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Day: 16 April 2013

Live: Rachel Zeffira

Written by Natalie Wardle on . Posted in Music.

10th April 2013

The Deaf Institute

7/10

Best known as one half of pop duo Cat’s Eyes, whose debut album captured hearts in 2011 with its gauzy melodies, reminiscent of pop groups of the 1950s and 60s, Rachel Zeffira is now fast establishing herself a solid solo artist. From the first notes of spine-tingling opener ‘The Deserters’, there is no doubt Zeffira can handle herself on her own. She showed off her talent as a multi-instrumentalist as she maneuvered her way around the cramped stage, giving each song its own distinct identity, with her classical roots ringing through on ‘The Deserters’, before the psychedelic groove of ‘Here on It’.

Shortly before Zeffira’s set, the night was kicked off by up and coming Manchester band OSC, who, despite their relative inexperience on stage, managed to wow the crowd with a sound bringing to mind a jam session between ‘XTRMNTR’-era Primal Scream and Neu! Certainly a band to watch out for in the future.

Originally a classically trained opera singer, Zeffira bellowed out mournful melody after melody from debut solo album The Deserters, executing each song perfectly on stage. The voices of Zeffira and her backing singers echoed through the small venue throughout, making for an incredibly intense performance, despite the somewhat subdued atmosphere from the crowd. Although if she continues writing songs and playing shows of this quality, there is no doubt the bigger crowds will follow, providing the electric atmosphere she deserves rather than this ghostly Deaf Institute show.

Included in the set was a cover of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘To Here Knows When’ which was beautifully composed, turning Kevin Shields’ song about a self-described orgasm into her own shimmer of intimacy, making the song completely her own, with vocal and piano harmonies taking the place of the fuzzy ambiance of the original. This, along with blinders such as the upbeat groove of ‘Break the Spell’, clearly presented Zeffira’s hugely impressive talent as a musician. Ending the show with just a modest smile to the audience before swiftly departing the stage, followed by her excellent backing band, Zeffira appears shy, but clearly has real confidence in her ability.

Album: James Blake – Overgrown

Written by Josh Tralau-Stewart on . Posted in Music.

Released: 8th April 2013

Republic

9/10

The current British music scene is saturated with tedious singer-songwriters that clog up the radio waves with simplistic, unimaginative three-chord guitar songs relying on worn-out clichés that cater for the lowest common denominator.

Then there is James Blake. As a post-dubstep producer, Blake has an innate ability to create swirling tornadoes of sound to surround rhythmic beats, as was displayed perfectly by 2010’s ‘CMYK’ and ‘Klavierwerke’ EPs. His 2011 self-titled album, however, displayed a different side to Blake. He managed to marry the rhythmic post-dubstep sounds he had managed to create on his earlier EPs with a soulful, Joni Mitchell-influenced singer-songwriting capability, demonstrated by his fantastic reworking of Feist’s ‘Limit To Your Love’. This ability has not deserted Blake, and remains to be a strong influence on his latest release: Overgrown.

One such example of James Blake’s soulful mastering of meaningful, heartrending lyrics with post-dubstep is the album’s title track, which questions the culture of impermanence of meaning. Blake expresses a deep, and perhaps futile wish to mean something that is not just a temporary occurrence, to not just be “a star, a stone on the shore”, to not just create something with meaning in a particular moment, but instead to create something that has a lasting emotional impact.

In an interview in 2010, Matt Berninger of The National stated how music should be vague, allowing it to be open to the interpretation of the listener. After all, all the meaning of songs is created in the minds of the listeners. James Blake is an expert at this musical impressionism, in creating deliberately vague statements, often repeated and surrounded by pulsating pops and clicks, allowing the listener to apply individual meaning, and therefore emotional power to the songs.

However, James Blake is certainly not as subtle in his public statements as he is in his songwriting. In an interview in 2011 with The Boston Phoenix, Blake laid into the current state of dubstep, arguing that ‘Brostep’ artists had hijacked the genre that had previously been about creating nuanced sounds by creating music that is about “who can make the dirtiest, filthiest bass sound, almost like a pissing competition.”

It cannot be denied that Overgrown has some quite incredible musical moments. ‘Life Around Here’ provides a heartfelt exposition of emotion, with post-dubstep swirling around the repetition of “Part time love is a life around here, everything feels like touchdown on a rainy day”, slowly building to a climactic crescendo.

The album also includes numerous collaborations with other artists. One such guest appearance is from Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA on ‘Take A Fall For Me’. In the song, RZA raps over Blake’s expert musical production, making for a creation that is not dissimilar to his 2012 collaboration with Trim on ‘Confidence Boost’, using the Harmonimix moniker. However, Blake’s RZA collaboration does not make the same impact as ‘Confidence Boost’ did. Whereas the Trim collaboration intently moved towards a climax, ‘Take A Fall For Me’ does not. Both the music and lyrics seem stuck in a rut that they cannot emerge from, rendering the song seemingly lacking in any definite direction.

Another of Blake’s collaborations on Overgrown is on ‘Digital Lion’ with Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music, and more recently a producer for numerous musicians, including Coldplay’s two most recent albums (the less said about that the better), seven U2 albums, and three Talking Heads albums. ‘Digital Lion’ is excellently produced, with a bouncy beat, encircled by what could be mistaken for the sounds of a UFO landing nearby, and complemented by Blake’s sublimely soulful voice.

The most immediate song on Overgrown is also the leading single of the album – ‘Retrograde’. This song represents all that is brilliant about James Blake. It combines the looping of an intoxicating riff with the immensely powerful lyrics Blake is famed for. The song conveys a feeling of abject loneliness and heartbreak, but also of confusion – “Suddenly I’m hit. Is this darkness or the dawn? When your friends are gone, and your friends won’t come.” Blake has stated in interviews that the song is about falling in love, but it is clearly not a love song. It perfectly illustrates the confusion and apprehensiveness of love, and the loneliness that inevitably accompanies it.

Overgrown can therefore only be viewed as a starkly, and often frighteningly introspective and emotional album. It is, without doubt a considerable step away from James Blake’s 2011 self-titled debut album, and is much closer to his ‘Enough Thunder’ EP. Thus, it represents a shuffling away from voice-driven, often minimalistic songwriting demonstrated in ‘Lindisfarne’, and towards a more electronically driven sound. However, Blake has not abandoned his singer-songwriting influences, returning to the piano and voice combination on ‘DLM’, which has distinct echoes of Blake’s sublimely beautiful cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’. As stated by Zane Lowe in the interview in which Blake announced Overgrown, there simply are no other artists creating the same kind of twisted, emotionally complex music, making James Blake a unique contribution to music.

Album: The 1975 – Music for Cars EP

Written by Will Lynn on . Posted in Music.

Released: 4th March 2013

Dirty Hit

8/10

The 1975 are a local quartet who have recently been gathering rather a lot of steam. Their first two offerings, ‘Facedown’ and the subtly titled ‘Sex’, were critically acclaimed, and set them up for propulsion into the mainstream. Their current hit ‘Chocolate’ has only furthered their progression, with dates at The Ritz and Shepherd’s Bush Empire later in the year already sold out.

First things first, the title is misleading. This should not be chosen as the soundtrack to your first road trip, unless you want it to be outrageously melancholy. The only thing I can attribute the choice of title to is the fact that motoring is mentioned in two of the tracks.

If you were expecting the tone to have been set by ‘Chocolate’, you were wrong. The opening track ‘Anobrain’ is packed full of opulent synths and distorted harmonies. Give it time though, because once the confusion has worn off, the song is emotionally very powerful. It builds to its key moment superbly, as singer Matt Healy pleads “I think I love you”. Although short, at just shy of two minutes in length, the track is a magnificent opener, and gives a taste of what’s to come; a sonically diverse piece of work.

‘Chocolate’, currently enjoying widespread radio play, follows; dominated by a  melodic guitar riff. This is the only track that seems to justify the EP’s title and boasts the strongest guitar beat in a significant amount of time. It is a gorgeous song and remains the standout track here.

‘HNSCC’ is next and is musically just as confusing as it’s title. There are no lyrics to comment on here, but the soaring ambience of the short track really helps to piece the EP together nicely.

‘Heads.Cars.Bending’ is the only track besides ‘Chocolate’ with a traditional chorus. The electro pop beat is lined with James Blake-esque claps, and the chorus is yelped melodically by Healy. Although we are left completely in the dark as to what the title means, the urgency of his voice makes this track very powerful, and the refrain becomes addictive after a few spins.

The EP concludes with the densely emotive ‘Me’. Brassy, soft synths kick it off until a gentle drum beat comes in, adding a rhythmic layer to the track. The track contains the most touching lyrics in the album, with Healy declaring ‘I was thinking about killing myself’. The song’s context is given by a constant plea to an absent lover, with the phrase “Don’t you mind?” added to the end of most lines. Healy’s despair is cemented with the affecting “ I love you… don’t you mind , don’t you mind”.

Although this EP is a brash departure from their previous material, it is a stunning piece of work. It could very easily be dismissed as an indulgent ‘hipster’ experiment, but it is packed with emotion and ensures that The 1975 are not keeping themselves in a box, music wise – it bodes well for their forthcoming full-length debut.

Old school animation in the digital age

Written by Dylan Wiggan on . Posted in Film.

Once upon a time,  if you wanted to see a rat ‘make it’ as a chef, learn what monsters are hiding in your closer or find out what happens to your toys after you left the room, you’d have to draw it. Panstakingly, frame-by-frame. But the times they are a changin’, as Bob Dylan once sang. But unlike Dylan I’m not flagging up a change of a social and cultural nature in the face of the civil rights movement, no, instead I’m looking into the much more important issue of the change of animation techniques.

It’s all Pixar’s fault really. Little did we all know as we tucked into our popcorn and slurped our big gulps, chuckling haughtily through each of the latest insta-classic films they delivered us throughout our childhood, that they were hammering nail after nail into the coffin of what has become known traditional animation.

You see the meteoric rise of Pixar, famed for their CGI 3D animation, coincided with the fall of Disney’s classic 2D output. In hindsight this looks to be more due to poor quality then changing tastes: compare Disney’s Atlantis (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), Brother Bear (2003), Home on the Range (2004) against Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004) and it’s clear which studio was a better run of creative form.

Regardless though, the studio bigwigs got together and decided the reason they were in such a rut was the format rather than the content. They proclaimed 2D was dead and promptly shut down their traditional animation studios and committed to aping the more popular approaches of Pixar and Dreamworks animation.

Since 2004’s Home on the Range you could look at the film landscape and agree that 2D is dead as CGI animation dominates the market. The last major 2D attempt, 2009’s The Princess Frog, was a relative financial disappointment, and the last major hit in the format was 2007’s The Simpsons Movie, which was a unique proposition.

Despite mainstream failure old school animation undoubtedly lives on, only just for more niche markets. Aardman Animation, though increasingly straying into computer animated waters, continue to toil away with stop motion with the likes of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. The revered Studio Ghibli continually shows how 2D has no limits to its hardcore cult fan base of both kids and adults with such favourites Ponyo (2008) and The Secret World of Arrietty (2010). Not to mention quirky stop motion hits Coraline (2009) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

Most recently there was Frankenweenie (2012). This Tim Burton film is a black and white, stop motion film (perhaps as non-commercial as a family animated film can get). Speaking exclusively with The Mancunion, Frankenweenie’s executive producer Don Hahn talked about getting this kind film made in today’s climate. “The black and white was homage to the old monster movies and the studio [Disney] was surprisingly co-operative with all that stuff we wanted to do. And I don’t think it’s just because Tim was involved, I think its that stop-motion is a relatively cheap and really personal medium that has an under-served, rabid fan base.”

Though CGI looks to be the dominant medium for the foreseeable future, films like Frankenweenie are a great reminder of how family films don’t need computer animation to still feel fresh and relevant to modern audiences. Hopefully Frankenweenie’s success will lead to more old school style animated films, giving ‘kids’ films the same diversity as ‘adult’ films enjoy.

Frankenweenie is available on DVD and Blu-ray now

Help, I’m a traditionalist!

Written by Lauren Arthur on . Posted in Lifestyle.

Over the Easter break, my friend from home asked a boy out. She met him, became smitten, added him on Facebook and started messaging him. A couple of days later she asked if he wanted to go for a drink. When she told me this the next day, my insides instantly shrivelled up. How could she be so bold? What if he’d rejected, or worse, ignored her? Most importantly, should women even ask men out?

After some thought on the matter, I realised that whilst I admired her, I would never be able to imitate her. Both my traditional romantic side and my independent ‘I don’t need anyone’ other half are, for once, in full agreement. Sadly, I believe in good old fashioned chivalry and courtship. I don’t want some big cringey gesture, but I don’t want to have to ask my knight in shining armour out first either. I like having the power to be reserved and slightly elusive; by asking them out there’s no mystery and there’s certainly no doubt about your interest.

However, later as I served a group of men at work it I found myself questioning why on earth women shouldn’t ask. Their captivating conversation covering new protein shakes and Match of the Day made me realise that women shouldn’t sit around waiting for these blatherskites to ask. If you know you like someone then there’s no harm in taking the plunge; many, I’ m sure, would find your confidence even more attractive.

The boy that said friend asked out did say yes and a date has been arranged. Whilst I envy her courage and the other women that follow suit, I can’t help but think that that will never be me. Women that ask are the empowered heroines, the Elizabeth Bennett’s of our generation and the rest of us are Janes: slightly more reserved yet (hopefully) ending up equally as happy.