Pigfoot in Cambridge : A strippers' band ? (work in progress)

This is a review (work in progress) of Pigfoot's gig in Cambridge, hosted by Listen!

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 October

This is a review (by Tweet) (work in progress) of Pigfoot's gig in Cambridge on Saturday 10 October 2020 at The Unitarian Church, Emmanuel Road, hosted by Listen!

Some people have said that we sound like a strippers' band ~ Chris Batchelor

It was nice that, though few, we knew each other, as performers and audience both knew what had been missing in all the false dawns about live gigs - as Batchelor said, 'Playing in front of humans', with (especially in the second set) a chance to try out material / arrangements !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2020

When numbers weren't swaying to Caribbean rhythms, the first set had the quartet express its New Orleans origins (in 21st Century Acid Trad) - as well as showing that spirituals or Bacharach alike will syncopate, and how well James Allsopp's baritone complements Batchelor's tpt. pic.twitter.com/pQNX79zids

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2020

Batchelor and Allsopp are very different (musical) personalities, with dissimilar playing-styles. However, bass clarinet, breathed as finely and beautifully as the latter does the sax, is also a good tonal-match for Batchelor on flugelhorn or cornet*.

Except for Liam Noble on a Korg keyboard (plus a smaller one (sampler ?) and a group of effects-pedals), the gig was acoustic, so, hearing him via one audience-facing speaker, the balance as between Paul Clarvis on percussion and Batchelor and Allsopp was for them alone to judge.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 11, 2020

As well as with Noble's prominent and recurrent use of a 'toy piano' timbre (or that of a de- or differently tuned piano), along with many a Monk-like dissonance, and Clarvis' highly amenable and adaptive percussion (on what seemed, just physically, a 'cut down' kit**), there was, often enough, a sparseness in the texture that not unreasonably might connote the functional instruments of a small seedy house-band, accompanying the acts : just think, maybe, of Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love (2013), a tune that Pigfoot gave us in the second (?) set ?

Clarvis' cheerful smile (and eyes that searched the room for our response) showed why it matters for a band to have live listeners, as well as being a barometer, by their relative absence, for the times when something more experimental or unfamiliar needed his full concentration.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 11, 2020

[...]


End-notes :

* Batchelor's trumpet and cornet both have a silver-band finish, and all three are shiny to behold on their stands. (Allsopp just lays his alternative instrument, when not in use, on the deck.)

** Chosen, again, to fit both the space and an acoustic affected by the reduced number of sound-absorbing bodies that would allow for a fuller dynamic (as well as being eminently portable) ?

*** Which sounds not a little Arts Council funded... ?



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)