We first encountered Werkha’s Tom Leah as one half of Bug & Leaf, an ambient electronic duo in the Mount Kimbie mould formed with his fellow University of Salford music student Rick Hartley, who now performs under the moniker of (murmur). But his first real taste of musical recognition arrived when Gilles Peterson picked up Cube & Puzzle, Leah's debut EP as Werkha, to play two of its exquisite tracks on his BBC Radio 6Music show towards the end of 2012.
Outside of their annual Sounds From The Other City stage shares, the last time the Mind On Fire and This City Is Ours music promotion squads teamed up was just over three years ago, booking a little known ambient production duo back when you thought Mount Kimbie was an obscure summit in the Rockies and dubstep was barely grazing music’s collective consciousness, nevermind under consideration for a 'post-' tag.
Now Then was also around back then, in blog form, and here’s what we said.
The two have belatedly fused their musical minds and monikers once more and in a stroke of inordinately uncanny accident, the week of their follow-up show has coincided with the announcement of Mount Kimbie’s sophomore LP, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth.
Paul White is the next headliner they’re fast-tracking to further fortune. I won’t lie, at first his name sounded like the indifference provoking hybrid of a professional snooker player from the 1980s and a smart casual fashion label. But I’ve been told that my own name sounds somewhere between middle management bureaucrat and trainee accountant, and perhaps some other occupations associated with service sector drudgery, so who am I to talk? Maybe we could both do with boarding the good ship pseudonym until such assumptions burn out. Or we could both embrace our appellations; I'll find a steady and unremarkable 9 to 5, and he'll be stitching the latest line of snazzy waistcoats and bow ties in no time. There we'll both be, our roads never to cross, living out predetermined paths through to the epitaph. But I digress.
Do a little digging and his name pops up everywhere. His production credits go back more than five years and he’s recently supplied a rework of Seaming’s ‘Vertigo Billy’ for her Ronseal simplicity inspired remix album, entitled The Remix Album. Diplo (whose Mad Decent label is under fire from the plagiarism police for failing to credit Plastic Little’s “do the Harlem Shake” vocal origin on Baauer’s YouTube indebted hit) has declared that he is “his biggest fan,” placing himself at the front of a queue of music industry admirers that includes trend setting disc jockeys Mary Anne Hobbs and Gilles Peterson.
A fascination with obscure psychedelic records is evident in Paul White & The Purple Brain, an LP released via Stones Throw offshoot Now Again Records and dedicated entirely to samples of Swedish multi-instrumentalist and guitar FX pedal champion ST Mikael – whose own cosmic exploration has crossed sonic paths with Dungen’s Reine Fiske. More recently, White’s compositions have edged closer to hip hop, working with MCs such as Homeboy Sandman, Jehst and Danny Brown on Rapping With Paul White – an album with a diversity exemplified by the appearance of the North West harpist Nancy Elizabeth reciting a poem through stifled laughter.
It’s a strong CV for a Manchester first-timer, and on Friday he’ll be wearing yet another hat. This show introduces his new live trio alongside drummer Mo Kolours and saxophonist Tenderlonious, so expect all of the above (barring the snooker threads) with added jazzy dexterity.
Words: Ian Pennington.
Paul White poster art by Dead Pheasant.
Mount Kimbie poster art by Mike Newton, Herbal Sessions.
Paul White headlines Kraak Studio on Friday 29th March. Support comes from Manchester’s Ape Cult and Danny Drive Thru. Sounds From The Other City takes place on Sunday 5th May, with the This City Is On Fire stages across both floors in The Kings Arms.
If an electronic artist turns the heads of three of the area’s top promoters, then it’ll be worth sitting up and paying attention. Mind On Fire, Groovement and Hoya:Hoya, have clubbed together to make sure Kidsuke will be calling in Manchester as part of their European tour this month.
Words: Ian Pennington
We have a pair of tickets up for grabs for the show at Roadhouse on Wednesday 21st November. Just email ian@nowthenmagazine.com with ‘KIDSUKE’ in the subject line to add your name to the hat. Otherwise, tickets are available for £5 adv. Click here for more information. A version of this post appeared on the Manchester Mule website (the competitions are separate, though).
The two styles are evident within a pair of Manchester’s more prominent hip hop groups, Broke’n’English and The Natural Curriculum (TNC).
Compare this with TNC who, on paper, on video and on record, are the more socially aware. Certainly through the Dayse & Aver splinter group, backed by DJ Omas, they point out dystopian aspects of society and rasp viciously about the double standards of the status quo. They enter dialogue with the world’s uncomfortable truths ringing in their ears from sci-fi films and Moondog epigrams (“Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, but now that it’s the opposite it’s twice upon a time”), bringing a barrage of metaphor (“You live your life like a white rat behind glass / Trapped by the dread of what could happen if you bite back”) and messages for us all.
The latter tackle the grim with gusto and the real with relish, enshrouding the listener in a darkness of supposed sci-fi just beyond the looking glass; the sort found in A Clockwork Orange or Nineteen Eighty Four that sits a little too close to home, while staying arm’s-length enough to leave many readers thankful for small mercies and oblivious to the puppet strings. It doesn’t lend Dayse & Aver's music to an uptempo outlook.
There’s no doubting that Broke’n’English have more renown both in Manchester and beyond but you’ve seen Dayse & Aver as well, I guarantee it. It’s hard to miss them when walking around Manchester; past the city’s streetlamps, bars, venues, signposts. Their paraphernalia is peering back at you in mugshot poses, waiting for you to take note. And take note you will.
This isn’t to say their performances are motionless. Past gig costumes have included CCTV camera heads leering at them – a nod to the video for ‘Human Zoo’ – and a string of future shows will fill stages with instruments as part of a live collaboration with former members of The Mind On Fire Band, beginning with Antwerp Mansion on Thursday 22nd March. It is just a case of what they say more than what they do being the cause for movement, which is an apt contrast with Broke'n'English given the lyrical dichotomy.
Words: Ian Pennington
Mind On Fire Records’ seventh recording project (third vinyl imprint) savours an artist whose music never lingers on the same idea for too long. Although Paper Tiger often perform as a septet, this EP holds the hallmarks of the band leader Greg Surmacz’s solo laptop and sax slot supporting Shigeto at Islington Mill last year; unable to sit still while scratching the itch of galactic jazz with self-described knob-twiddling.
‘Delight Dub’ is a good example of that progressive inclination. Beginning with a bubbling calm like Four Tet’s ‘Reversing’, they then introduce assertive beats, fidgety glitches and subtle womps and by the midway point it’s a bustling forum for stop-start staggered propulsion and scattered trails of thought. It’s not dissimilar to the title track of their ‘Send Me’ single via Jus Like Music Records last year for its helium ridden vocal clips and spliced sci-fi until brought to rest by a late cosmic synth refrain.
The title track ‘Illuminated’ holds a more straight-forward musical flow that welcomes in the band’s trademark saxophone, but this is generally a record of darkly ambient turbulence filled with ADD and constant shifts in focus, not too far removed from the structure-abrogating Brainfeeder label’s output.
The flip side sees Blacksmif’s remix of steadily looped builds joined by a Wisent reworking as scrunched and jagged as the paper protruding from the cover artwork designed by onefiveeight’s James Hayes. Each offering an alternate perspective whilst remaining true to the various directions trodden by Paper Tiger's originals.
D’lyfa fills in the gaps by answering Now Then Manchester’s questions ahead of this Thursday 8th December's show at Dulcimer in Chorlton.
NT: You say you want to carve your name in the tree of life; when will you feel you’ve accomplished this?
NT: Who has done your EP artwork for Sewing Seeds and what are your impressions of that?
Ever since then, he has slowly but surely drifted out into a sea of spliced soundwaves and, in pairing with multi-instrumental beats merchant David Schlechtriemen (also of The Pickpocket Network, HoneyFeet and Driver Drive Faster), his soulful side is being rejected for something altogether more immediate. The quaint (if wrongly attributed) folk-tronica tag has long since been shed. Tracking his progress as a musician very much open to experimenting with his art, you can still sense the early learning in folk and blues, notably in tonight’s recognisable tracks ‘Beginning’ and ‘Clap Hands’, but Denis has used his accumulated coats of technological paint to embrace something far more hard-hitting, raw, visceral and primordial: dance music.
If you were to see him tonight for the first time, his abundance of facial follicles would seem more sonically apt alongside pre-shave Beardyman or moustachioed Andrew Weatherall than folk’s William Fitzsimmons or Iron & Wine. The audience are still heckling for the standouts of his first two LPs: “‘Elvis’! ‘Sometimes’!” they plead; “Judas!” you can almost hear them thinking. From David’s arrival partway through opener ‘Clap Hands’ until he departs again for ever-beguiling curtain closer ‘Beginning’, it is a deluge of electronic indulgence. During that time, some shuffle uncomfortably and reminisce about more intimate climes of days gone by, sat cross-legged in crammed south Manchester bars, but in realising his own musical present and future, he is steadily leaving that audience in the past.
Denis’ ever-developing brand of dance noise would most cohesively fall into the IDM category alongside the likes of Walls, Fuck Buttons and Ghosting Season. But Denis and David (or Tatetitotu, as they're tentatively calling the project) are unchained by genre and also retain a certain organic feel that some peers cannot boast. Their compositions are untethered to the workings of a macbook, generating a production less disguised than the others. Looped sample pads and a mesmerising array of gadgets seem over-complicated, but groundings are often laid by the more human elements. Denis’s acoustic guitar plucked with intricate precision; his vocal howls and hollers adding an entombing atmospheric intensity. In this sense it could be interpreted as in keeping with the bluesy roots.
That progressive dynamism is as fundamental to the synthetic as it is to the natural. Indeed, the open-minded are shifting their feet to the Denis/David duo’s block rockin’ beats. The only sticking point would be that it’s not Denis Jones as advertised; it’s a wholly different racket. Tuneglue.com nods to John Fairhurst, Adrian Crowley and Alin Coen Band as reference points, but those are inaccurate and inadequate to his direction; every step he’s taken has been away from those peers. Which means that local promoters Mind On Fire are way ahead of Tuneglue. They saw the sonic signs more than 18 months ago by pitting him alongside the likes of From the Kites of San Quentin and xxxy on a bill topped by Mount Kimbie; next week (Thursday 17th November) they’re taking that a stage further by seamlessly coalescing him (plus David) with the supports for IDM electronic glitch tweaker Shigeto at Islington Mill.
And so to the future, which for Denis should include many more of the kaleidoscopic frames distributed on entry to this gig – albeit with more of a light show to hammer home his realignment in techno-musical technicolour. The specs, incidentally, are an apt side-story and one that lends credence to Denis’s strides into dancefloor-filling territory. Distributed on entry to the Deaf Institute, they build a hallucinatory experience with minimal effort, cost and after-effects; the silver screen is dabbling with 1980s 3D comebacks, so why not independent music? Many seem sceptical, but taking on the paraphernalia of Biff’s infamous Back to the Future crony means you’re only a short leap into the surreal away from a psychedelic Chemical Brothers or Orbital spectacle. Not often will this be used as a simile, but then it hasn’t been often that Denis has provided an encore with the ballistics of a D’n’B beats bombardment.
Dayse: How long have you got?
Aver: Manchester & its rain…. George & Aldous... Edward & Sigmund... Curtis & Morris...
D: That really does depend on whether you put Star Trek on the same shelf as Blade Runner...
A: Sorry about him. We meant to make a record that sounded advanced and industrial in order to differentiate ourselves from the guitar pickers, the endgame of which is to spit roast a cyborg, if you get my meaning?
A: I’ll make a beat from the weird noises with big drums, Dayse will write a verse or two based on some old book he just read, then blam!!! 6 months later Omas will murder the cuts and we got ourselves a B-side...
MOF: Speaking of books, you reference a lot of philosophers on the EP – particularly those who deal with ideas of the state and control. In these dark times how relevant do you think these issues are?
D: It’s relevant to us at least, because our consciousness was born into it. The whole world got paranoid after 9/11. That paranoia got real in the United Kingdom during the events that surrounded the 7/7 bombings. Both events happened at a time when our generation was beginning to sow the seeds of its own political and philosophical consciousness. So things such as the illegal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes on the Northern Line by London Metropolitan Police in 2005, for a crime that he never committed, naturally stained our outlook.
It showed a weakness in the technology and dangers of human error when using it. And there’s a substantial list of fuck-ups like this. We put the whole mass surveillance operation under scrutiny and began to rebel against it. For panopticism to work in society at large, the state can’t afford to reveal itself as it did. You have to stand back and keep people paranoid without them knowing why they feel the way they do. The state held it up for a while with their right-wing, anti-Islamist propaganda and some groups in society are still struggling to see through it today. But eventually I think we smartened up on a whole issue and the state failed. Thankfully, we never became a police state, but we nearly did. That paranoid fear turned into something else. You’re seeing the results on the news everyday now.
D: Bollocks to the serpent! My take on social contract theory is simple: I didn’t sign shit! I don’t believe in absolute chaos, but if you’re going to grant the state a monopoly on physical violence, which is what law enforcement and social governance really boils down to, then it should be there in black and white. This country has no constitution so to speak, we just have a long history of conflicts and fuck-ups that we’ve never learned from, partly because they’re not included in the traditional agenda of our education system.
I also think that we should be deriving certain rights from the State of Nature. In the modern world, the right to bear arms is an extension of the human animals’ natural right to defend itself. That includes defending itself against the state. The state could justify another Peterloo by hiding behind a social contract that doesn’t exist. This is relevant until we get together as a nation and make it irrelevant.
MOF: Anyone who has been to a rave in Manchester has seen the GMP misuse of this ‘monopoly on violence’, but it extends (perhaps less visibly) to every aspect of the rest of society. To quote a wise man: “What is to Be Done”?
D: We should all buy a mocha and a blueberry muffin from Starbucks. And cherish them...
A: Honestly though, I could mash off a double-choc-frappacino with extra cream right now... Then it’s off to a march about capitalist oppression in the 3rd world.
D: The global economy is upside down. I’m broke and looking for answers. Naive as it may be (and it definitely is, but let’s not get into a debate about the PRC or the Soviet Union or Cuba... the list goes on) where do you think I stand on this issue? Accept it or not, this is still a class society, it just lacks a clear divide.
D: That’s life I guess. Music is my life...
A: Very
A: Not a chance son. I dug so deep once I woke up in a record store in Japan!
MOF: The bass sounds really stuck out for me, are they all samples or is there an element of live instrumentation as well?
A: Brother Tom played bass for tracks 3 [Dark Matter] & 5 [Dear George].
A: Not that different.
D: Old-timers cashing their Hip Hop pensions + Untalented senseless urban youth that can’t relate = Yes.
A: What’s an enema?
A: [Old Bill] Sykes' EP is nearly finished and that is gonna be nuts. It’s mostly Chalky-p on the beats, with a few tracks by myself and Poynton’s one & only DJ Omas, so that’s something to look forward to. As for further afield Odd Future are sick, check the Earl album if you get a minute.
This interview first appeared on Mindonfire.co.uk. The Now Then Mind On Fire showcase, also featuring Danny Drive Thru, Vieka and Zoir, takes place on Thursday 11th August at Dulcimer in Chorlton. Danny Drive Thru, Dayse & Aver and Vieka will all have new vinyl records available to buy for the first time on the night.
