Wild Wild Women’, a Jim Croce cover, struck a suitably bittersweet note, while an encore of ‘Hole in the Bucket’ seemed designed to prove that this band can sing anything and bring a tear to the eye. (David Pollock)
68 THE LIST 9–23 Sep 2010