Jazz in the Cube garden on a summer evening.. the idea might sound like one of those things that people would take on board as just a pleasant ambient backdrop for their conversations over a drink and a cigarette: something akin to “Dinner Jazz” playing on the radio as a background to a middle class dinner party. But when Dave Perry took his alto saxophone outside to play a solo set to kick off the live music for the evening, people were unusually attentive and became entranced by the bewitching sounds.
In typical Cube style we’d forgotten to turn on the garden lights, so as the end of day light faded into an ever-darkening twilight, the garden became illuminated as much by the unearthly glow of the Neon sign above as the sun itself and descended into a reverent hush. Not that sort of jazz gig nervous hush where people want to chat but feel too self-conscious about getting glares from nearby beard-stroking jazz aficianados, but relaxed sighs at beautiful tones and playfully lyrical excursions reverberating gently back from the surrounding buildings. In the background, the occasional distant sound of police sirens going up Stokes Croft seemed a world away (as well as too much of a soundtrack cliche to be real).
On the first few pieces, I can’t claim to have been able to follow quite where the music was going (but then I don’t think it was intended to be “understood” as such). Instead it was just a joy for me to hear someone making such warm and emotive sounds and to gradually tune in as he seemed to explore various melodic ideas – wandering away from anything as confining as a rigorous song structure to improvise over. There was also a certain playful element (cheeky even?) in the variety of sounds he was bringing forth from his sax – not that feeling sometimes associated with experimental music of someone trying to coax awkward sounds out of an instrument that it was never intended to play just to be seen to be pushing back the boundaries. No – this came across as much more of a man at great ease with – and having great sympathy for – his sax. It was a surprise to hear later that this was actually an instrument he had just recently borrowed from a friend and was rather unfamiliar with.
On some of the later pieces, a rhythmic groove seemed to evolve (though still a million miles from a vamp or a self-imposed jam) around which he intertwined his musical ideas. Even one of the Cube neighbours was reported to be seen nodding gently as they did the washing up. (Good to know that sound coming from the Cube can occasionally be enjoyed by our neighbours, rather than a cause for annoyance.. a tricky thing at times for a venue in a residential area).
The set came to an end to appreciative applause and smiles all round at having experienced something that was (certainly to my mind) rather special and touching. Those people who had earlier stepped in off the street and got no further than settling down on the metal steps down into the garden wandered inside to pay their entrance dues. The garden lights finally got switched on. And this was just the start of the evening..
(And thanks to my fellow volunteers that night, who so graciously let me derelict my duties to hear a bit more of the music).
Back in November the rather marvellous Qu Junktions put on musical odd ball and all round top banana Eugene Chadbourne, ably supported by The Cube Orchestra with Guest Conductor Nick Sorenson
Nick came up with an interesting score with which to improvise with, it’s not that hard to unerstand but I can’t rebothered to spend ages explaining it all, needless to say it worked in creating a piece of work that didn’t have the audience fleeing for their lives, suprising really as at certain stages bass solos, penny whistles and egg shakers were in liberal use:
And then on to the maverick Eugene Chadbourne, I’m glad to say his odd ball charm won over an appreciative audience, so much so that he got his electric rake out, just check the clip out further on. I really enjoyed his first tune and especially the marvellous ‘Girl From Al Qaida’ played to the tune ‘Girl from Ipanema’ by Astrid Gilberto. He chuckled to himself whilst singing the song, one guy was guffawing throughout the gig. Anyhow enough of me, over to the man himself:
And for the encore, his electric rake:
Oh it was a good, good, night with lots of happy faces at the end. My thanks to all who came and to Mark and Chiz for putting on The Orchestra.
See you next year, Big love and Ciao for now Richie Paradise
Sadly, possibly because of a Qu Junktions final jaunt at the soon to be closed Seymour’s Family Club, The Cube was nearly empty for a fantastic programme of short films and musical performances put on by our like-minded Birmingham counterparts.
I managed to record most of the ubergeeky ZX Spectrum Orchestra performance which you can check below . . .
If you’re in Birmingham in February you can catch the Flatpack Festival put on by the same people which will feature a performance by my computer ( NOTE while we’re in gloriously pedantic geek mode : I say “my computer” but he’s not generally meant to be called “my computer”, he actually ismy computer, so it’s “mr_hopkinon’s computerâ„¢”, or just “The Computer” to you thank you ! )
Got no pics or nothing, but I feel honourable mention should be made of our own 7 inch cinema of sorts – “7s & 8s” featuring Super8 films and & 7 inch singles put on by Cube projectionist, Ali, the next day, and almost next door in Cafe Kino.
It’s been a while, but I wasn’t going to miss this one . . .
Last Friday found The Cube holding the 2nd ( or is it the 3rd . . ? ) part of QuWack, the mini-festival of 15 minute performances by uncategoriseable soloists who are cut by the closing Cube curtains whether they are ready to finish or not.
Do you remember the first time, QuWack ( M ) ? It was in May, back on the other side of 2006’s summer, and consisted of 2 days ( Hence the 2nd or 3rd part confusion above ).
That M stood for Male rather than May though, and this time it was QuWack ( F ) – see if you can work out what that’s for . . .
I didn’t hear anyone particularly express this, but you might think forcing a gender divide could be contentious or just plain unnecessary . . . but I think, like the other arbitrary rules, such as the 15 minute lenght of sets and solo artists only, it placed a constraint within which to be creative that was very effective over all – just this time it’s effect was for those choosing who to programme . . .
Events put on by Cube associates like Blackout and Venn, and alternative/electronic events just generally across the globe, have many times been criticised for being too weighted in favour of male performers, and even though there was still twice as many men than women over all, I suspect it could have been even further out of wack if that arbitrary rule hadn’t been in place . . .
I don’t want to bang on about it too much, but I reckon one of the main reasons an imbalance exists generally is because, regardless of gender, being approached in the first place is so important in giving you a chance to think about what you can do . . . and for a variety of reasons men just seem to get asked more.
In blogging the first one I think I praised Chiz and Mark for coming up with a format that forced the performers to think very carefully what they could do in the allotted time. I for one enjoyed making a one-off set for The Computer, which , not so incidentally, probably wouldn’t have spent the summer touring the country if Mark hadn’t asked me at some point to come up with a way to “perform” my electronic covers live . . .
Anyway, as with the first two nights every single performer . . .
. . . took to the challenge with style, and, for my money, once again, there wasn’t a duff performance all night. Unfortunately it also shared similarly sparse audience figures as the very first M night had – though the second M was packed out as I remember, possibly thanks to the draw of Kid Carpet’s name.
Continuing the form from before was Adam Faraday’s live documentation . . .
. . . he videoed all the performers across the evening onto a single tape . . . and no sooner than some footage was captured, was it projected onto the closed curtains during the setting up for the next act. A simple but highly effective method of visually pulling the event together and building expectation for the next performance.
Also expertly tying everything together, and also reprising a role from the first time, was Lea Potinek . . .
. . . once again introducing the acts with a sharp sense of cabaret. Lea as you may have noticed from above was also the first act on, doing a seven and a half minute performance. She also ended with another seven and a half minutes so dividing her 15 minutes in a echo of Twocsinak’s performance that was split in half over the two M nights.
Sadly, and a bit stupidly, I managed to miss Lea’s opening performance as I was oblivious to it starting, enjoying Nina’s DJ ing in the bar . . .
. . . but happily caught Lea’s closing one, an electronic interpretation of ‘The Erl King’ by Schubert ( although my camera didn’t ).
The first performance I got to see, presumably flown in from the States, was The Electricfyin’ Casey O . . .
. . . who sent us to sexy preset Casio heaven with some super fresh moves and cool, and manic, comedy command of the mic.
. . . who completely mesmorised the audience performing three amazing songs for electric guitar and voice that I later found out she had only written that week. Even more astounding, given just how arresting the performance was, this was the first time she had performed it that style, i.e. not using electronics, for two and a half years. Seems a great waste for what could have been in-between, but I’m very grateful she decided to come back.
The next performer was someone I had not heard of before – Chipper . . .
. . . Her setup was cello with live processing via laptop, and also succeeded in captivating the audience. This was one single piece over the 15 minutes which was artfully constructed with a real feel for the over all musical dynamic of the piece rather than getting caught up in the technical possibilities of processing. It reminded me a bit in feel to Team Brick’s show stopping finale to the M night, and I think he dug it too as I heard a distinctive low “yeaha-ah!” when the appreciative applause broke out as the last note fell away.
Back after a short break, with Rosie swapping DJing with Nina in the Bar . . .
. . . the second half started with Lady Lucy . . .
. . . Originally billed as “Lady Lucy and the MPC”, though due to a last minute change of plan it was Lady and her laptop instead ( stay tuned for the first LL & MPC outing . . . ). After a reprise of “I ride my Sk8board, yeh” as featured in her recent “Don’t Do Tricks” DVD launch. Lady took to the mic, much to everyone’s delight, with a rambling but somehow completely hilarious story about being advised to learn to love karaoke at her art school interview, and brought up, on the feed from her laptop which was on the cinema screen behind her, scanned images of her paintings of Blondie, hand clicked on in Windows Picture and Fax viewer. Then, using a downloaded midi file as backing, Lady performed a version of ‘Rapture‘, and on finishing asked for a female volunteer from the audience. Jessica Marlowe obliged and they sang The Bangles ‘Manic Monday’ together, after Googling live on stage for the lyrics, with much of the audience joining in the shamelessly shambolic fun.
After that delightful disorderliness, Irina Artamonova . . .
. . . who I’d never caught a performance by before ( though I’d hoped to see staff panic only wall unit at Venn ). She came in contrast to the preceding chaos with what I presume was a well rehearsed, certainly a well structured one. Behind a whole raft of impressive looking electronics, no laptop there ( at least I didn’t spot one ) she built up a beautiful, noisy and slightly terrifying, as in awesome, piece. Particularly engaging was the way she skilfully worked her voice in.
This was followed by Rasha Shaheen who has gigged quite a lot with her solo stuff, I recommend her album Hatshepsut, and I assumed she would be playing some tracks from her regular set. Instead, presumably with the M / F theme in mind Rasha appeared very strikingly on stage ( though not that visible in the pics ) in full Niqab and performed the Islamic call for Prayer, or Adhan, with layers of electronic processing . . .
. . . After the performance Rasha explained that this piece, which she had been performed before, is in protest against the fact that it is forbidden for women to perform the prayer. Rasha then said after this serious piece she would like to do something more fun – show her “home movie” . . .
. . . Sheesha – how to prepare one. With much musical equipment on stage the subtitles were a bit obscured from some audience angles. A plucky soul took the initiative to get on stage and to rearrange stuff to give everyone a better view. Accidentally, and unintentionally rather theatrically, she cut the film by pushing down the onstage laptop’s lid to her brief embarrassment, but actually to the audience’s, including Rasha’s warm hearted amusement.
After the film resumed, with no further hitches, Lea had the honour of introducing herself once more . . .
. . . and finished off the evening with that fine electronic reworking of Schubert.
All in all a very entertaining evening. It felt a shame not to have been enjoyed by a fuller audience, though at least one person I spoke to rather enjoyed the fact they saw something so good so exclusively. It was full of stuff, but seemed to end too soon – I would have loved to have had the chance to see a second F night as before . . . not sure what the plan is now for QuWack, but if you hear it comes back, I suggest you make tracks.
Meanwhile here’s a couple of YouTubes of moments I managed to capture . . .
This Friday & Saturday saw a new mini-festival brought to us by Qu Juncktions . . . QuWack
This was QuWack, number 1, “M” ( for all Male. Next, obviously, will be “F” for all female . . . )
Two nights, seven and a half solo male performers, all categorised as uncatergorisable, doing one fifteen minute set each – the “half” men being one man doing a pair of seven and a half minute performances to end the first day and start the second – with the curtains closing bang on the 900th second ( or 450th ) whether they’d finished or not . . . geddit?
That’s what we were promised, and broadly got, although Saturday had an extra bonus performance ( from George Headfall ) and a Chiz curtain calculation error meant Kid Carpet got cut off at the 10 minute mark – but he came back almost immediately for a 5 minute encore much to the crowd’s delight.
So, who were the fellas? Have a look see . . .
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
It was all top notch and a tribute to good thinking by Chiz & Mark of Qu for giving so many singularly talented odd-bods a set set time to prepare something stunning for.
A particular inspirational stroke was Chiz’s idea, faultlessly executed by Adam Faraday, to video the performances which were then played back ( sans audio ) immediately onto the closed curtain while the change-overs took place . . .
. . . so bringing a wonderful coherence to the over all events.
. . . from ( separately ) mr_hopkinson’s computer and ( pictured ) Kid Carpet . . . which leaves out-on-their-owners Don Mandarin ( karaoke of your own songs ), just off the plane from Berlin international electro superstar Kurt Wiesel ( needs no introduction – this man is HUGE, if you haven’t heard of him, you will . . . ), a beautiful little set from last minute slot filler Fránçois, plus S J Esau, who I sadly missed as I was taking care of my computer after his set ( sorry, Sam ! ).
Friday’s audience was a little bit undersubscribed – not too bad though – but Saturday was completely packed out – all in all amazing.
The one female performance presence in this male, though handsomely un-macho atmosphere, was multi-linguist Lea Piontek, who introduced acts carabet style in the spotlight in front of the closed curtains . . .
. . . including Kurt’s intro in German and Fránçois’ in French.
Loads of pics up on Sparror . . . and if you want mp3s of my compy’s Cutler tributes you can get one on his myspace space ( search for Ivor’s image ), and the other on Rob Da Bank’s listen again ( around the 1:04 mark ), if your reading this around the week it was written . . .
Richie Paradise
