Josienne Clarke is great, Ben Walker is great and I hope my neighbours don't mind that my housemates and I were playing their music til 4am last night with the windows open. This is a review for the Hackney Citizen of the duo's latest release, but Josienne's self-penned 2010 album One Light Is Gone is also worth checking out - first song 'The Birds' is as beautiful and haunting a song as you are likely to hear this Autumn - and the duo's takes on traditional songs on second album The Seas Are Deep is also a treasure chest. I will probably need to write more about this music soon.
An edited version of this review is published in September's Hackney Citizen, but here it is in full.
Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker - Homemade Heartache EP
When you hear Josienne Clarke sing, you aren’t likely to forget it in a hurry. She’s got a voice like a struck bell, clear and melancholic, and writes songs in the same troubled language, to which Ben Walker’s guitars and arrangements provide a skillful foil. The duo have worked on two previous albums, one of originals and one of traditional folksongs, both drawing on British songwriting and balladry, but the Homemade Heartache EP takes its cues from the other side of the Atlantic, from artists like Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and the Old Crow Medicine Show. It’s a natural progression from Clarke’s previous work in British folksong, with which country shares a wounded, weary soul.
“As a listener my favourite songs are often the ones about lost love and break-ups,” Clarke says, “and country is a very good genre for that! As a songwriter I also seem to favour those themes and try, where possible, to make my songs as honest and meaningful as I can.” The Homemade Heartache EP, as you may expect, mainly concerns itself with aching hearts, but is presented with a wistful beauty, as Clarke’s voice winds itself around guitars, mandolins and accordian.
‘Just Travelling,’ the first song, kicks things off with a spirited interplay of guitar and mandolin, with Clarke in a defiant mood, describing hardship as “a distance that gets shorter as you go along,” whilst the chorus, ambiguous as all good folk lyrics are, seem both to encourage and lament a friend who never stays put. As the song heads home, Basia Bartz’s violin locks in for satisfyingly climatic hoe-down.
‘Forever and more’ is a showcase for Clarke and Walker’s intertwining guitars, as the song breezes in on fingerpicking that counterpoints the languid violin and vocal lines. Walker is a consummate guitarist, and the range of techniques he deploys across a 2:50 song are more varied than some display over a whole album. That said, the guitars are never showy, and could even be described as understated, with even the instrumental break showing a balanced restraint.
The title track is perhaps the most clearly indebted to slow-burning country, with swooning washes of slide guitar, a deep, sturdy bassline, a twangy electric and a lyrical violin setting the scene for Clarke’s heartfelt plea to a lover not to be scared away by her melancholy. Clarke harmonises with herself here, as she does elsewhere on the EP, to great effect, putting the finishing touch on a classic ballad.
“I’ve never thought of crying as something strange / It helps with understanding that every tear means change.” The lyrics to ‘Every Tear Means Change’ could sum up Clarke’s whole songwriting style. In time-honoured fashion, she explores life’s sadnesses to find some kind of truth. With such a clear guiding principle, she could probably turn her hand to just about any style of music and come out with some pretty good results. But the care and thought that has gone into this EP shows a real affection and appreciation for country music, as well as a true understanding of its spirit and power. The EP is available on Bandcamp and from shows, and I would recommend that you go have a listen.
This is an interview with Ross Aitken about his Oversound project, a musical, photographic and psychogeographical exploration of the London Overground's East London Line. The interview was conducted for an upcoming feature in the Hackney Citizen. There wasn't enough space in the print edition for the whole interview, but Ross's in-depth answers about the creative process behind the project are too good to go unpublished. So here is the entire interview, which is a pretty fascinating and inspiring read.
You can listen to the project below, or with a full interactive map at http://oversound.co.uk/:
Zygmunt: Firstly, what was your main inspiration for the project? Do you use the East London line frequently, do you live in the area? What was it about this particular stretch of rail?
Ross: The inspiration for this project came from a desire to try and combine some of my interests outside of design into a single piece of work. I've been interested in music for as long as I can remember and have spent the past year especially trying to incorporate music in my work as a designer. Urban exploration has also fascinated me for a long time and these were the two main driving forces behind the project.
In particular, two existing projects provided key sources of inspiration. The most prominent is Funf; a concept album created by a British producer called Emika. To produce the album, Emika spent months producing field recordings in Berlin's famous Berghain nightclub, sampling the sound of echos, clunking pipes and even its strobe lights. These field recordings were then given to a selection of producers who were asked to each produce a track using the sample recordings only. Something about this project just struck me as being so simple and elegant and the idea really stuck with me.
The other major inspiration was an app called Secret London which basically consists of a google map of the city that features unusual places to visit; landmarks, restaurants, museums, clubs, bars, all of which have been submitted by the users. London has so much to offer its residents that some of the most interesting stuff often gets lost in the crowd, but this app makes discovering Londons hidden treasures that much easier. Again, I wanted to replicate this theme in my own work in some way.
Eventually I put two and two together and developed the concept for Oversound in order to produce a soundtrack to accompany the exploration of the city. Since I rarely travel without music it seemed logical to try and combine these activities but it was also an opportunity for me to become directly involved in the process of music production.
Also, whilst developing the project, I came across a practice known as Psychogeography which involves exploring the links between ones environment and the emotions produced by it. This really helped to influence the overall direction of the project.
I have been living in Dalston for the past two years and have a lot of friends in South London so I was very familiar with the overground and the East London Line in particular. It was an obvious choice for me when I started the project. I think traveling by overground train or bus is always a more intriguing experience then the tube because you are offered a view of the city around you. However, unless you make the effort to actually get off the train and explore these places then they remain nothing more then a view, something familiar yet unknown and intangible. After two years of traveling that same route on a fairly regular basis, I wanted to know what really went on in all those places I had seen from the train window and with this project I wanted to provide other commuters the chance to experience them too, all be it in a fairly abstract sense.
Z: How and why were the ten artists/musicians chosen?
R: A few of my collaborators on the project were musicians that I knew personally and was interested in working with. Those people I approached directly but aside from that I used social networking to find the rest of the musicians. In particular, I sent messages to the members of two Facebook music groups, one of which, SoundFjord, is dedicated to sound art and linked to a sound art gallery of the same name in Tottenham.
In choosing the artists, I wanted there to be a diversity that I knew I was unlikely to find by simply recruiting my own friends so thats why I chose to leave it up to fate in a sense, although I obviously listened to previous work by each musician before accepting them for the project.
I knew from the outset that I was only looking for ten artists as this corresponded with the number of stations on the train route.
Z: Almost all of the musicians use electronic elements, synths etc., and there are very few acoustic instruments audible, with the exception of a few pianos, some of which seem to be field recordings anyway. Is there a reason you went for electronic musicians, is it to do with the nature of sampling / use of field recordings in a practical sense, or was it an aesthetic choice?
R: It was never my intention for the project to result in purely electronic music but I think this was a fairly natural conclusion due to the necessity for the artists to work with the samples I had recorded. I think that having explained the process in my initial call for artists, those who agreed to be involved chose the project because they were used to producing electronic music and knew it was something they would be comfortable with, rather then me choosing them for that reason.
Early on I actually asked the artists to vote on whether they wanted to use their own instrumentation on the project or stick purely to the samples I had recorded. 6 out of 10 voted to use their own instruments in the production so we went with that. It just turned out that the majority of the musicians stuck to using electronic instrumentation for the project with the most notable exception being Lee Chapman who recorded his own piano piece for his track Canada Water - Surrey Quays.
Z: And what was the brief you gave them?
R: I began by asking each of the ten musicians to chose one of the journeys on the route. Then, along with the samples I had produced, I supplied the artists with visual resources that I had created in the form of videos and photographs of each area which I instructed them to consider before beginning their production. The idea was that the resource material would directly influence the artists mood and subsequently their choice of instrumentation, pace and structure for the track would reflect this.
Although I was mostly interested in each individuals response to the brief and the section of the journey that they had chosen I did provide the participants with a set of rules designed to ensure the project was coherent.
First of all, having made the samples for each journey, I separated the sound files into different folders for each part of that journey. For example, in the sample folder for Dalston to Haggerston, there was one subfolder containing samples from Ridley Road Market, another with samples from Gillette Square, another from Kingsland Road and so on. I requested that the musicians use at least one sample from each of these subfolders in order to create a detailed audio-portrait of the area, though how prominently each sample featured in their final composition was entirely up to them.
I also instructed the artists not to place samples in a geographically chronological order within the track since this would mean the tracks only matched the journey in one direction. I wanted the tracks to be interchangeable so the soundtrack would work regardless of whether the listener was travelling from north to south or vice versa. There for, I instructed the musicians not to think of their track as the journey from Dalston to Haggerston specifically (for example), but rather a reflection of the space between those two stations
I also created a folder of "shared samples" for each musician. This folder contained samples from the journeys immediately before and after there own and both of those samples had to be used. The idea behind this was to try and allow some of the atmosphere to transfer between the tracks, with elements of different tracks being detectable throughout the soundtrack, hopefully making the overall soundtrack more seamless. In regards to this, I also requested that throughout the production process, each artist discussed and compared their piece with those that would be placed immediately before and after theirs in the soundtrack.
I also gave each artist a very specific track length that they had to stick to. This roughly reflected the time their section of the journey took by train, shortened by a few seconds to avoid any overlap when listening to the soundtrack.
Z: When making the field recordings on foot, what kind of equipment did you use?
R: I used two different types of portable directional microphone to make my sample recordings. I started out using a Tascam which had two built in microphones that could be rotated to pick up sound from different directions. It also came with an external microphone which was useful for certain circumstances but ultimately I found the Tascam was too prone to picking up distortion and feedback so I started using a Zoom recorder with a built-in mic only. This proved far easier to use with more dependable results so I used the Zoom for the majority of the project.
Z: Did anyone notice you making the recordings and react?
R: It was interesting to see peoples reactions depending on where I was making the recordings. In some situations it was necessary to not only alert people to my presence but ask their permission to make a recording. Aside from this though, I quickly learned it was easier to make my recordings as subtly as possible in order to capture an authentic atmosphere and avoid confrontation. I remember one person on Ridley Road Market was particularly obstructive and took real offense to my recording, even though I wasn't remotely concerned with whatever it was he was doing. Most people however, either pretended not to notice me or else were intrigued and even helpful which was nice. It prompted a lot of interesting conversations.
Z: How did you choose what to record? Some of the recordings are obviously public, like market traders and bicycles, but some, like the man growling “stop that fucking childish shit…never grow up do ya” on Haggerston-Hoxton or the kids on Shoreditch Hight Street-Whitechapel seem like less public but more telling moments. How did those come about?
R: This all relates back to the concept of Psychogeography. It was my intention to discover aspects of each neighbourhood I walked through that would speak for themselves in a sense. I made the walk from Dalston to New Cross a number of times over the weeks I was recording just looking for interesting places that I felt would betray something of the atmosphere and character of an area. If it was something architectural for example then I would photograph it and these photographs were provided to the musicians as PDFs. More fleeting moments were captured on video and a short film was also created for each section of the route and presented to the artists.
For the samples, I was really trying to record things that were not only geographically unique to an area but that would produce interesting sounds that would not necessarily exist elsewhere. Therefore, while there are indeed more generic sounds like cars and bicycles, I did not simply record the sound of a road, since roads are everywhere, but instead I wanted the sound of a cars echo in the Rotherhithe tunnel for example or the bicycles on the canal tow path in Dalston.
Moments like that audio sample you mentioned usually came from my personal interaction with people in the area which was a really interesting experince for me. That particular vocal sample came from some mechanics at Cremer Street Garage near Hoxton station. I had approached them to ask if they'd mind me making a recording there as I felt the garage had a lot of character and really said something about East London that is not so easy to find any more. Thankfully they were happy to help and were wonderful to record. Aside from the obvious sounds of tools and machinery there were some priceless examples of cockney banter that are seldom heard just walking down the street, especially in more gentrified areas like Dalston.
Z: Some of the tracks also seem to feature beats that mirror the sound of trains -- I’m thinking especially of Theo Alexander’s Wapping-Rotherhide. Trains are naturally rhythmic things, and the Overground seems especially musical to me as its rails seem to sing or produce a note before it pulls in to or leaves a platform. I know the project was an attempt in some ways to escape the confines of the train, but do you think that elements of railway sounds snuck back in?
R: Yes definitely. One musician did actually request that some samples were made from inside the train though I was keen to avoid this as I felt it was unnecessary to include sounds that the listener was already being bombarded with. Still, I feel it was inevitable that the train provided inspiration in terms of the tracks pace and structure and I think an example of that is present on most of the tracks to a certain extent. For example, on the original mix of James Thompson's Haggerston - Hoxton the track slowed down gradually towards the end to represent the train rolling to a halt at the next station. Lee Chapman's Canada Water - Surrey Quays also mimics the trains underground journey; grinding and echoing through a tunnel in its first half before emerging into the the outside world; represented by the piano piece at the end of the track.
Z: Some of the tracks stop quite abruptly, whereas others fade out or end more formally. Was it a challenge for the artists to produce such short tracks? Did you have to cut any down?
R: Yes, I think all the artists had some difficultly in making such short pieces but I didn't cut any of them down personally. The only editing I performed was mastering, which I did on all the tracks in order to make sure they were consistent with one another and fitted together as part of the soundtrack.
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A feature on Oversound will be published in September's Hackney Citizen.
Cargo is hardly my favourite place for a night out: a door charge of £10, a £20 card limit at the bar after 10pm, and most drinks pushing £5 make it hard to have fun there, and I’m scared to ask for tap water in case they charge me. But it is a great space, and it has one major plus point as a live music venue: their sound system sounds incredible.
As I walk in to the 1883 Sunday Sessions (29 July), Stray Dogs are on stage. Their suits and haircuts are razor-sharp, and even their guitars look like they’ve felt the benefit of some careful dusting and a can of Mr. Sheen.
I always think of bands like this as being descendents of The Jam; emotional in a masculine way, well groomed, earnest but not too much, and with a commitment to playing proper songs on proper instruments well, without relying on any samples or laptops, as a matter of pride.
As they lock into the three-guitar wail of set highlight Perfect Night, the band shows that they are capable of pulling off some special moments, but even in the thickest onslaught of guitar, they seem as if they aren’t quite reaching their full potential; they aren’t quite hitting hard enough.
They’re early on this admittedly mixed bill, and the room is about half-full, so it could well be nerves. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen, the chemistry’s not right. But they seem like a band with big things to do, and on a night when they hit their stride I imagine they’re electric.
There are a few unprofessional things in the setup of the venue. For example, the cases, bags and instruments that take up half of the standing room in front of the stage, and distracting projections behind the bands of other bands playing sessions for 1883.
No matter how good it is for branding, it kind of defeats the entire point of having live bands play if you’re going to project video of other bands behind them! But these are, I guess, teething problems for this new Sunday gig.
I watch the next band, Will and The People, run through their line check with a rising feeling of dread. I’ll come clean here: I am sick to the fucking stomach of watching vaguely hippy white boys play reggae.
No matter how dirty their trainers are, they always look clean. The Jamaican-inflected “hey-ey-ey-ey”, “oooh-ooh-ooh-ooh” and even “coo-coo-coo” sounds they make to test their mics do little to dispel my fears, and neither does the uniform of tie-dye, plaid, or other “ethnic fabric” shirts they’re wearing.
But, once they start playing, they are undeniably good. Reggae is easy music to be average at, but it’s incredibly hard to really play well.
The band are technically proficient, and not just in other people’s techniques, with everyone sprinkling some gorgeous multi-part backing harmonies around Will’s supple vocal.
As this is, to all intents and purposes, a reggae band, they play the traditional vaguely-political song, which comes off a bit patronising and cliche (Sample lyric: “my friend he’s called Natty / he sleeps on the streets … I wish his parents had given a shit”. Jesus.), two soppy but heartfelt love songs, one of which, Masterpiece, is genuinely lovely, and three songs about weed.
They even do a cover of Bob Marley’s Concrete Jungle, the irony of playing which at Cargo seems to be lost on everyone, and they absolutely play the shit out of it.
With a few more great songs in their set to capitalise on their skill and chemistry, they will be a formidable live band. They’re easily the best performers of the night; they own the stage.
Other highlights include a medley of Ibiza club tunes in a reggae style, which must go down pretty well at festivals, and their van, which is parked outside, and decorated with a full-side portrait of a stoned hippy. Apparently these guys are getting pretty big in Holland, and there’s every chance you’ll hear Masterpiece on the radio at some point.
Three guys wrapped in Union Jacks have been running round the venue for most of the night chanting “TEAM GB!” and are probably having the most fun of anyone in Shoreditch tonight.
And they turn out to also be loyal fans of Cave Painting, a band who have been picking up a fair amount of buzz recently on music blogs. The singer has a nice falsetto, and it is nicely supported washes of guitar and synth, which sometimes verge dangerously on becoming cloudy.
But the real highlight for me is the drummer. Somehow he manages to find new accents in old grooves, when he isn’t redefining the beat altogether. His style is precise and minimalist, and he’s a joy to watch.
The band creates a soundscape in each song, like a cresting wave that never quite breaks. And sometimes you wish it would break. Although there is something admirable in their restraint, when they finally unleash hell on their set closer, it’s a genuinely cathartic moment. Their set could probably just do with a few more.
Anyway, 1883 Sunday Sessions seems like it’ll be a good night, with six great bands and acoustic artists for a tenner. Try and catch the next one.
Instead of the spare, subby electronic soundscape of Björk’s original, SPIRITWO’s version of ‘Oceania’ rides in atop a whirling bed of polyrhythmic Darbuka drums, flutes, sampled electro kicks, the jangling steel strings of Ouds and reverberating washes of quarter-tonal backing vocals.
Since SPIRITWO have changed the rhythm of the song almost completely, the resulting sound is something akin to the early output of Björk-collaborators Dirty Projectors, who incorporated middle-eastern rhythms and singing styles into western art-rock to critical acclaim. SPIRITWO’s thrilling version of ‘Oceania’ makes a strong case for the intuitiveness of this particular fusion; especially in the hands of musicians versed in middle-eastern tradition.
Whilst Dirty Projectors took a studious approach to their fusion project, starting with rock music and meticulously incorporating eastern textures, SPIRITWO seem to start with rhythm and energy, and channel them through a rock song to create a true hybrid.
Of course, the star of the show here is Yael Claire’s voice, every bit as muscular and elastic as Björk’s, but with a foreign ululation used to striking effect in several of the well-placed rhythm breaks. Claire’s vocal performance here is full of depth and character, and she interjects her perfectly controlled tonal fluctuations with whoops, croaks and even laughter.
In the modern, polished pop landscape it is actually quite startling to hear a voice so resolutely human, especially so directly, placed as it is here at the very forefront of the mix. Claire also sings the choir of backing vocals, which swoop in and out of the song, gliding over the whirlwind of instrumentation.
‘Oceania’ is, of course, the song that Björk sang at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and SPIRITWO’s version of the song is timed to tie in with a sporting event taking place in our back gardens this summer.
Accompanying the song is a stop-motion video shot and edited by Claire with collaborators Jon Bagge and Tal Lotan, which tells the story of her journey to Hackney from Israel. Residents will recognise a lot of the locations along Regents Canal and Kingsland Estate, which are intercut with the beaches of Tel Aviv.
Claire describes Hackney as the place where she “finally connected with other musicians from the Middle East,” including IBO, who provides live Darbuka beats and percussion arrangements, Amir Shoat, who engineered and mastered the recording, and Charlie Cawood, guitarist of SPIRITWO and Turkish folk band Opaz Ensemble, who adds Oud and Saz stringed instruments.
With the video also featuring Nazir Tanboull’s mural ‘The King’s Land’ from the Kingsland Estate, SPIRITWO’s ‘Oceania’ is a true testament to the quality that can be achieved through collaboration between musicians using DIY processes, and is a good example of the kind of innovation that can occur when people are technologically empowered to pursue their projects.
The current proliferation of home recording equipment will hopefully continue to throw up gems such as this project; a well-executed, well-produced cover that takes the song from its original context and adds depth, meaning and warmth in its translation to a new musical tradition.
This is a pretty solid record. And The Fades are a pretty solid band. If they headlined your friend’s band’s show, you would stay to watch them. This record isn’t going to change the way anybody thinks about rock music, but it does nicely condense ten-plus years of guitar bands, from the early-2000s stop-start jangle-and-shout of The Rakes to some heavy, sludgy riffing in the style of the modern Arctic Monkeys.
The Fades are obviously four guys who love guitar music, and are well versed in its techniques, flourishes, and spirit. There’s plenty of dual-guitar riffing, tight fills from the rhythm section, and lyrics dealing fairly equally with heartache, nonchalance and nonsense.
There are some real standouts; lead single Joy gallops along on a propulsive bassline and rolling toms which give way to a soaring chorus, the album’s best, and the song manages to bring an adult perspective on the hardships of co-dependence and commitment, with its refrain of “I want to see it through / I want to be with you,” echoing sadly and hopefully through the storm of pained noise the band kicks up. It’s the most finely focused two-and-a-half minutes on the album, and must be ecstatic live.
Most songs are also augmented by nice production touches. Handclaps, tambourines, backing vocals, shouts and falsettos, guitar effects and vocal distortion are all deployed tastefully, bringing these recordings to life. The Fades seem to acknowledge that these additions are often necessary for this style of music, which can easily lose a lot of its immediacy and energy between the gig venue and the recording studio.
Speaking of live, many of the songs sound like they would work well – even, perhaps, better – in a dark, sweaty pub with a can of cheap lager. A few songs, Meccano, Foot In Your Mouth and the fun Ronseal-lyricism of I Love Punk Rock, are all based around catchy vocal lines which build up through repetition to a crescendo involving the always-obligatory “woah-oh”ing from the backing singers.
It’s a tried-and-tested formula, but The Fades are good at it, although they do more interesting things elsewhere in the album, such as the gorgeous Beatles-y harmonies in Eight Times A Day, which features guitar playing enough like George Harrison to make me wonder if the title is an Eight Days A Week homage.
Closer and title track Ragnarok climaxes in a suitably apocalyptic way, with a great chord change, growls, screams, wailing guitars, and even a fake fade-out. It’s a good end to a decent album, but the songs I will keep coming back to, like Joy, Eight Times A Day and I Love Punk Rock, are the ones where The Fades set aside their professionalism and instead write something direct and heartfelt.
Once bands attain a certain level of ability, it sometimes becomes harder for them to get past technicality to something more essential in a song. Punk rock, especially, has always been at its best when it is driven by a purity of intention, rather than a high level of skill, and The Fades’ best tracks manage to marry competency and conviction to create something that taps into the raw essence of this music.
