Leftfield music with a touch of „Sowiesoso“
„Walks“, the new album by English duo Group Listening. You sometimes have to go to the margins to get hold of such treasures like „Clarinet and Piano – Selected Works, Vol. 2“, their penultimate work. Funny the duo calls itself like it calls itself, but British humour is part of the presentation of this awesome contemporary folky kosmische chamber improv and all. When asked for a recording anecdote Stephen Black says: „Nothing particularly exciting, just your usual next door’s dog barking, or the sound of a pigeon in the chimney breast. It was fuelled by coffee and cheap bread.“ Nothing to add to this.
31st May – Loves Cafe,Weston-Super-Mare
1st June – Shift, Cardiff
4th June – Kazimier Stockroom, Liverpool
5th June – Glad Cafe, Glasgow
6th June – Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
7th June – Futtle, Fife
8th June – Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
9th June – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
11th June – Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester
12th June – St Matthias Church, London
13th June – Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
14th June – The Rose Hill, Brighton
16th June – National Justice Museum, Nottingham
26th June – Dareshack, Bristol
27th June – The Grayston Unity, Halifax
28th June – Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury
29th June – The White Hotel, Manchester
Ein Kommentar
Anonymous
There’s a vein of retro-futurism in Group Listening’s work, drawing on a deeply English sensibility – even down to the landscapes that permeate the music.
Paul Jones comments…
Steve and I were walking in and around Bolton Priory, where we must have playing a gig nearby – Leeds I think. Most likely it was on a day off between shows and we were heading north. We went on quite a long trek, I remember it being hilly terrain, rolling slopes and lots of gradients up and down, with the River Wharfe in full flow we passed by a place with stepping stones crossing the river.
A number of nearby places had dramatic and gothic sounding names; the Valley Of Desolation and Storiths Crag. Hill End was on the map and close by, it encapsulated the feeling we had created in the music; that feeling you get when you set out on a a purposeful walk up a steep hill and the relief on reaching it’s end, exhausted but slightly elated.
Bandmate Stephen Black counters:
‘Hills End’, a bit like ‘New Brighton’, feels futuristic to me. Like Blade Runner, or Kraftwerk but with clarinets and recorders. The tune has everything you need. Propulsive drums, arpeggiators, a wind synth and two key changes too. It reminds me of driving down a motorway but getting diverted to witness a pagan ritual with burning effigies and a maypole.