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Live From Birmingham: Eleanor Friedberger, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Weaves & Cavern Of Anti-Matter

Live From Birmingham: Eleanor Friedberger, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Weaves & Cavern Of Anti-Matter
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Eleanor Friedberger
Academy 3
September 6, 2016

She's on tour, all the way from upstate New York (economically hounded out of Brooklyn only recently), and surely slightly disappointed by the meagre turn-out in the Academy's smallest room. How many here? Perhaps somewhere between 20 and 30, but all looking like ardent fans of Eleanor Friedberger, one of rock'n'roll's more individualist talents. Well, perhaps her solo material isn't so determinedly strange, restless and unpredictable as her songwriting with brother Matthew, as a member of The Fiery Furnaces, who are certainly one of rock'n'roll's even more individualist acts. They've been on hiatus (as these bands often say) since 2011, which is around about the time that Eleanor's solo activities gained prominence. She released her third album, New View, at the beginning of this year. Whether by design, or simply as a result of her solo penning tendencies, Friedberger's own songs stem from a more traditional rock source, often using the chugging garage band as a template, not least The Velvet Underground, and their immediate followers, the Modern Lovers. Maybe she's even into Creedence Clearwater Revival. She's certainly into Neil Young, at least within her own cranium. Anyway, the songs have an attractively straightforward riff-base, highlighting Friedberger's eloquent lines, still wriggly in their phrasing and timing, slipping in slightly askew images and direct, uncluttered observations. She's deliberately naive and subtly dark, as Lou Reed has paved the way.

Friedberger's trio features a bassist who frequently takes solos, clicking in an effects pedal fuzz, sometimes switching to guitar, then spouting in the more expected fashion. The drummer maintains a propulsive beat, keeping trucking without any fancy moves. Many of the songs are thoughtfully medium-paced, but then Friedberger hits a cluster of faster, harder songs, not least "Stare At The Sun," beginning to pace about the stage, locking eyes with her bassman. The rapport increases, but it looks like some other shows on the tour were set for 90 minutes, with this one just stepping over an hour. Perhaps a measure of the difficult, low-key atmosphere. When she namechecked the Furnaces, there was a sole murmur of recognition from the bowels of the gathering, Friedberger joking (or probably not joking) that this was the least enthusiastic response she'd ever heard. Not really her fault, not really the audience's fault, just a crucial lack of critical mass. Though the crowd might be sparse, there's an enthusiastic call for an encore, so Friedberger returns to play a few more, the pinnacle of the night being "Single Again," one of the best songs from the Furnaces book. This was a valiant attempt at a gig, under subdued circumstances, but a good show nevertheless.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius
The Tin
September 17, 2016

This Saturday night show in the Coventry canal basin was the climax of the Synthcurious organisation's full day of modular synthesiser jamming/gossipping, which also included an afternoon Krautrock documentary screening. Pye Corner Audio opened up the evening gig, a one-man operation for Martin Jenkins, who's been active in this guise since 2010. His electronic palette reflects environmental calm and uppity techno in equal measure, although the manifestation of the latter is decelerated and neutered, present more in a textured way. The use of broadly chorusing sonics can cause problems for those who prefer sounds of a more clipped, stark, blipped or blobular nature. PCA is hung up on a 1980s bloat-spreading of chords.

It's difficult to believe that Hans-Joachim Roedelius is now aged 81. At least in the subtle lighting of The Tin's old-brick interior, he seems much younger, as he leans over his laptop, pondering the next sonic move. His appearances in the UK are relatively rare, and Roedelius may never have played in Coventry before. Back in the 1970s, he was part of Cluster (with Dieter Moebius) and Harmonia (with Moebius and Neu's Michael Rother), also working regularly with Brian Eno. Tonight, he's joined by Christopher Chaplin, the pair having being collaborators for the last five years. Chaplin is often jarringly high in the mix, at least during the first stretch of the set. This is also because he's responsible for most of the punctuating harshness, even if his occasional forceful eruptions are heavily rationed. These fleeting bursts emerge from a placid lake of Roedelius contemplation. Hans-Joachim is much less intent than usual on playing piano sounds, spending most of his time burrowing into laptop files and triggering organic washes with his smaller key-set. The duo build an inner space that invites the full crowd to stand transfixed, mulling over the glacial drift of the music, pieces that sound like an ongoing suite, dedicated to making the next hour into a common flow of meditational unfurlng. Toasting the audience with his glass of red wine, Roedelius is tempted into an encore, returning alone at the piano-keyboard, to offer a lullaby. As it progresses, he chances upon the delicate melody of Eno's "By The River," from 1977's Before And After Science. A beautiful conclusion to a masterful séance of a set...

Weaves/Dilly Dally
Hare & Hounds
September 18, 2016

In this double package of Canadian rock combos, Dilly Dally were the ostensible headliners, but Weaves were the far superior outfit. This latter Toronto four-piece appeared to have spent several weeks in the UK, or at least European parts, honing their live skills via a heavy datesheet. This was the first time that your scribe had confronted their fleshy essence, although already seduced by their recorded work. Their antecedents aren't massively clear. They're too song-based to be post-post-rock, too convoluted to be punky and too adventurously virtuoso to entirely avoid comparisons with the outsider avant-garde. The crew that most spring to mind are Pere Ubu, particularly as singer Jasmyn Burke tends to command the stage with an easy-going intensity, partly twinkling with humour, partly staring out the front row of the audience, with an unhinged curiosity. Her mannered phrasing always holds a melodic charm, but her general delivery is swoopingly rocky, locked in with the comparably verbal guitar lines of Morgan Waters, who works a telepathic bond with drummer Spencer Cole. Once they count in a song, nothing can arrest their precision careening. When Waters lets his bottleneck flash, singing up and down his strings, we can't help avoiding a Captain Beefheart comparison. The heavily driving "One More" is unavoidably their best number, and also the rockiest, delivering the necessary riffs for maximum excitement, but some of their other more sinuous songs weave a different spell, out of ambling rhythms and spoken-sung intricacies. Weaves are affable, but also strangely menacing, the former when talking to the crowd, the latter once a song explodes.

The official headliners of this gig, Dilly Dally, also arrive from Toronto. Their name suggests something quainter than their actual hard-ass post-grunge onslaught, to the point where it's completely misleading. Perhaps this is intentional. The vocals of Katie Monks are a strained, throaty, anguished, raspy yowl of anger and frustration, very powerful, but also not that well controlled. She's doubtless in thrall to the sound of Courtney Love (Hole) and Kat Bjelland (Babes In Toyand), but both of those singers can beautifully sculpt their hoarse rawness, and direct it with an unerring cut. Monks also plays guitar, in rhythm fashion, and with a much harsher sound than lead guitarist Liz Ball, who operates in a completely contrasting sonic sphere. Ball is constantly picking out circular phrases, with a heavy reverb, sneaking around the riffing pile-ups of her colleagues. She's the most creative member of the band. Dilly Dally only released their debut album last year, so they're already quite advanced. Set beside Weaves, though, they sounded very direct and basic in their approach, missing the perceptively ironic performance stance, intricate musicianship and advanced songwriting abilities of their opening act.

Cavern Of Anti-Matter
Hare & Hounds
September 21, 2016

Following the possibly not permanent 2011 dissolution of Stereolab, guitarist Tim Gane has been recording and gigging with his Cavern Of Anti-Matter since 2013, focusing his old band's concerns into a narrower tunnel. Stripping away the exotica and pop influences, he's retained a much tougher allegiance to the Krautrock elements of Stereolab's sound (Faust, Can, Neu!), repetitive beats are refined, synthesisers ruptured, and guitar lines doggedly riffed. The current material is now all-instrumental, and usually of an extended length, all the better to accumulate intense rhythmic and texturing mass. Gane is helped along in this mission by Holger Zapf (analogue synth-banks) and Joe Dilworth (old Stereolab sticks). Zapf tends to be a subliminal presence physically, obscured behind his racks of gear, but his sonics are no mere meek presence, often providing dense, bassy pulses, as well as higher-end oscillations. Dilworth and Gane are the personalities of the combo, bantering consistently throughout the set, often at odds with the serious bent of the music. At the recent Green Man festival, in the Welsh Brecon Beacons, this band played for barely 45 minutes, but upstairs at the Hare &Hounds pub, they run on for just over an hour, allowing even greater progressions of intensity. Gane might keep his riffs quite minimal, but like a systems musician, he covertly increases the content, sneaking in a filigree, twisting out a variation, upping the level of chug. Dilworth is constantly taut, powering with extreme force, making some numbers surprisingly danceable, like a radically alternative disco variant. It's this combination of rock, electronics, funkiness and abstraction that prevents any sense of monotony arising, as the audience allows itself to be carried aloft, speeding along on top of the slowly-shifting pulses.

Photo Credit: Inès Elsa Dalal

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