Manchester MIDI School’s Sessions series is to stage its second ever workshop and has invited Manchester folkie-turned-electronic music experimenter Denis Jones to share his experiences and skills as an independent musician specialising in modern production and electronic music.
You could call it eclectic, but this particular bill is more a case of folk and easy listening sandwiched between two examples of aptitude in innovation, Paddy Steer and Denis Jones. The former, a polyrhythmic percussionist who is one half of Humble Soul signee Homelife, opens, but the emphasis is with the latter – the headliner – who is joined by his now regular collaborator David Schlechtriemen (aka The Pickpocket Network).
In between is a midsection comprising the calming Cortina Deluxx and Table, who make use of the grand piano for a selection of compositions designed for the Band On The Wall jazz club in its smokier days; the lack of which may alter the modern day atmosphere but now means you can see as clearly as hear the sobriety and stillness of melody.
Smith is constantly wary of the time, indeed most are ushered through at a canter, making the pause for breath ahead of label centrepiece Denis Jones & The Pickpocket Network seem prolonged. It’s soon forgiven throughout a set illustrating the benefits of being allowed freedom of expression without limits to time or creativity, typified by the pounding sculpting of ‘Rage’ grinding the show to a halt over an hour later. With an overall mellower feel than recent displays, the pair emit a variety of progressions from scattered digital darts like a less wacky Dan Deacon to looped samples of a Moondog epigram (“machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, but now that it’s the opposite it’s twice upon a time”), via a couple of old favourites in ‘Beginning’ and ‘Sometimes’.
A fitting end, temporarily at least, to the Humble Soul output from Manchester. I’ve been assured that the journey will continue from further afield, so hopefully there’ll be many more birthdays to follow.
The first Now Then Manchester show for this year of supposedly imminent oblivion will play host to Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, Samson & Delilah and Ottersgear. Haywood himself has been likened to Nick Drake and Mark Kozelek by critics who were running out of superlatives to describe his self-titled debut album, released late in 2010. That LP documents the ornithologist Haywood’s five years of bird-and-people-watching during travels around Highland Scotland. Combined with the New Hawks, a band comprising talented musicians such as Paddy Steer, Mikey Kenney and Mia Bleach, Dan emits a crazed stage presence, which can be sampled on Thursday 19th at Dulcimer.
Humble Soul, believe it or not (you'll have to believe it because it's the truth), will have been promoting some of the area’s finest music for five years this month and have assembled a typically stellar bill for the occasion. Denis Jones, Paddy Steer, Table, Aidan Smith and GladEyes all jostle for attention at Band On The Wall on Saturday 21st. Then as an after party option the Spektrum attic club at Sankeys hosts another edition of Continue through the early hours, this time roping in a recently arrived Manchester resident in the shape of R&S and Magic Wire signee Lone.
Some more folky types will be showcasing some songs at Dulcimer on Sunday 22nd; Imploding Inevitable presents the Manchester leg of Laura J Martin’s album launch mini-tour. As a multi-instrumentalist (flute, piano, mandolin) who favours a looping pedal to build her compositions, Martin brings an off-kilter zaniness to the alt-folk template, leading chirpy melodies through meandering sonic textures. Emily of former Red Deer Club cohorts Stealing Sheep supports in Emily & The Faves guise.
Last year an arts group based at Islington Mill decided that the best way to counter the public sector cuts would be to subject their work to a fiery communal death, very much shaped by its participants, in order to rise again from the ashes with new ideas and outlook. The Artists’ Bonfire returns this year with concern for funding in the arts still ablaze, but interpretations of the event needn’t be as incendiary as the fires, as artists are encouraged to join for reasons both political and personal. This will take place at Islington Mill on Thursday 26th but be aware that the deadline for submissions is Friday 20th.
Also on 28th will be Air Cav's first show of 2012 across the Irwell at the Kings Arms
Then a little further along is a special tour for Now Then interview alumnus The Electronic Exchange, who are set to treble in numbers for a full band performance at Kraak on Friday 10th. Also on that bill is Dayse & Aver from the always excellent hip hop collective The Natural Curriculum.
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.
