Hackney-based duo Laxmi bounce straight out of the speakers and into your brain: you can’t shake them off, no matter how hard you try. Their unique brand of ‘voodoo pop’, created from found noises and urban soundscapes, is suited to both grimy clubs and the darkness of your bedroom at night.
Laxmi’s new EP, Rules Made By Men Who Never Sleep, is a challenging set of songs that fights definition. It pays homage to the likes of PJ Harvey and early M.I.A., while settling into its own groove, carved out by pulsing basslines and razor-sharp lyrics. It can loosely be termed electronica, though so many other influences creep in that it’s hard to keep up with them. ‘I Wanna Be Your Blood’ is probably the most accessible track, with its strangely relatable lyrics and potential for remix. It builds satisfyingly, drawing in the listener before dropping off into nothing.
Singer Lou Barnell has a massive voice, dripping with nonchalance and cool. Her enveloping vocals are supported by guitarist Stergin, forming a match that’s dirty, deep and fresh. Both are labelled producers, suggesting an independence and spiritedness that shines through in every track. ‘It Is Over’ is the highlight of this short offering, with a thumping rhythm and catchy hook. This is music to move to.
Not everyone’s cup of tea, Rules Made By Men Who Never Sleep is undeniably ambitious and atmospheric. The concept isn’t new by any stretch, but it’s a clever and provocative rendering of found sound. It might not break any records in the mainstream, but this EP’s originality and irresistibility surely mean this sound will become a staple on the East London electronica scene.
Laxmi next play at The Bird’s Nest in Deptford on 17 April
The festival season starts in earnest next month with Land of Kings, which returns to Dalston after a year’s hiatus.
Starting at midday on Sunday 3 May, the festival will see 16 hours of live music, food and film in venues across Dalston.
Live acts announced include electronic maverick Tom Vek, who will be performing a special a/v set alongside techno artist Nathan Fake, female choir Deep Throat, melodic indie funk act Boxed In and 90s-influenced power pop act Juce.
On the DJ front, Dalston’s backrooms and basements will welcome the likes of Hot Chip spin off The 2 Bears, house specialists Waze & Odyssey, plus NTS resident Moxie who will spin an eclectic mix of techno, grime and hip-hop.
Aside from the music, the festival programme is reaching into the realms of immersive performance with Gideon Reeling’s flamboyantly irreverent Land of Queens at the Arcola.
Film curators Lost Picture Show will be hosting a roof top cinema, and Dalston’s Rio Cinema will be hosting a late show of shorts by local filmmakers.
New for the 2015 festival is Royal Thoughts, described as a “salon of talks, interviews and ideas”, and cultural journal Let’s Be Brief will be holding a creative forum.
Street food pioneers Street Feast will be serving up their signature nosh, and women’s group the Dalston Darlings will also be in attendance.
Confirmed venues include the Alibi and Birthdays, the Arcola, the Bunker, Dalston Roof Park, Eastern Curve Garden, Rio Cinema and back-live music den the Servant Jazz Quarters, while Oval Space will be throwing open its doors to hold the Land of Kings Afterparty.
You don’t need to be a talent scout to hear something special in the voice of Denai Moore. It’s soulful without affectation, powerful yet at times restrained … In short, this 22-year-old from Stratford has a gift. She writes her own songs too, about timeless themes – heartbreak and hard times – doing so with a rawness and emotional honesty that sets her apart. Moore has collaborated with the likes of Astronomyy and made several acclaimed EPs. This month sees the release of her debut album, Elsewhere, produced by Rodaidh McDonald.
Denai, congratulations on releasing your first album. Do you see it as a defining point in your career so far?
Totally. It feels really strange now having spent the last year living with it. I’ve seen the album grow and it’s weird that it’s out of my hands now and out in the world. I’m mostly excited because I’m super proud of it and I feel like it’s turned out just how I wanted it to be.
I’ve been watching the video for your single ‘Blame’, which is set in Iceland. The sparse beauty of the landscape there seems fitting for your music in general, don’t you think?
It’s crazy beautiful up there. We were wanting to capture an epic scene from a film, and I think the video conflicts being caught between love and lust, and the danger of putting blame on other people, or blaming yourself. The whole idea was to make it really ambiguous so people are left wondering what happens and you get a different idea each time.
The album follows I Swore, your EP from last year, which really showcases your voice and song-writing ability. Is it a good primer for the album?
I think I Swore is definitely a good introduction, sonically, for the album and that’s why it was important for me to put it out, as I felt it was showing a different direction. I got such a good reaction and so much support from it that it made me look forward to the album coming out even more.
Both the I Swore and Elsewhere were produced by Rodaidh McDonald (who’s worked with The xx and King Krule amongst many others). How important is he to your music?
I think he’s brought a lot out of me that no one else has done before. When we met he helped with ideas for songs and I felt really safe creatively with him. When we work together I feel we’re bouncing off each other. Like with the song ‘I Swore’, the demo was shorter than the version you hear now. He pushed me to make the song better and I felt like he was that extra 30 per cent that pushed my songs and everything to what it is now.
Another champion of your music is Ben Drew (Plan B), who produced your 2013 EP The Lake, as well as co-producing ‘Blame’ and ‘Feeling’ on the new album. What does he bring to your sound?
I feel every time I work with him he surprises me even more. He’s so underrated as a producer. With the last song we put on the album, literally a week before I handed it in it was just this demo. We got in with Ben and he had all these ideas that really made me excited about the album again. I really value his opinion on just about anything really. Even as a mentor he’s really important.
You’ve done quite a lot of work with other artists, collaborating with the likes of SBTRKT on single ‘The Light’ and the track ‘All I Need’ by Astronomyy. How do collaborations help you creatively?
I really like working with people outside of what I do because I think it makes me a better songwriter. The song ‘All I Need’ came about the first time I sat in with Rodaidh and we started working with Astronomyy. He has a really fresh sound to him with surfy guitars and hip hop and R&B beats. I feel he’s super talented and he’s someone people should look out for.
Will you be joining him at Field Day in June then?
Yes, I’ll definitely be at Field Day. I’ve been there for the last two years and this year the line-up looks really amazing. Before then I’ll be doing a show at Electrowerkz the same week of the release, so I’m really looking forward to that – last year I spent a lot of time supporting other people, and while it’s really amazing touring with other people it’s even better seeing how their shows work and taking inspiration for your own live shows. I’m really nervous but it’s really exciting to be playing new material.
You were born in Jamaica and came to Stratford when you were 10. What was it like when you first arrived, was it hard to adjust?
I wouldn’t say it was hard to adjust really, I’d been there for holidays about three or four times previously and I had relatives there already. I think I definitely identify more now with East London than Jamaica. Of course there were a lot of cultural differences, but I didn’t really notice them as I was really young.
And growing up in Stratford were you always musical?
I guess. When I was younger my dad was working as a musician in Jamaica and America so I experienced what it was like to be in a studio. And I’ve always been around instruments at home. I suppose my musical development started when I got my first guitar when I was about 12 in Year 7. It was where a lot of my first songs came from.
And what was your first song?
It was a song called ‘Changes’ I wrote when I was 12. I’ve got a recording of it on an old laptop and hearing it now it’s so crazy how different it seems. That’s why music is really important to me. I write about what I’m currently going through, what my opinions are, and I put that out in my music. There’s a song on the new album called ‘No Light’, which is one of the oldest songs on the album, from two years ago. When I wrote it I was in a dark place and when I listen to it now it feels so different, like it’s taken on a different meaning. Even already, I look back at some of the songs on this album and get a feel of the time I wrote them in, like when I was turning 20 and and dropping out of uni and having all these new experiences for the first time. I think that’s what’s the album’s all about.
Was dropping out of university a difficult time for you? How did it come about?
To be honest it was just a bad experience anyway. I was studying songwriting and before, when I was just writing with no really kind of real method, it was just natural and I was just writing in my own time. I found that studying it, so you have to write so many songs in a week, just took the joy out of it so I had to stop. I think that’s the same for a lot of people. When you’re being told to write about four songs a week about this or that it all starts to feel tired and mechanical.
How were you discovered?
I started taking song-writing seriously when I was doing my A-levels. It was my last year but instead of focusing on my exams that were in a few months time I was more excited about the new songs I was writing and just wanted to get out there. So every week I was going to all these open mics and all these little gigs and that’s how I stumbled on the singer Clare Maguire. She saw me and asked me for my email. A couple of weeks later I was at her house making demos and we literally have the same manager now.
Listening to your first EP Saudade you can hear a lot of Bon Iver in there. Who are your big musical inspirations?
I feel like the staple ones are Bon Iver, like you said, then Lauren Hill, Feist and Kanye. These people to me are artists in the sense that they are people who are super uncompromising and write music for themselves. I think a lot of people get lost jumping on a trend and trying to create a ‘moment’. I think the main thing is to make yourself happy. That’s what I try to do every time.
What’s the next step for you and what are your ambitions?
I’m not ambitious in a traditional way. I’m not the kind of person to be like ‘I’m going to go after that Grammy’. I think in a sense what’s important for me is to keep growing as an artist and as a songwriter, get better in the studio, be more comfortable trying out different instruments, and more confident as a performer. After these first few shows hopefully I’ll do a few festivals, then hopefully write again, get into the studio and work with a few other artists. That’s the idea.
Denai Moore plays at Electrowerkz on 9 April. Elsewhere is available from 6 April denaimoore.com
Put together from scraps of cassette tapes and sound collages, you’d expect Daryl Waller’s debut to be one for the avant-garde. The 37-year-old decamped from Cornwall to Hackney to put the finishing touches to The Baby Blues, and in the process the eleven tracks took on their own lives. By producing the record he confesses his sound became “more song-like” and there’s no doubt the arrangements now take centre stage.
Spoken word still intermittently features in the haunting folk cuts, carried along with Waller’s hushed vocals. Employing double tracking in places, he evokes Elliott Smith, if only he’d swapped Portland, Oregon, for a damp woodland.
Themes of forestry recall places far away from the city, coming as no surprise that the album was partly made inside a wooden hut and despite being billed as lo-fi, the crystal clear production brings moments of beauty as string parts slowly burn over picked guitar lines.
Beginning life with stitched-up lines from film, ‘Gene Wilder’ develops into a hypnotic waves of psychedelic vocals crashing in between poetic lines before ending with a spoken word coda set over bird song.
Waller isn’t keen on spending too long on an idea, and opener ‘Take Me Anywhere’ proves that it’s of no artistic detriment. As he exhales his vocal delivery, it’s easy to become lost in the hypnotic orchestrations that throw the poetry into the background.
At just over two minutes long, ‘Shoad’ achieves much more than its length suggests. Starting life with a cascade of finger-picked notes, the later addition of dissonant stabs of strings, evoking the sound of sawing wood, serve to reinforce the rural themes of the record.
It quickly becomes clear that The Baby Blues is the result of a collection of abstract aural sketches developed into a gorgeously fully-formed record.
Busker’s paradise at No 14 Bacon Street. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
A couple of Sundays ago, I was on Bacon Street looking for the Vintage Emporium. Outside Des and Lorraine, a genuine East London junk shop, I asked a couple of men the way and was redirected next door. “Ask for Olli,” they said. “You’ll see he is really nice!”. It took me just a few seconds to realise I had stepped into the close-knit heart of East London’s Brick Lane community.
Pushing through the door of this intimate coffee shop, I instantly felt at home. The vintage furniture was harmoniously displayed and the smell of fresh lilies heightened a sense of delicacy as I was welcomed by numerous smiley faces.
On a small stage in the centre of the room was Jess Collins, who co-owns the place with her partner Olli Stanion. She was singing and playing fiddle with another musician, Alastair Caplin. Encircled in thick curtains evoking a baldachin, the look and location of the stage was a give away. “This place is a kingdom for musicians,” I thought to myself.
Bacon Street blues. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
Over a month ago the Vintage Emporium was renamed No 14 Bacon Street as Jess and Olli just managed to obtain a two-year lease extension from their new owner, the Truman Brewery.
Fiddle player Caplin is already part of the furniture, programming sessions of acoustic folk, jazz, swing and old time bluegrass music.
He explained: “The biggest change of the rebranding is the glass of wine appearing behind the bar so anyone can come with a bottle, pay the £3 corkage fee and listen to music.”
String ensemble at No 14 Bacon Street. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
All afternoon, musicians kept on entering a venue that was already packed. “They are all buskers from Columbia Road market and come here to play for fun and to enjoy the tea and cakes provided by Jess and Olli,” I was told later. “Between 15 to 20 musicians can turn up in one afternoon; this is the closest thing to community I have ever felt in London,” insisted Caplin.
Before I knew it daylight had long gone and people started dancing in the remaining free corners of the room, their faces illuminated by candlelights evoking paintings from the chiaroscuro period. Whilst I was taking pictures, I started daydreaming about how Caravaggio or Rembrandt would have depicted the scene, as a musician started playing harp, accompanying me as if by magic in my travels back in time.
If you don’t know the area, walking down Cable Street at night might feel like stepping into a no man’s land. You’ll soon realise though that behind the seemingly derelict factories lies a strong artistic community.
Cable Studios is an example. Situated in what used to be a sweet factory that was hit by a bomb during the Blitz, the building turned into a centre for small businesses and artists as early as the 1970s. Numerous squatters took over and the corridors of the factory were filled with the smell of fresh paint and turpentine.
Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
By the early 1990s, loud music replaced the smell of paint, as ravers turned the area into one of the most decadent parts of London. By 2000, musicians were setting up recording studios and rehearsal spaces in Cable Studios.
Like many before, Rena Beck and her partner Alastair Clark moved to Cable Studios to find cheap accommodation whilst trying to make a living from their art.
In 2007, a room in the courtyard of what used to be the factory’s canteen and then a prop making company became available. They rented it and opened the space twice a week for open mic and jam nights. Jamboree was born.
Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval
With no heating in the main building, a local band started using Jamboree as an open rehearsal space. The musicians would busk at Limehouse station to attract audience members. Other musicians joined in and since then the dance floor is packed more often than not. Jamboree is now open seven nights a week.
Most likely a remnant of Beck and Clark’s time as squatters, there often is a bohemian feel to Jamboree. The music is eclectic, ranging from French musette to Americana, bluegrass or rock. Gypsy is at the heart of this world music venue, with many Klezmer bands and Eastern-European style nights.
Beck goes through a very particular selection process to choose artists from the 10– 30 emails she receives each day. She doesn’t listen to recordings but instead watches the artists perform on YouTube. “For me the quality of the musicians is one factor. Another one is the musicianship they have, their energy and charisma on stage. I always say they are a great band if they make the audience want to be a musician as well.”
By day, Alan Audrain manages Bouchon Fourchette café on Mare Street. But making coffee and serving customers is just the tip of his talents. When off duty, he is Alan A., a singer-songwriter with a penchant for extravagant outfits. A regular performer at Gay Pride festivals, last month Alan A. released Astray, an electro pop album that is fun and melodic but with plenty of attitude – and innuendo.
Alan, how did it all begin?
I moved to London in 2004 from Nantes in the west of France. I’ve always been singing, whether it’s taking singing lessons or in a choir. When I was a kid I used to jump on benches and do concerts for my schoolmates. Then I started writing here and there, bits and pieces, nothing serious. In 2008 I moved to Montreal and met my first arranger, Frank, and we worked on the first album together. This is the third album.
Can you describe the style of your music?
It’s very poppy, very British pop. It’s kind of orientated to a gay audience. I always say gay audience and their lovers because it’s kind of like a story of a gay man in London. And it’s a bit witty and a bit cheeky, but at the same time I don’t want to shock people – I prefer to amuse them.
Your song ‘So What?’ tackles homophobia with lines like “So what if I’m a homo, any more you want to know?” How has being gay informed your music?
Well, I grew up in a very small village so when I discovered I was gay it was kind of hard to come out. It took me a couple of years to come out to my best friends and a few more years to come out to my family. It’s quite hard to discover something about yourself but not be able to express it, or have to hide yourself. The song is just a way of saying well that’s me and you have to take me for who I am or move along!
Your French identity is very part of your music as well. How important is it to let the audience know that you’re French?
I think that was quite ambiguous until this album really. That’s why I wrote the song ‘Excuse My French’ because I wanted it to represent that part of me. That’s who I am, that’s where my family is and where I go back to regularly.
If you were able to do a collaboration with anyone who would it be?
I think I would aim high if I could choose anyone. Maybe I’d collaborate with a DJ like David Guetta, because he’s French as well and he’s on the scene everywhere in the world. DJs like that would be great but obviously doing a record with Jimmy Somerville or Duran Duran or the Pet Shop Boys would be amazing.
Mezzo-Soprano Lore Lixenberg. Photograph: Mahogany Opera Group
A Stoke Newington singer will star in the world’s first ‘mindfulness opera’ this September at the Barbican, which is to feature yoga, communal eating and even washing up.
Mezzo-soprano Lore Lixenberg and seven musicians are to perform Lost in Thought, a four-hour opera for voices, instruments and audience based on the structure of an extended meditation.
Audience members are to work alongside the performers to create an “inner journey of mindfulness” through periods of meditation, rest, communal eating and yoga.
One of the most crucial parts is the washing up section, which develops into a communal performance by using a rhythm that occurs throughout the rest of the piece.
Composer Rolf Hind thought of the concept and composed the music for Lost in Thought, which is based on Buddhism.
Hind’s idea is to provide an antidote to the ‘critical mind’ that audiences bring to concerts and challenge traditional boundaries between audience and performers.
Artistic Director of Mahogany Opera Group and director of Lost in Thought, Frederic Wake-Walker, added that opera not only grapples with the desire to sing, dance, ritualise and tell stories, but can also “express most relevantly our multi-media, multi-cultural existence today”.
Mercury Prize-nominated FKA twigs is one of a slew of acts just confirmed for Field Day festival in Victoria Park on 6–7 June.
The alternative R&B singer’s performance is set to be a London festival exclusive. She will be joined on the Field Day Saturday line-up by hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, Radiohead drummer Philip Selway, Norwegian producer Todd Terje and father and son pairing Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté.
Last week it was announced that Mac DeMarco, the poster boy for Canadian slacker rock, will be part of the Field Day Sunday line-up, alongside the likes of Patti Smith and Ride. A fuller picture of Sunday line-up has now been revealed, with post-punk outfit Savages, psychedelic five-piece Hookworms and indie rockers Viet Cong all due to perform.
Complementing the live music will be DJ sets from the likes of Awesome Tapes from Africa, Barcelona producer John Talabot and DJ Floating Points.
All these acts and more will feature on Field Day Radio, with Field Day supremo Tom Baker hosting a series of shows over the next couple of months to whet the whistle of festival-goers. The first episode is available here.
Radio enthusiast: Nina Garthwaite. Photograph: In the Dark
Video never quite managed to kill the radio star. Instead, radio survived into the 21st century, evolving with the times rather than becoming outmoded. Its longevity might be down to how it moulds to our daily lives and routines: waking up, commuting, or hanging out the washing. But doesn’t treating radio as background noise dilute the listening experience?
A group of volunteer radio enthusiasts and producers have set out to challenge how we think about spoken word radio. Under the banner of In the Dark, they hold monthly themed listening events they describe as “celebrations of stories through sound”.
Group listening
I go along to one at bicycle-friendly cafe-bar Look Mum No Hands on Mare Street. Fittingly the theme is bicycles. For an hour I sit listening to clips from radio documentaries, learning about the lifestyle of a cycle courier (they apparently have 99 different words for rain), hearing the travails of a transgender teenager trying to choose a bike, and even listening to Frank Zappa using a bicycle to make music.
“It’s just a case of listening and listening and listening to loads of stuff and seeing what we find,” says Nina Garthwaite, In the Dark’s founder, explaining the curation process. Locations tend to match themes; so a selection of documentaries about water were set on a boat, while an event about death was held in a cemetery.
“What can be quite fun about group listening is that you can really take people on a journey,” Garthwaite tells me. “One of our all time favourites was the erotic audio event, which was quite explicit at times, and we just had a bunch of people squeezed into a room.
“It was a good example of one where we played with this thing where you’re trapped in a room, you can’t tune off or click away or distract yourself, and we’re going to make you feel really uncomfortable. But then we’re going to make it pay off, hopefully, by the end.”
Let there be dark
In the Dark started exactly five years ago, when Garthwaite was looking to switch career from television to radio. She found good audio more difficult to access than film or television, and as an industry radio seemed closed, celebrity focused and convinced of its own decline.
“A lot of the time it’s still the case that people think of radio as a bit of a disabled medium. That it’s constantly having to compensate for the lack of visuals. I think audio can tell as many stories as any other medium, only it tells them in a different way.”
Another motivation came from the feeling that the broadcaster was the ‘keeper of the keys’ to radio.
“At the time it felt like we were saying: watch this, we can get a bunch of people to not only listen to audio but get out of their house and go to a place to listen to stuff that a broadcaster might say was a bit too esoteric or strange.”
But what do people gain from listening to radio in this way, I ask. She responds: “Getting together and listening is such an antithesis to the way we consume things nowadays. It’s like the counterpoint of the internet age.
“But the reality, as opposed to the gimmick of it, is that it’s a really different way of listening. You hear the pieces so many times by yourself putting it together, but suddenly you’re in a room with other people and you hear it in a different way. People laugh or look sad, and suddenly it’s a different experience.”
But the irony of this down-home experience being the “counterpoint of the internet age” is that it is also fuelled by it. The five years since In the Dark was founded have seen a resurgence of interest in audio as a creative form, with American podcasts such as This American Life, 99% Invisible and Radiolab leading the way. Then there’s Serial, single-handedly credited with bringing podcasting into the mainstream.
Garthwaite talks of there being “wonderful momentum” in radio documentary making, but is wary of the increasing dominance of American podcasts and the growing tendency among UK broadcasters to look for ‘British versions’.
“I think there’s a danger of going ‘look this is great, now you go and make something as great’, which is immediately stifling, right? It’s like the ‘be funny’ thing, no one’s going to be funny if you do that.”
In the Dark’s fifth anniversary show on 19 January will feature the cream of pieces from past events, as well as a conversation about what the future holds.
“The grounds keep changing and that’s why it’s stayed interesting and why we’ve kept doing it for five years,” Garthwaite adds. “Constantly we’re trying to keep making these events something that keeps pushing a little further and keeps offering people something they wouldn’t hear otherwise.”
