East End Review

Tag: St John at Hackney

  • Concert pitch – October gig guide for East London

    Concert pitch – October gig guide for East London

    Isabel-Sörling-Soil-Collectors
    Isabel Sörling of Soil Collectors, playing at Match and Fuse Festival this month

    15–16 October, Hackney Wonderland @ Oval Space, The Laundry, London Fields Brewery, Sebright Arms, The Pickle Factory

    Five venues play host to a line-up of established bands such as Mystery Jets and We Are Scientists as well as up-and-coming acts like singer Sonia Stein and NGod.

    21–23 October – Stoke Newington Music Festival @ various venues including Mascara Bar, St Pauls Church West Hackney, The Waiting Room, Haunt, Stereo92, The Lion, The Lacy Nook, Green Room Café, The Haberdashery

    Three-day multi-venue event across Stoke Newington will see DJ sets and live music from the likes of Thurston Moore, Sterling Roswell, Pink Cigar and The Pacers

    22 October – Super Hans @ Oval Space

    One of the nation’s best loved comic creations Super Hans from Peepshow (aka Australian comic Matt King) takes to the decks for his debut London DJ set.

    28–29 October – Match and Fuse festival @ New River Studios, Café Oto, The Vortex

    Organisers boast this will be a “knees up like no other”, bringing together musicians from 14 European countries. Highlights include Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and the Native American/Scandinavian pop improvisers the Soil Collectors.

    29 October – Mirrors festival @ St John at Hackney, Moth Club, Oslo, Round Chapel

    Eyes will be on the Mercury Prize-nominated Bat for Lashes, who is set to headline this one-day indoor festival. Also on the line-up are Allah-Las, Bill Ryder Jones and the curiously-named garage punk six-piece Diarrhea Planet.

  • Concert pitch: September gig guide for East London

    Concert pitch: September gig guide for East London

    Thurston Moore credit Vera Marmelo 620
    Thurston Moore. Photograph: Vera Marmelo

    Merzbow and Thurston Moore

    Never before have Japanese noise musician Merzbow, Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Sonic Youth great Thurston Moore performed live together. Or at least until now. The four solo artists released acclaimed ‘avant album’ Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper last year. And this month they are set to perform it live for the first time at St John at Hackney.

    28 September
    St John at Hackney, Lower Clapton Road, E5 0PD
    stjohnsessions.co.uk

    The Invisible

    South London three-piece The Invisible will be at Oslo this month, playing songs from their impressive third album Patience. The group have defined their music as ‘experimental genre-spanning spacepop’ with front-man Dave Okumu’s impressive CV including production credits for the likes of St Vincent and Amy Winehouse.

    28 September
    Oslo, Mare Street, E8 1LL
    oslohackney.co.uk

    Sing for Samaritans

    Vintage clothes boutique Paper Dress Vintage is to host a night of live music in aid of Central London Samaritans this month. Indie rockers Belle Roscoe and singer-songwriters Will Connor and Nadia Rae are confirmed for the fundraising event, with some ‘very special guests’ yet to be announced…

    7 September
    Paper Dress Vintage, 352a Mare Street, E8 1HR
    paperdressvintage.co.uk

    Hairy Hands

    Hairy Hands, the moniker of electronic musician James Alexander Bright, will be playing a free gig at the Sebright Arms this month for the launch of his album Magic. If the rest of the album is anything like single ‘YNA’ then expect watery synths, liquid funk and sultry melodies.

    21 September
    Sebright Arms
    31–35 Coate Street, E2 9AG

    Opera Cabaret

    Mezzo-sopranos Lore Lixenberg and Lucy Stevens will be performing songs and arias by baroque maestro Henry Purcell at The Old Church this month. The Opera Cabaret describes itself “a spectacular celebration of music and fun”and will feature Elizabeth Marcus on harpsichord.

    Music for a While
    10 September
    The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, N16 9ES
    theoldchurch.org.uk

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Scott Walker + Sunn O))): Soused at St John at Hackney – ‘ridiculously sublime, sublimely ridiculous’

    The noise they make: Scott Walker and Sunn O)))
    Soused: Scott Walker and Sunn O))). Photograph: Phil Laslett

    A new album by Scott Walker is an event in itself. The erstwhile pop crooner turned avant-gardist is noted for taking 11 years between albums. When free tickets were offered to a listening event to hear his new album Soused, the organisers were overwhelmed by demand. After a comparatively dizzying two-year turnaround, the new record is a collaboration with veteran drone makers Sunn O))), a pairing which has had the muso message boards salivating uncontrollably.

    St John at Hackney Church is no stranger to religious fervour. It’s a church. Tonight its congregation is there to worship a different idol. A neon stack of £80,000 hi-fi equipment provided by McIntosh Labs has been set up to play the 49-minute record to them. The crowd’s tones are noticeably hushed from the outset.

    It’s no surprise that the album begins with a surprise: a great swell of bright church organ, immediately confounding the expectation of the sludgy drones of Sunn O))), though these follow, impossibly dark and smouldering. A baroque painting of drones, odd percussion with bells and whips, whistles, and brutal guitar noises, through which Walker’s pained baritone soars and dips, by turns roaring and aching, even pleading. Especially in this hallowed space, the record feels like a dark prayer to no God.

    A comic distraction from the reverie comes half way through. A woman lumbering up to the altar, gyrating intensely with the music, removes three layers and a bag, and commences what I can only describe as dancing. There’s always one, isn’t there? At length two staff members try to move her off. She sinks and goes limp, and they can’t drag her body. It’s hopeless and hilarious.

    The crowd suddenly takes her side: “Let her dance!” A few minutes later the music becomes more static. She sits a while, and departs. With this episode of the absurd interrupting, but arising directly out of, the deep spell of concentration and seriousness, tonight’s listening event shares the reflexive quality that the Quietus noted in both Scott Walker and in Sunn O))) “what makes their music feel sublime can also make it seem ridiculous.”

    Soused is sublime, ridiculously sublime, sublimely ridiculous. It is very much a Scott Walker album, but with more drones and no orchestra. Less scary than his ballet music, but more danceable.

    Review of Scott Walker + Sunn O))) Soused listening event St John at Hackney Church on Tuesday 14 October