Cantilever returns: Melos Kapla, Cassie Kinoshi + Geordie Greep
This weeks shows, new music and more...
Cantilever is a weekly rundown of London-based gigs, and other musical ephemera.
Lo, we are back. Regular programming resumes. The music scene in London will once again be dissected and part-digested for the lucky few who are subscribed to this newsletter to more easily consume. Never say: “I wish I knew about them when they played last year.” Never say: “I never find anything I love anymore.” Do say: “My ears are ready, they can open no further.”
At subscriber request we’ve made a Spotify playlist for this week on Cantilever. Stick it on while you read this newsletter / refer back to it as you go! There’s also a Google Doc linking out to Bandcamp pages if remunerating artists is your thing.
Shows this week
Melos Kapla — Cafe Oto, 18.11.24
Melos Kapla is an improvisatory quintet established in 2019 by Tom Relleen of Tomaga, intended to explore minimalism, improvisation and “sublimated reverie”.
On their self titled debut, the influence of original 1970s minimalism is writ large. Specifically, the marimba and harmonic background textures are reminiscent of passages from Julius Eastman’s Femenine (1974), a “lost” composition that debuted 2 years before Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians (1976), and one that may clash slightly, like Melos Kapla’s output, with a pre-conception that so called “experimental” music need be harsh or cerebral, rather than gentle and affecting. On Melos Kapla (2024), the synthesised and acoustic textures are largely separated. The instruments are given space to breathe, they speak in their own language.
Tomorrow at Cafe Oto is likely to contain an atmosphere of real poignancy as Tom Relleen very sadly passed away in 2020 at the age of just 42, this outfit having not performed without him before.
Music from Relleen, who was prolific, has trickled out since his passing. Marta Salogni, Melos Kapla’s producer, tape-loop player and Relleen’s partner said of their collaborative record Music for Open Spaces (2023): ““I wanted each piece to be a photograph of the moment we looked at each other and said, ‘This is finished.’“
With this underlying ethos, it’s unlikely that tomorrow’s performance will stick closely to the source material, if you can call it that. Continuing in the spirit of someone, but allowing their contribution to remain its own untouched moment, is a moving tribute to loss.
For her part, Marta Salogni will go down as one of this era’s most important producers, having worked with Bjork, Frank Ocean, Depeche Mode, Animal Collective etc. on plenty of very ambitious sounding records. You can check out her work here. Tickets.
Clarissa Connelly — ICA, 20.11.24
A folkloric take on contemporary classical composition for piano and voice, Clarissa Connelly’s pieces are full of genuine surprises. The ten songs on World of Work (2024) shift quickly between light and dark. Rhythms keep you guessing as the songs unravel new areas. Major to minor harmonic turns provide a genuinely Renaissance feel.
The album opens on a single chord which is left to fully decay over a good ten seconds. Just before it starts to sound like a joke, another chord resolves it. This fine line between sincerity and something more arch is really the MO of the whole album: foley effects are precise, but just shy of on the nose, a synthetic bassy voice occasionally hints at a parody. It’s also provided one of the most polarising album covers of the year. Tickets.
Side note: Connelly, alongside Astrid Sonne, ML Buch and Erika de Casier, was an attendee of the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, an entirely free university course in Copenhagen that seems to incubate totally original ideas of what so-called popular music can be. The good news is, you too can apply for this course! Applications are open until the 2nd of December. Good luck.
LSO x Cassie Kinoshi’s seed — Barbican, 21.11.24
Cassie Kinoshi’s brand of balanced composition-focused jazz has tended to be somewhat outshone in public consciousness by her more party-music oriented contemporaries from Tomorrow’s Warriors, the institution offering free support and career advice to London Jazz musicians. Bradley 4:18 (2021) placed atonality and rhythmic skittishness next to sparse introspective studies for individual instruments as it soundtracked a Maxine Doyle choreographed all-male ballet which attempted to reflect sides of masculinity. Kinoshi’s latest album gratitude (2024), out on International Anthem, extended her palette to lush string arrangements, courtesy of the London Contemporary Orchestra. This show at the Barbican will see her debut a new piece — HEART — inspired by Jamaican activist and writer Una Marston’s poem ‘Nature’s Heart’, which will be performed in a programme with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony no. 6 & Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour. Tickets.
Fontaines D.C — Alexandra Palace, 22.11.24 + 23.11.24
One of the striking things about the total atomisation of culture in the information age is that, sometimes seemingly against your will, you end up rooting for the big guy. Fontaines D.C have now sold out both their nights at Alexandra Palace and a show at Finsbury Park. “Good for them!” you think; “fair play!” I too have enjoyed watching the video of Chappell Roan’s performances 9 months apart: one to no one and one to everyone. It’s a good thing!
At a time when it’s increasingly difficult to cut through — when the head gets shorter and fatter and the tail gets longer and thinner — we should want to share the things we love with as many people of possible, and we should want those things to achieve the levels of success required so that they are self sustaining. We just wish there were more of them!
Dogrel (2019) was a great album. ‘A Hero’s Death’ was genuinely life affirming. ‘The Couple Across the Way’ from Skinty Fia (2022) was touching, and Romance (2024) has a well won swagger, even if it does sound a bit like Kasabian.
The big guy is also extremely lucrative. And on the second night of the Fontaines D.C residency at Ally Pally, you can instead head down the road to O2 Academy Islington, pay a tenner, and spend the night listening to their music at the “Not Another Indie Disco: Fontaines D.C Special”… All great but I ask you this: has there ever been a shorter gap in time between the artist’s boom in popularity and the recorded music tribute night to them than there is here? Even Taylor Swift and Drake vs. Kanye had to be around for at least a decade before this kind of thing started happening, didn’t they? There’s a Mark Fisher-esque, a Simon Reynolds-esque comment in here somewhere, but, really, who cares? Waiting list (to the gig, not the tribute night…)
Anohni — Royal Festival Hall, 24.11.24
‘Breaking’, the latest track from Anohni and the Johnsons, is a fitting continuation of the soul influence that defined My Back Was A Bridge for You to Cross (2023), an album with the eponymous LGBT activist Marsha P. Johnson on the cover, that felt like the zenith of the ANOHNI’s musical vehicle.
This performance at the Royal Festival Hall is titled “Dark Blue: Anohni sings Lou Reed” and closes the London Jazz Festival. It was Reed whom the track ‘Sliver of Ice’ on A Bridge… is about. As he was nearing the end of his life, Reed spoke to Anohni about finding new satisfaction in small experiences and sensations, inspiring the lines “The cold ice on my tongue / Makes its way towards oblivion”. Another touching tribute. Very few remaining tickets.
Grab a ticket before they sell out
Blue Bendy — MOTH CLUB, 01.02.25
Blue Bendy brought out a quietly brilliant record this year which seemed to simultaneously represent the apotheosis of and draw a curtain on the so called “south London scene”. The half-spoken reflexive lyrics wryly echo contemporary internet culture as much as they point towards intense emotional depths. These sit atop interlocking half-midwest-emo half-chamber-pop instrumentals. So Medieval (2024) is a rare record where perfectionism paid off. Head to MOTH on the 1st of Feb for something gloriously intense. Tickets.
Ichiko Aoba presents “Luminescent Creatures” — Barbican Hall, 31.03.25
Aoba’s previous full-length Windswept Adan (2020) was conceived as the soundtrack to an imagined film: an expansive exercise in jazz-folk-ambient-etc-etc awe-building. “Comparisons come from multiple directions, from the glistening folk gentleness of Vashti Bunyan, the psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection to the poised jazz / classical tension of Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders’ Promises, though none of these quite sum it up” is what we said at the time. So if this sounds like your thing you can still get a ticket in the stalls for the debut of this forthcoming album. Tickets.
Geordie Greep — KOKO, 15.04.25
The idea that the singer maintains an indexical relationship with the words they are singing in the song is a truly postmodern phenomenon that seems to now be, oddly, accepted as an essential truth. Just ask any pop-star-easter-egg-hunter or lawyer attempting to convict a drill rapper. Did Glen Campbell’s fans feel cheated when they found out he was not, in fact, a Wichita Lineman? Maybe they did. Didn’t Johnny Cash’s fans get a bit miffed when they found out he wasn’t actually in prison…? Or was that just in the film? Anyway, on Geordie Greep (former Black Midi frontman)’s The New Sound (2024), it’s nice to hear a record that very clearly places character as one of its most important tenets, even if it is, as they say, an hour of a man raving about sex workers. Steely Dan meets Robert Fripp meets William S. Burroughs. The first KOKO show sold out immediately and a second was added. Tickets.
Also notable this week
Chris Cohen - The 100 Club, 19.11.24, Tickets.
The Slow Country - The Shacklewell Arms, 19.11.24, Tickets.
Xiu Xiu — Heaven, 19.11.24, Tickets.
The Dare - Heaven, 20.11.24, Wait List, Heaven residency sold out. Bristol still available if you’re desperate.
Naima Bock — The Ivy House, 21.11.24, Tickets.
Three Trapped Tigers — Electric Ballroom, 22.11.24, Tickets.
Rosie Alena — The Ivy House, 22.11.24, Tickets.
Ganavya — Union Chapel, 23.11.24. Wait list.
Joy Orbison — EartH Hall, 23.11.24, Wait list.
Baggio — The Shacklewell Arms, 23.11.24, Tickets.
Fat Dog — O2 Kentish Town Forum, 23.11.24, Wait list.
Cola — The Dome, Tufnell Park, 23.11.24, Tickets.
Other musical ephemera
Irving Berlin’s Nine Rules for Writing Popular Songs
Lessons from The Great American Songbook: “… The song writer must look upon his work as a business, that is, to make a success of it he must work and work, and then WORK…"
The lost record subculture on Reddit to find “The Most Mysterious Song in the World.
What these people don’t know is the most mysterious song in the world is actually my side-project.
James Blake wears Meta x Ray Ban spectacles
The dystopian collaboration between two monopolies. A long read here on EssilorLuxottica (Ray Ban’s parent) and anti-trust. Worth a look, particularly for our bespectacled readers.
“Fintech is brat…” Charli XCX headlines event exclusively for Revolut customers
Nothing inherently against Steven Bartlett, Outernet, Revolut, nor Charli XCX, but it just of makes you go 🫤 🙁 doesn’t it? Sorry…
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