Edition 34 of Laughing Stock. A new year. A new agenda. LS editors Rich & Connah out and about. A weekend of music in the city, presented in two acts.
PROLOGUE
London, back end of Jan. Chill in the air, big coats on. Giddy feeling of people breaking dry Jan for payday weekend. Shows to be seen, small glasses of red wine to be consumed. Euston carnage is two days away. Drink it in.
ACT I, ECSTATIC SHOWCASE, CAFE OTO, DALSTON
Friday night, the Ecstatic label showcase at Dalton’s Cafe Oto. One of the most exciting labels gathering some of their most exciting talent to show off how exceptional they are all are, a collaborative, interchanging 3 hours of future ambient and electronic avant garde. Felisha Ledsma, sat at her desk with her laptop and equipment like your all too familiar working from home set up, except she’s constructing dreamy soundscapes overlaid with field recording chatter, remixed and retooled on the fly, and you’re retooling a powerpoint deck about this month’s delivery. Ben Vince, all red trousers and saxophone, on stage with Cucina Povera who’s chanting melodically like a 14th century monk, hypnotising us with her gentle, looped incantations as Vince unleashes honking bursts from his horn, again remixing his noise on the go into wonderful accompaniments to Povera’s mesmerising delivery. A triumphant mix of ancient and modern, an evocative, intoxicating set.
To the projector and Romance, still anonymous, still incredible. Here (or not) soundtracking scenes from Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse creating a fractured narrative, all French rivera, smoking, and lust. Dreamlike, transfixing the initially chatty crowd into meditative silence, Haydée Politoff running rings around the infatuated male protagonist as Romance does what Romance does best; evoking memories locked in your brain, snippets of long lost dreams, slowcore beauty. Back to the decks as label boss Not Waving tests out the Oto speakers with some industrial thump, accompanied by an initially missing-in-action Ben Vince on the evening’s highlight, a noisy blast of brass x beats, a thumper to bounce to, the most visceral sounds to shake up the chin-strokers.
Finally, to another Not Waving collaborator, Spivak’s dreamy conclusion, the first guitar of the night wielded, Midwife shoegaze crossed with icy Chromatics cool. Bathed in red light, intoxicating with her hazy smokescreen calls. Out into the chilly night, invigorated, wishing they had sold copies of their leopard featuring gig poster to stick on our walls and remind us that Ecstatic deal in only the ecstatic, musical nominative determinism.
*INTERVAL. SLEEP, AWAKE, VISIT GALLERIES, MISS EXHIBITIONS BY A MONTH, EAT THREE TYPES OF CHINESE ROAST MEAT AND BRAISED TOFU, SAMPLE SAM SMITH’S NORTH PRICED DELIGHTS*
ACT II, SPACE AFRIKA, KINGS PLACE, KINGS CROSS
Saturday night, still quite nippy, scarves protecting windpipes. An event. The Laughing Stock album of 2021 to be performed in full with strings and guests aplenty. Space Afrika’s beguiling Honest Labour played out in real time as god intended. Seated, reverent. All wood-panelled properness within spiting distance of The Guardian. The familiar set up of electronics at a central desk, surrounded by the unfamiliar; empty chairs with strings propped against them, foil, a glockenspiel primed to be plonked. Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid, our maestros for the evening, conducting proceedings to conjure the image of the rain-slick early hours streets of Manchester. Visuals to transport us from the capital to the homeland, opiates for those of us who’ve made the pilgrimage south.
A trick pulled off with aplomb; no decoration for decoration’s sake, just embellishments integral to the sound of the album, produced by exceptional musicians sensitive to the cause. Edgy violin adding to the claustrophobic atmosphere of ‘LV’; cello trudging through ‘Preparing the Perfect Response’, tinfoil and plastic bags rustled close to mics to recreate static rain on ‘Lose You Beau’. And then: enter stage right the visceral figure of Blackhaine, the very definition of ‘a presence’, to blow the whole thing apart with his electric verse on ‘B£E’. Tetchy, twitchy, gut wrenching, completely captivating. Bianca Scout, the yin to Blackhaine’s yang, calming across a sparkling ‘Girl Scout Cookies’, a shimmer interrupted by static blasts from the central desk, a reminder of a brain zap from years gone by.
LA Timpa now, returning from his atonal support stint to lend his particular talent to ‘Strength’, before the cello soars once more across the melody for ‘Honest Labour’, a melody so brain-worming it has us morphing it into 10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ as we depart. A standing ovation from an enraptured crowd, shy bows and acknowledgements that this was a bit special, a job well done, perhaps a closing chapter on an astonishing album.
EPILOGUE
A stomp to Islington, a Zipp car to the Army & Navy, a Guinness zero poured with bar staff direction from a can. Two men beat each other for shiny belts, cuts running red down glistening, beaming faces, a unification unbroken. Home, sated by a weekend of exceptionalism. Euston is still 12 hours away, we shall not be afraid just yet.
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