dontmovemusic:

Something For The Weekend

Well hello there.

Sitting here with a glass of cheap chilean red, listening to a 12” of Eric Chenaux, the French-Canadian singer who came to the Tin Angel on Saturday night, I feel compelled to give up my blogging virginity to anyone who cares to take it!

Let me begin by explaining that the Tin Angel is not just the place where I happen to work, rehearse, eat and sleep, but is, in fact — speaking completely subjectively now of course — probably the warmest, most intimate and intense music venue in the Midlands. But it’s more than that too, I would describe it (and its sister venue, Taylor John’s House) as a resting place for weary musicians, a sanctuary for the creative, a place for the internally captive to unload some of their anguish, a general shelter for the gentle from the blood-splattered pavements of Spon Street. That goes for the Tin Angel as a music venue and also for the Tin Angel as a cafe, a rehearsal space, a gallery and a record label headquarters. It really is a hub of creativity within, what some may consider, an otherwise barren city.

Now you’re probably thinking “why is this guy using his blog to shamelessly promote his place of work?”

Or “he appears to be head over heels in love with a music venue. That’s a bit weird!”

Well the reasons are two-fold.

The first is because I’m starting this blog as a vehicle for my musical compadres and me to communicate a little more with the outside world, and, since “The Tin” has been supplying us with electricity and equipment and jobs and a sofa-bed and Red Stripe and toasties — not to mention a record deal! — for several years now, it has become pretty fundamental to the existence of DON’T MOVE!. In short, I feel that it would be appropriate to begin our blog by paying tribute to our musical home.

The second reason is to set the scene for the awesome gigs that prompted me to write the blog in the first place. Just a couple of days back, I had one of those weekends where I had nothing in particular planned, so I just went to the Tin gigs by default, with no prior research into who or what I would be watching. Not suprisingly, I found myself susceptable to severe amounts of enjoyment! On Friday night: the Black Twig Pickers, a Virginian trio who — covering banjo, fiddle, fiddlesticks, guitar, washboard and harmonica — played straight-up bluegrass and old-time with all the feel, authenticity and gusto that it deserves! This was a music which I was much exposed to and influenced by as a teen, but have been somewhat deprived of in recent years. There’s something so organic and truthful about this music which is, generally speaking, harmonically and structurally so simple. Technical music bullshit aside though, it’s the simplicity and innocence that are the reasons why I always find myself coming back to folk music — American and English.

As I clocked off my shift at 6 o’clock on Saturday, I was unsure where I was going to be for the rest of the evening. There were various gigs going on in other places, and I was familiar with some of the artists. I had not heard of the band that was due to play at the Tin. I was intrigued, however, by the growing pile of instruments and other clutter that was occupying an increasing amount of Tin Angel floor space. The three gentlemen putting it there were the Dead Rat Orchestra, two of which were heavily bearded, two of which bare-footed, and all of which very pleasant and polite. It quickly became apparent that they were arranging a rather unique stage set-up, that they were assembling and testing each instrument /object individually. Amidst harmoniums (or should it be harmonia??), miniature bass drums and laptops were logs, meat cleavers and matches — the one thing there wasn’t was space. Skip forward three hours. The three men carefully position themselves among their junk to begin their set.

As a fan of pop music, I would normally be slightly fearful of such a bucketload of instruments and toys. I’d be suspicious that it was all just going to be a hollow stunt to impress, a decoy for the lack of melodic hook. But what followed did impress me right through. It made me smile. It made me weep. There were certain recurring atmospheric themes: the long harmonium drones, the scratchy, high-end, jerky bowing on the fiddle, the hypnotic waves of a toy-like nylon-string guitar. But the set was diverse too — hand chimes, cymbals, heavy drum rhythms, synths, knives, a hissy tape player and bowed clock chimes all arranged sensitively within a collection of disparate and tangible song ideas. They maintained a true attention to the minute details, a focus on the tiny subtleties in music that are often overlooked. It seemed like a head-on collision of sweetness and awkwardness….

…The fiddle plays a slow and meloncholic traditional folk tune which lightly dresses a low muddy drone from the harmonium. Once the mood has been suitably established, a voice from somewhere in the depths of the clutter begins to sing a soft and understated harmony with the fiddle. The lyrics are virtually indeterminable since he’s making no attempt to go anywhere near a microphone. I begin to feel that reassuring tingle of sadness and despair. Two verses of raw, timeless emotion later, another member stands up and throws — from a basket he’s clutching under one arm — what appears to be a small shiny piece of metal out in front of him, even further towards the already spacially-invaded audience. It drops and pierces the soft cloud of toil and heartbreak with its high ringing that seems to hang there long after the sound of it has died. On closer inspection, it’s hexagonal. He drops another, also hexagonal, but its sound on impact with the floor is higher, louder and entirely different altogether. He drops another. And another. And a few together. More frequently now. And the voice begins to throw some too, whilst continuing with its haunting melody. The sound is constant, like a heavy shower of sweetness, and rips the melancholy into shreds of ecstasy until that’s all that fills the room. As I felt my eyes fill with water, I was glad I had stayed.

I smoked my cigarette in silence. The break ended, and the Dead Rat Orchestra returned to the stage, this time accompanied by Eric Chenaux. The dark, bearded, gallic Canadian rested his small nylon string guitar on his crossed thigh, and his band started up again. They played respectfully and sensitively, and their bold experimenting served equally well as a backdrop for Chenaux’s gentle songs as it did for their own engaging performance. Chenaux’s songs also carried a timelessness with them. Born somewhere in the cosmos of ‘folk’, they seemed to have travelled lightyears in the vessel of Eric’s accomplished, adventurous and effortless fingerstyle guitar playing, the unorthadox structures and his uber-soft and understated — yet, still playful — delivery, to a contemporary landscape that is as vast and open as it is dusty and claustrophobic, as dark and frightening as it is bright and optimistic.

Well its been a real pleasure sharing my inspiring weekend with you! I hope we can do this again sometime…

Mason

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