More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 May
That review (on 29 June 2009) (of the opening Troyka album by Martin Longley, which I talked about before) goes like this (with my added numbering in parenthesis - so that I can add facetious comments...) :
A transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions
Troyka are yet another young London combo who are inhabiting (1) the increas-ingly (2) vibrant scene that's devoted to the uninhibited collision between jazz, rock, free improvisation and funky jamming. They're beaming off into a completely different direc-tion when compared to the work of keyboardist Kit Downes' previous band, Empirical. Downes has so far (3) been heard as an acoustic pianist, but in this setting (4) he concentrates on the organ, cranked up to its grittiest settings (5).
Troyka's other two members are not so familiar (6) on the jazz scene, but they're certainly empowered to excite (7). Guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Joshua Blackmore add to the forceful jazz-rock judder, with spiny constructions and shifty beats, as Downes jams (8)out on his electro-warbled keys. It's a transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions (9), erupting with powerchords (10) and prog rock organ bursts, and even featuring the odd dose of bluesy bottleneck slide guitar.
The opening pair of tracks are so profoundly excessive in their pursuit of leaden riffage (11) that, for a while, subsequent (12) pieces can't help but feel restfully in-active by comparison. Tax Return contorts around an organ susurrus, with guitar that's by turns prickly and overloaded. It's not surprising that New Yorker Wayne Krantz is cited by the band as a heavy influence. The Frenchman Marc Ducret could be another contender as a guitaring forefather. Blackmore's drum patterns are highly detailed, the Troyka combination ending up as being at once avant (13) and visceral. The chunky organ flamboyance can't help but remind the listener of Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge. Even mightier, Clint must surely be dedicated to Mister Eastwood in Dirty Harry guise, with its extremely weighty powerchords (14) and bassy overhang (15).
The itchy time signatures continue (16), but most of the heavy artillery is reserved now until the album's closing tracks. A sinister bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching (17). Twelve rains organ droplets, with a guitar that arcs up from vibrato-ed pings to the return of that earlier scalding sensation (18). The granite riffing (19) is sustained during Born In The 80s (20), but it's now alternating with a glowing sensitivity (21). With Noonian Song, Montague is getting into Krantz via the arcane tunings of composer Harry Partch, or maybe even the bendy tonalities of Fred Frith's table-top guitars.
The Agent's facetious comments
(1) Can one 'inhabit [... a] scene' ?
(2) Is the word 'increasingly' increasingly used when someone wants to claim some-thing is happening more - without telling you how much ?
(3) Is it obvious that this phrase is meant to mean when Downes was playing with Empirical ?
(4) Isn't 'setting' a word more used to describe a venue (or a venue's features) than a 'combo' ?
(5) Clumsy repetition of 'setting' ?
(6) Does this mean (a) 'less familiar', or (b) 'less familiar than Downes' ?
(7) Authorized to titillate ? Licensed to kill ?
(8) Overused (also in the first paragraph) ?
(9) We may know what a duck-billed platypus is, but what are 'shiny contortions' ?
(10) Whatever they may be - heavy note-clusters ?
(11) Is Leaden Riffage a village in Kent (a twin to Granite Riffing - please see (21), below) ?
(12) Posh way of saying 'later pieces' ?
(13) Posh way of saying 'before' ?
(14) Does repeating the 'word' (please see (10), above) help ?
(15) Huh ? A medical condition ?
(16) Whatever their itchiness may comprise, did I know that they'd started ?
(17) Couldn't they get some ointment for it ?!
(18) Which 'earlier scalding sensation' was that ?
(19) Eh ?!
(20) It may be intentional to confuse verbiage with the names of tracks (e.g. 'A sinis-ter bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching'), but why does the track listing render this one as 'Born in the 80's' (apostrophe and fewer capitals) ?
(21) Is (a) the way in which the 'granite riffing' alternates glowingly sensitive, or (b) are some sections 'granite riffing' and alternating ones 'a glowing sensitivity'... ?
All in all, that panel in the talk on Music journalism in the 21st century might lead one to believe that a piece published by the BBC wouldn't be open to any such criticism - as I say, are they just protecting their backs, but not seeing the onslaught of those who write appreciations of live or recorded music in a different way from a traditional review ?
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Showing posts with label Martin Longley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Longley. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 May 2013
Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Troyk-estra and Talk I
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 May
Work in progress… - beware of a bumpy landing !
I have just read a review of Troyka’s debut album in 2009, which maybe I can import into this blog – it appears on the BBC web-site, and was written by Martin Longley.
If I can, I hope to draw on it to make some comments about the panel discussion (plus Q&A) that took place under the title ‘Music journalism in the 21st century’. It comprised four male contributors, amongst them the jazz critic of The Times (broadcaster Alyn Shipton (@AlynShipton), who also chaired the session), The Financial Times*, and the deputy editor of Jazzwise.
The fourth (who had written for The Birmingham Post) was the only one prominently introduced as blogging (and, yet, who talked fairly little about his blog, other than the freedom that it gave him to write about what he wanted, when not earning a living) :
All wanted to peddle a message of ‘If it was good enough for me…’ and ‘I had to work my way up’, littered with boasts of their writing and editorial skills and like kudos. In a way, of course, the typical defensive speech of those occupying posts that they don’t intend – wish, maybe ? – to vacate : Don’t bother to climb the greasy pole – if you do, I’m the resident bear at the top, so mind your neck !
Therefore predictable, and predictable that they would ‘take a pop at’ those whose blog postings extend beyond, as the case might be, the 375-, 500- or 1,000-word limits to which they have to work, or whose content (they believe = opinion ?) is not a review, but opinion.
It’s as if they (wildly ?) assume that the bloggers couldn’t do what they do – and write a 500-word review to deadline – to save their lives, just because the bloggers choose to do something else, for whatever reason – and, if people read what bloggers right instead, who is to say that they are wrong (except that it might endanger further the position of those paid to pen tight, tidy, and possibly tired traditional accounts of gigs or releases).
So much for the chaff. The grains were the usual ‘tips of the trade’ of Someone I’d once met said… or They asked me if I’d stand in when X was sick, and I’m still there 300 years later, the positive face of the negative slant previously given :
They approached me because they knew me, they only knew me because I do this sort of thing, and I only survive doing this sort of thing because I’m brilliant, which they wisely recognized.
I laugh, but it’s just like Hollywood stars (whether in their own eyes or not) who tell an audience :
I met Tom Hanks two years before, and then we were out of contact, but he rang me out of the blue when I’d just finished in The Cherry Orchard off Broadway and said he wanted me for the part of Scrooge
[Hanks did not happen to mention that he had not got Mel Gibson or Hugh Grant to take the part, or that Hanks’ agent had suggested approaching The Star because (if it genuinely was Hanks’ ‘shout’), at least, of industry-driven Factors a, b and c - more likely, The Star knew all of this, and this is the agreed concoction for the PR world that is ‘celebrity’ interview…]
Continued… (not in this posting, maybe in order not to offend the critics’ tender sensibilities !)
End-notes
* Or was it The Sunday Times ? (I didn’t take notes, and I forget which.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 May
Work in progress… - beware of a bumpy landing !
I have just read a review of Troyka’s debut album in 2009, which maybe I can import into this blog – it appears on the BBC web-site, and was written by Martin Longley.
If I can, I hope to draw on it to make some comments about the panel discussion (plus Q&A) that took place under the title ‘Music journalism in the 21st century’. It comprised four male contributors, amongst them the jazz critic of The Times (broadcaster Alyn Shipton (@AlynShipton), who also chaired the session), The Financial Times*, and the deputy editor of Jazzwise.
The fourth (who had written for The Birmingham Post) was the only one prominently introduced as blogging (and, yet, who talked fairly little about his blog, other than the freedom that it gave him to write about what he wanted, when not earning a living) :
All wanted to peddle a message of ‘If it was good enough for me…’ and ‘I had to work my way up’, littered with boasts of their writing and editorial skills and like kudos. In a way, of course, the typical defensive speech of those occupying posts that they don’t intend – wish, maybe ? – to vacate : Don’t bother to climb the greasy pole – if you do, I’m the resident bear at the top, so mind your neck !
Therefore predictable, and predictable that they would ‘take a pop at’ those whose blog postings extend beyond, as the case might be, the 375-, 500- or 1,000-word limits to which they have to work, or whose content (they believe = opinion ?) is not a review, but opinion.
It’s as if they (wildly ?) assume that the bloggers couldn’t do what they do – and write a 500-word review to deadline – to save their lives, just because the bloggers choose to do something else, for whatever reason – and, if people read what bloggers right instead, who is to say that they are wrong (except that it might endanger further the position of those paid to pen tight, tidy, and possibly tired traditional accounts of gigs or releases).
So much for the chaff. The grains were the usual ‘tips of the trade’ of Someone I’d once met said… or They asked me if I’d stand in when X was sick, and I’m still there 300 years later, the positive face of the negative slant previously given :
They approached me because they knew me, they only knew me because I do this sort of thing, and I only survive doing this sort of thing because I’m brilliant, which they wisely recognized.
I laugh, but it’s just like Hollywood stars (whether in their own eyes or not) who tell an audience :
I met Tom Hanks two years before, and then we were out of contact, but he rang me out of the blue when I’d just finished in The Cherry Orchard off Broadway and said he wanted me for the part of Scrooge
[Hanks did not happen to mention that he had not got Mel Gibson or Hugh Grant to take the part, or that Hanks’ agent had suggested approaching The Star because (if it genuinely was Hanks’ ‘shout’), at least, of industry-driven Factors a, b and c - more likely, The Star knew all of this, and this is the agreed concoction for the PR world that is ‘celebrity’ interview…]
Continued… (not in this posting, maybe in order not to offend the critics’ tender sensibilities !)
End-notes
* Or was it The Sunday Times ? (I didn’t take notes, and I forget which.)
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