East End Review

Tag: music

  • The Comet is Coming: Hackney’s dark horse for Mercury Prize glory

    The Comet is Coming: Hackney’s dark horse for Mercury Prize glory

    The Comet is Coming. Photograph: Fabrice Bourgelle
    (l-r): Dan Leavers, Shabaka Hutchings and Max Hallett as jazz three-piece The Comet is Coming. Photograph: Fabrice Bourgelle

    The story of The Comet is Coming is the stuff of dreams for aspiring bands: a serendipitous meeting of musical minds and an album, thrown together out of sheer enthusiasm and a series of creative epiphanies, that propelled the East London-based group into the national spotlight. Last weekend the cosmic jazz trio, fronted by charismatic sax-player Shabaka Hutchings (aka King Shabaka), played a headline set to a delighted crowd at a rain-soaked Chatsworth Road festival. Tonight, the group’s debut album Channel the Spirits will be up against the likes of David Bowie and Radiohead for the coveted Mercury Prize. Max Hallett (aka Betamax Killer) is the group’s drummer, as well as a composer and production guru. The 31-year-old here talks about musical experiments, why Hackney is still the place to be for artists and how space is “a blank canvas of imagination”.

    Channel the Spirits was written and recorded in Hackney. How has working in the borough shaped your music?

    I’ve been living in and around Hackney for about 10 years and I think there is a kind of edginess to the art that’s created here, though probably that was more so a few years back. People travel in from all round to go there and make stuff. I live further east now in Forest Gate but we all travel in because it’s still the place to get stuff done really. We’ve got a studio space in Stoke Newington in a place called the Total Refreshment Centre. It’s kind of our ‘HQ’, and is where we recorded the album. It used to be a Jamaican community centre I think but now it’s a recording and rehearsing space. They used to do a lot of parties and gigs there too and there’s lots of bands and artists going through there all the time so it’s part of a little scene really.

    How did the band form and what brings you guys together musically?

    Me and the keyboard player Dan [Dan Leavers, aka Danalogue the Conqueror] were already in a band called Soccer96 and have been playing together since we were at university. We did this gig and Shabaka came along with his saxophone. He’d been coming to a couple of our gigs and just showed up and jumped up on stage towards the end of the gig. We started playing and it unleashed this really big energy onstage. It was quite serene and then afterwards we were like, ‘okay, we need to go in the studio.’

    And you recorded the album then and there?

    Yeah, without doing any more gigs really we just went into the studio to do something that became the album. At the beginning we didn’t even know it was going to be a band. We just started recording. So the album is really the beginning of the band, because the album and last year’s EP (Prophecy) were taken from the same sessions.

    Can you talk me through the making of the album?

    Me and Dan had already started producing our own sound in the studio using reel to reel recording and a lot of improvising. We were just perfecting this method when we met Shabaka so he just sort of walked into this process. We must have written and recorded the album in about six days, then Dan and I mixed it in my garden shed during the winter. We tend to write whilst mixing too so we added a lot of laser sounds and some recordings from space. We just tried to fill it with interesting sounds from start to finish basically.

    How surprised were you to receive a nomination for the Mercury Prize?

    We were doing a gig in Portugal when we heard about it. We had a vague idea something was going on, and then Shabaka got a phone call and went outside. We started joking saying maybe that’s the Mercury nomination – and it was. So we just went straight down to the beach and went swimming in the sea. It was a really nice day and there was a really amazing vibe.

    A lot of people are talking of The Comet is Coming and making comparisons with the world music pioneer Sun Ra. Do you think that’s fair?

    I think everyone would agree that Sun Ra sounds very different to what we do. But because he used space and themes of space and created a mythology for himself, he has been quite inspiring. As soon as we realised this was going to be a spacy project it suddenly opened our creativity to a new direction and everything made perfect sense. We were kind of freed from our own culture in a way and reimagining our whole world at this point. Another thing is that Sun Ra’s band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, is still going and Shabaka is actually a member of that group. So he’s had some guidance from those guys as well – there’s a personal connection on his part.

    Shabaka Hutchings has said that the thing that unites you three is the “knowledge that we’re in space”. Could you talk a bit more about this and what it is about space and the cosmos that inspires you?

    Space is like a blank canvas of imagination really, because there are so many things that we don’t really understand or haven’t discovered. That’s kind of how our musical journey has been. The studio became our space mission, and it sounds cheesy but space taught us to use the equipment a bit like a science experiment. We’ve been trying to reconnect with music as a form of science. Science and music and spirituality at one point were all the same thing. They’ve branched out into different meanings, but I guess we’re trying to bring them back together and explore them and understand they were once just one idea.

    What’s you own musical background?

    I’m from a musical family – my parents are both musicians, so yeah I studied piano and met Dan at Sussex University where we both studied composition. But we got more into a beatnik kind of vibe and started going a bit more experimental. We all play in a lot of different bands around London because on a practical level it’s very healthy to be in a lot of bands because you get more experience, and also you have more work.

    As serial collaborators how do you rate London’s alternative jazz scene – is it in good health?

    Yeah, I’d say. Particularly in Hackney and parts of South London. But I think there’s a certain vibe of jazz music that has been collected within another scene. Basically there’s so much overlap of the genres that you’re starting to blur all the boundaries. I think in places like Hackney you can see that happen a lot, jazz musicians playing with non-jazz musicians.

    Are you going to carry on making music together as a three-piece?

    We’ve got another EP that we’ve already finished that will be coming out early next year, and there’s also been talks of maybe making a second album, which I think the label people are kind of keen on. But yeah, I’m sure we’ll try to continue making more experiments.

  • Azealia Banks axed from Hackney music festival after racist rant at Zayn Malik

    Azealia Banks
    Azealia Banks. Photograph: Rick Bonetti via Flickr

    Azealia Banks has been dropped from headlining a Hackney music festival after the hip hop artist unleashed a racially abusive and homophobic twitter tirade.

    Banks was set to headline Rinse: Born & Bred festival in Haggerston Park on Sunday 5 June.

    But Rinse FM, the festival organisers, have dropped the US star after she posted offensive tweets targeted at One Direction’s Zayn Malik.

    In a statement, the festival organisers said: “We have decided to cancel Azealia Banks’ headline appearance … Rinse: Born & Bred Festival is a celebration of rave culture and has been created for everyone. We celebrate inclusivity and equality.”

    In a stream of derogatory tweets, Banks called Malik a “brown-faced refugee” and said his whole family would be “obliterated by the good old U.S of A.”.

    She added: “The UK really can’t rap though. UK RAP is just a disgrace to rap culture in general.”

    The row started when 24-year-old Banks claimed Malik had copied her work for his new video, Like I Would.

    Damn Zayn be mood boarding the fuck of out me 😳.. I’m not mad about this though. Zayn is a cutie pie

    A photo posted by Azealia Banks (@azealiabanks) on

    Banks added that she thought the singer was a “cutie pie”, but when Malik, a British singer with a Pakistani father and English-Irish mother, tweeted: “I see you reaching but I don’t care … My @’s too good for you,” Banks assumed it was aimed at her and unleashed a tirade of abuse, including the accusation that Malik was only in One Direction “to draw brown attention”.

    Responding to the festival’s decision, Banks tweeted: “To all of my Darling UK fans who bought tickets to see me at the Rinse FM show. My sincerest apologies!!!!!

    “But you know Mama Puma always goes in for the Kill. And NEVER backs down.”

  • Feral – Ulli Mattsson review: ‘urging new water through old riverbeds’

    Feral – Ulli Mattsson review: ‘urging new water through old riverbeds’

    Ulli Mattsson. Photograph: Adam Weymouth
    Ulli Mattsson. Photograph: Adam Weymouth

    For Ulli Mattsson the water has always been synonymous with home. Growing up by a river on the border of Swedish Lapland, she has lived for the past six years aboard a former peat-transporter on the River Lea. This century-old barge has doubled as both abode and arena, acting as the stage from which she recently launched debut album Feral and its accompanying tour over the course of three intimate nightly shows down in Hackney Wick.

    Feral’s invocation of the waterways acts as an antidote to homesickness that delves deep into the tradition of Scandinavian folk music. Beginning with ‘Blue Whales’, an elegiac waltz of blunted guitar cut through by pining strings, it is a song saturated with a yearning for landscapes of her past, for blue whales and other organisms not usually found in the depths of the Lea.

    ‘Mother’, the record’s lead single, similarly follows this notion of loss and yearning but with more dynamism in the music. The guitar is upbeat despite the bleakness of the narrative, and this renewed vigour propels the album forward.

    Lyrically, the album seems to take its inspirations from folk oral traditions. Mattsson’s vocals, though minimal in range, materialise with a raw tenacity that conjures fragments of her homeland into a collage of aquatic ecology, oceanic mythology, and her own existence.

    It is an album of stories that find their sources in both the individual and communal tales of sea-faring creatures, from the account of the lonesome ‘Riverwoman’, to references to Queequeg and the Sirens found in ‘Winter’s Waiting’.

    Ulli Mattsson's Feral. Photograph: Adam Weymouth
    Ulli Mattsson’s Feral. Photograph: Adam Weymouth

    Whilst the first half of the record pays due reverence to traditional instrumentation, the song ‘Magpie’ ushers in a change of scenery. The sudden deluge of electronic instruments that appear in the middle-eight presents an interesting contrast to Mattsson’s personal take on the old ‘One For Sorrow’ nursery rhyme. It brings out a clear sense of divergence from what has come before, thrusting the record into new waters.

    Subsequently, tracks such as ‘Wandering Lights’ and ‘Last Song’ offer some of the most surprising and interesting musical moments on the album in a honeyed cohesion between deep, ritualistic percussion, and the flash and twinkle of modern programming.

    It is through this mixture of old and new, here and there, that Mattsson uses Feral to draw original noises from traditional sounds, urging new water through old riverbeds.

    ullimattsson.com

  • Vinyl fantasy – The Record Deck casts anchor on the banks of the Lea

    Vinyl fantasy – The Record Deck casts anchor on the banks of the Lea

    The Record Deck moored in its usual location. Photograph: Luke Guilford
    The Record Deck moored in its usual location. Photograph: Luke Guilford

    The banks of the River Lea used to be a place where recovering vinyl junkies could feel safe from relapse, but that is no longer the case.

    For taking a stroll down the canal towpath on any sunny weekend, you may well come across Luke Guilford and his floating record shop, The Record Deck.

    The former librarian uses his barge as a de facto stock room, keeping everything from ‘the classics’ to jazz, blues and reggae – which can sometimes prove problematic for some.

    “People like stumbling upon it, but some get a bit upset they found it because they were trying to not buy any records,” says Guilford.

    “But I’ve found that record addicts will always find them wherever they are. I am one myself.”

    Thumbing through the racks of reasonably priced records (usually priced between £5 and £10) stored underneath his bed and around his boat, he takes out a sample of his stock.

    The Black Keys, Tom Waits and David Bowie sit neatly beside Django Reindhart, The Incredible String Band and an African jazz compilation.

    Given the diverse nature of his clientele, trying to organise the front of the shop, which he hangs from the side of the boat, has become something of an art form.

    “One day I decided to put a load of really trendy records out, then the first things I sold were The Shadows and Dire Straits. You can’t predict who is going to come along,” he says.

    Guilford started the shop as an exit strategy from the rat race. With the pressures of his 9 to 5 job growing, he decided to put his life-long love of vinyl and his modest dwelling together to join the growing ranks of Hackney’s riverboat traders.

    Currently moored alongside Springfield Park, The Record Deck can count a floating bookshop, a bar and even a hairdresser’s amongst its neighbours.

    The Record Deck is based in Hackney on most weekends, but using the grass bank as his shop floor means opening hours are rather dependent on the weather.

    However, Guildford keeps a box of records in the basement of Pages of Hackney on Lower Clapton Road for rainy days, and informs his Twitter followers of his location.

    One of the advantages of the transient nature of the shop premises is that Guilford has become a regular feature at canal festivals around the country. This year he will be floating downstream to Field Day in Victoria Park and the Angel Canal festival in Islington.

    Having lived on a barge for 16 years, Guilford’s love for life on the water has extinguished any desire to expand his enterprise or turn to the murky waters of online selling.

    “A lot of people sell on the internet but to me that just sounds really boring,” he says. “But I don’t have any major plans for expansion apart from buying a load of nice records and passing them on to people.”

    Follow @therecorddeckuk to keep updated on the shop’s location.

  • Florence and the Machine live review – ‘exuberance and theatricality’

    Florence and the Machine live review – ‘exuberance and theatricality’

    Florence and the Machine live in Hackney. Photograph: Dan Dennison
    Florence and the Machine live in Hackney. Photograph: Dan Dennison

    It’s been a long time since Florence Welch played a venue this small, the singer being more at home in leviathan arenas and on festival main stages than the relative compactness of St John at Hackney. The show comes as part of War Child UK’s Passport to the Brits, a series of concerts that has brought big names to small settings. Tickets were made available via donation and subsequent prize draw. A stirring introduction from War Child CEO Rob Williams expounds upon just what these donations can do for the most vulnerable victims of conflict.

    Given the exuberance and theatricality that have become the calling cards of Florence and The Machine live shows, it is difficult to imagine how the band would approach playing in a fairly Spartan interior. However, The Machine has all but powered-down in favour of an acoustic line-up of piano, harp, trumpet and minimal percussion. Yet Welch’s vocals on the opening few numbers (‘Cosmic Love’, ‘St Jude’ and ‘Drumming Song’, all played sans drums) already threaten to rattle the stained-glass windowpanes. Following a galloping performance of ‘Queen of Peace’, Welch confesses she’s more nervous of small shows because she “used to be a lot drunker” when she originally played them. A voice in the crowd immediately offers to get her a shot.

    A winsome cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Silver Springs’ comes as a delightful surprise, and one that superfan Welch seems to be enjoying even more than the crowd. Equally surprising is a rendition of Calvin Harris collaboration ‘Sweet Nothing’, pushed a world away from the kitschy pop-house of the original and made into some real Nicks-worthy balladry.

    Welch opts to go out on a high, with ‘Shake It Out’ and ‘Dog Days Are Over’ rousing the rabble into a swarming mass of rapturous singalongs and rhythmic clapping. It is one thing for a musician to sell-out a 20,000-capacity arena, but quite another to make the jump back to snugger surroundings without sacrificing the galvanising energy of the large-scale extravaganza.  Even the most recalcitrant detractors of Welch’s music would find it a challenge to call this performance anything but impressive.

    Florence and the Machine played at St John at Hackney Church on 26 February.

  • Julia Holter, Oval Space, live review: ‘not pigeon-holed by expectations’

    Julia Holter
    Playing straight: Julia Holter. Photograph credit: Flickr

    Julia Holter’s bracing and intelligent compositions have met with great critical acclaim ever since her debut Tragedy in 2011. However, she turned out to be one the big flavours of 2015 following her fourth studio release Have You In My Wilderness, which deviated from her more avant-garde earlier albums with its mix of vaudevillian pop and literary ballads.

    Holter’s vocals are every bit as striking in the flesh as they are on record, effortlessly clear and cool as she enunciates the first few words of set opener ‘City Appearing’.

    There’s always been a sense of perfectionism in Holter’s music that presents each track as a finished whole. This translates to the live show as she plays each song exceptionally straight, swerving away from too much embellishment as she trips through ‘Silhouette’ and ‘Horns Surrounding Me’.

    Surprisingly, ‘Feel You’, one of the stand-out pop tracks from Wilderness, is played in muted tones, flattened down and shuffled in between ‘Lucette’ and ‘Into The Green Wild’. But if Wilderness taught us anything it was that Holter is not one to let herself be pigeon-holed by expectations.

    Between songs the LA-native offers up a bit of context, expanding on the ideas that shaped the tracks or the time and place of their inception. ‘Silhouette’, we learn, was the last track she wrote for Wilderness, ‘Goddess Eyes’ was written when she was “a teenager, basically”.

    “This song is about Betsy above the building,” she says, eliciting hearty chuckles from the audience until they are all struck dumb by the frosty opening bars of ‘Betsy On The Roof’.

    However, in her introduction to ‘Lucette Stranded On The Island’, a track built around an unfortunate minor character in a short story by Colette, Holter informs the crowd she’s growing tired of talking about this particular song. “Maybe it’s just about going to the store,” she deadpans in her California drawl. “Maybe it’s a metaphor.”

    Pre-encore closer ‘Vasquez’ is the evening’s certified show-stealer. “This one’s about Tiburcia Vasquez who was on the loose back in the 19th century,” offers Holter as a primer. “I was there. I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

    The jostling percussion and slow-burning vocal lines, imbued with the electrified energy of live performance, dazzle their way into a dramatic clamour of scrambled jazz.

    Finishing with a two-song encore of the Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach hit, ‘Don’t Make Me Over’, and the harpsichord-heavy ‘Sea Calls Me Home’, it’s an apt conclusion to what has been a relaxed and rewarding display of Holter’s motley talents.

    Julia Holter played at Oval Space on 15 February 2016.

  • ‘Should be a right laugh’ – Sleaford Mods among new acts confirmed for Field Day

    New York band Yeasayer, confirmed as one of the acts for this year’s Field Day festival in Victoria Park

    Some of the most signifiant breakthrough acts of 2015 have confirmed as playing at this year’s Field Day – proof, if it were needed, that it’s never too early to start thinking about which summer festivals to attend.

    Sleaford Mods, the Nottingham punk duo fronted by Jason Williamson, are the most eye-catching addition to the line-up. The group came to the fore last year with their album Key Markets, a collection of scathing and witty portraits of contemporary Britain that take aim at everything from politicians to the very idea of alienation itself (“no one’s bothered”).

    With trademark cynicism, Williamson said the festival “always houses a great deal of interesting new music and not the usual bland array of star employees from big labels. Should be a right laugh!”

    Other additions to the Saturday line-up include New Yorkers Yeasayer, noise-rock quartet Girl Band, whose recent album Holding Hands with Jamie was included in Time Magazine’s 10 Best Albums of 2015 poll and producer Gold Panda, who is receiving considerable acclaim for his album Half Of Where You Live. They join already confirmed acts Skepta, Four Tet, Deerhunter, Floating Points and Youth Lagoon.

    Meanwhile, neo-psychedelia The Brian Jonestown Massacre have signed up to play Field Day Sunday. They join the likes of Beach House, John Grant, Molly Nilsson, GOAT, Optimo and the Thurston Moore Band.

    Field Day takes place in Victoria Park on the weekend of 11-12 June, with advance tickets available at www.fielddayfestivals.com/tickets.

  • Beirut – gig review: ‘meeting up with an old friend’

    Beirut
    Bold as brass… Beirut get their instruments out at St John at Hackney. Photograph: Russell Parton

    It’s been four years since Beirut last released an album; in which time I’d more or less forgotten about the group that made Balkan folk cool about a decade ago.

    So watching the band at St John at Hackney, a venue tailor-made for expansive harmonies and intricate brass, was like meeting up with an old friend.

    Fortunately, to push the analogy further, this old friend hadn’t changed all that much.

    Treated to a slew of songs off new album NoNoNo, most had all the oomph and yearning beauty of old, the electric piano-led ‘Perth’ and heavily percussive ‘Gibraltar’ slipping in seamlessly alongside old favourites ‘Nantes’ and ‘Santa Fe’.

    Trumpets blared on ‘The Gulag Orkestar’, undiminished after so long in the repertoire, whilst ‘Postcards from Italy’ (the zippy ukulele one) was just the right side of twee.

    Three brass players spread across the front of the stage, proving a sight and sound for sore senses when going for it in unison. But then the next moment the trio became sweet harmony singers, offering up vocal parts worthy of Fleet Foxes.

    In the middle of it all, of course, was Zach Condon, this enigmatic American who has forged a lasting career through total immersion in Eastern European folk.

    Keyboards, ukulele, keyboard and (of course) trumpet, he plays them all, and in his own way, his solos immersed in Balkan scales whilst flat beats act like a marching elephant.

    At one point, whilst getting the keyboard ready between songs, Condon tells us, in a rare instance of ‘patter’, that the previous night a cable had come loose mid-song, cutting out the instrument completely. It was hardly the anxiety of a rock ‘n‘ roller, though it was an insight into the perfectionism that every song at least equal to its recorded version.

    Later we learned it was the band’s last night in Europe. Could I detect relief in their voices and body language? Perhaps, and there were few other attempts to connect with the audience, save the dutiful expressions of thanks at appropriate times. These, however, were quibbles that paled in the face of such original song-writing and technical virtuosity.

  • Another string to Craig David’s ‘bo’

    "If you just do whatever you're doing, there is no box to be in." - Craig David
    “If you just do whatever you’re doing, there is no box to be in.” – Craig David

    “The past is a concept. Whenever you experience anything, it’s right now. When we were talking five minutes ago, it’s now. The future is now.” If Craig David used to insist on 9pm dates with “cinnamon queens”, today that is unlikely. These days he wears his philosophy on his sleeve with a watch that simply reads “now”. But while the former golden boy of UK garage is living for today – his fans just want to rewind.

    At the turn of the millennium David’s honeyed vocals and catchy lyrics, coating two-step beats with pop sheen, sent the 19-year-old soaring up the charts. When his first album Born To Do It “dropped”, as he calls it, I headed straight to Woolworths for a copy (complete with a B-side disc of him talking to himself). I learnt the words to the whole album, carefully balancing the CD on the spindle of my Sony Discman.

    But even by 2002 interest had already waned. “It’s what they call the rise and fall,” he lamented on his second album Slicker Than Your Average, which sold around half as many copies as his debut smash. He next became the victim of a cruel but oddly enduring character on Leigh Francis’ sketch show Bo Selecta which had his trademark facial hair and, inexplicably, a Scottish accent and a pet bird Kes – the kestrel from Ken Loach’s film. It was a swift descent.

    Craig David left London for Miami, moved into a hotel and got into bodybuilding. An episode of Cribs revealed life-sized photographs of scantily-clad women, white sofas, impressive audiovisual equipment and a thing for fast cars. Everyone moved on. Yet teenage kicks…so hard to beat.

    I jumped at the chance to do a ‘phoner’ with the beanie-toting star of my adolescence.

    Guestlist ratio

    He was in London for the tour of his DJ show TS5 in which he aims to “bridge the gap” between live performance, DJing and MCing.

    Named after the number of his apartment-cum-hotel penthouse, TS5 is modelled on his own “pre-drinks” house parties. These are carefully orchestrated affairs where the man himself “holds it down” on the decks, there are drinks on tap, before everyone goes “out out” (they call it that in Miami too).

    Getting the “sexy vibe” is an exact science so David enforces a rigorous 70:30 female to male ratio on the guestlist. “If you overload it with guys, and the girl ratio is lower, in my experience, girls feel intimidated by that,” he explains. “Guys get really confident and try and hit on everyone and the ratio is all off.”

    Curiosity piqued, I head down to Hackney’s very own Oslo for the gig, where I find myself surrounded by other sheepish looking folk in their mid-twenties, but no drinks on tap.

    There is a reasonably sexy ratio of 60:40, the “vibe” is millennium chic and girls in white TS5 trucker hats hand out leaflets for the next gig. This being Hackney, I am initially concerned everyone is here to parody their younger, less cool selves. But I’m wrong. “You’ve got to love Craig”, two people tell me outside. “He’s the English Drake”.

    Upstairs David exaggeratedly presses buttons and drags faders, his biceps bulging under his oversized white T-shirt. After an underwhelming opening song he gently brings in ‘Fill Me In’ and the crowd goes wild. Girls at the front flap white A4 sheets of paper with his name written on in biro, and there is much grinding.

    But even the most diehard fan would be forced to admit he is simply not the best DJ, and his soft-as-butter voice just sounds plain weird when warbling over aggressive house bangers.

    Thinking is the box

    I ask about the transition from singersongwriter to DJ. “It’s crazy to think the cycle has come full circle”, he says. “DJing is what I started off doing. When the first album blew up, I put that on the side burner. I just do what ever I want to do, there’s no boundaries.

    We’ve taken the box, and removed all the lines from it. It’s all open now.” I manage to anchor a memory of this ‘box’ in David’s sea of axioms.

    Along with 75 thousand others I am an avid follower of his Instagram account, a luxury flick book of Miami sunsets (#blessed), workout selfies (#eatcleantraindirty) and tautologies set against a backdrop of his own face.

    One of my favourites (genuinely), I tell him, is a picture of a cosmic night sky with a white square and “thinking is the box” written inside it…

    I can hear him nodding down the phone: “You got it. It is the box. If you just do whatever you’re doing, there is no box to be in, but as soon as you say ‘there’s the box and I’m trying to think outside of it’, you’re saying the box is there.”

    David comes across as intensely and at times robotically upbeat. I ask about his Instagram, where his posts often receive mixed responses, and how he manages to stay so positive in the face of jokes at his expense. “It’s transient”, he says. “It’s not to be taken seriously.

    The beauty of Instagram and Twitter is there is a follow and an unfollow button.”

    His puppyish optimism is likable and there is definitely a sense of humour under his earnest theories. I ask him if his rumoured new studio album has now been put on the “side burner.” He acknowledges the dig: “We’re taking the burner off. There’s no side burner, back burner, up burner, Bunsen burner. All the burners are out. We’re making the record.”

    Craig David Presents TS5 has announced a second date at Shapes in Hackney on 16 October 2015. For tickets see ts5.com/shapes

  • New East London music: Breathing Space

    Breathing Space
    Facing the music: Breathing Space

    One of the more unusual ensembles doing the rounds in East London is Breathing Space, a five-piece choral group whose site specific performances combine field recordings and soundscapes with contemporary classical elements.

    Describing themselves as a “sound art performance collective”, Breathing Space formed two years ago when four East London-based friends came together to perform at Cody Dock in Canning Town for an art project.

    The performance saw the singers floating on the dock inside a geodesic dome, and since then they have tried to keep their performances site-specific.

    “We respond to each project as it comes along rather than spending lots of time writing lots of different material,” says composer and singer Hannah White.

    A recent performance at Servants Jazz Quarters in Dalston saw four members of the group perform a piece called ‘Worm’, based on clips of speeches by well-known philosophers.

    Sound artist Stephen Shiell, who makes the soundscapes and field recordings that underpin the group’s sound, used the clips to create a soundscape, which served as the basis for the composition.

    “A lot of it we develop through improvisation, so with that piece, by the time we did it we had a structure but were still improvising on the night.

    “We developed the vocals and lyrics using certain quotes from philosophers. The main one was from George Bataille when he talks about pleasure only starting when the worm is inside the fruit, and then there was Marcel Duchamp’s ‘I force myself to contradict myself in avoid conforming to my own taste’.

    “We chose those because they resonated with us and the feelings that we had so I guess that is part of the process.”

    This month, on 23 May, Breathing Space will be returning to Cody Dock, a formerly derelict dock turned bustling ‘creative quarter’ for the lower Lea, to perform a new piece as part of the opening of the Line Sculpture Trail.

    Called ‘Cody Word Walks’, the piece is an hour-long improvisation using field recordings from around the dock, and poems by Breathing Space’s Melaina Barnes.

    http://cargocollective.com/breathingspace/LUGUS