Pumajaw

The final Threads of Sound of this month featured Organs of Love, Louise McVey and the Cracks in the Concrete, and Pumajaw.

More pics over here.  The videos of several of the recent bands are now up here, including this one of the excellent Pony Boy, shot by Paul Fegan, so you can see what you've been missing if you've not been Threading...

Minx

Cloudburn

The Obsidian Isle

I was at Street Level on Saturday to hear a talk by Gayle Chong-Kwan about her new exhibition "The Obsidian Isle", a collection of photographs of vanished places.   Apparently they're medium format photos (taken on a film-stock that has now been discontinued) of scenes built up from models and old photographs of the places.   They're extremely creepy and lovely - more information on the process of creating them, and a gallery of the photos can be seen here.

Lightbulb Moments

This field of lightbulbs had sprung up outside the library earlier this week - unfortunately they weren't lit when I was going past, and they'd vanished by the next day (it seemed to have something to do with a JP Morgan recruitment drive).

Martin John Henry, 17th c. and Adam Stafford

Back at Stereo this weekend for the latest gig in a Threads-packed month. First on was Adam Stafford, who had one of those cunning looping devices - in the manner of KT Tunstall - but produced much less standard sounding music with it. Many of the pieces had complex layers of vocal harmony, not often involving words, but with an amazing range - right up to unearthly shrieks and siren noises in a couple. Each "layer" had an associated range of dance-moves or gestures (not in a really choreographed way, just that it seemed to go with the sounds) so it was like watching a man in the grip of an incredibly well-organised musical multiple-personality disorder. It's hard to describe - so you should definitely go and see him if you get the chance.

Next were The Seventeenth Century, featuring fiddle and cornet in among the usual guitars and drums, with an unusual and excellent kind of folk-rock thing going on.

And finally Martin John Henry - who was launching his new album.  As usual, more photos over on the Threads Flickr.

Live Re-mix

The Threads folk were back at Stereo last weekend recording/photographing/filming a gig featuring Kid Canaveral then Zoey Van Goey doing a live remix of their songs with GNGR.  

Kid Canaveral were on first (with the stage looking much flasher than usual thanks to artwork by  Katy Wilson)

There were also fairylights strung from the roof  in the style of the Old Fruitmarket.

Next up were Zoey Van Goey, who started off playing some songs in their usual style, only to be joined half way through

 by GNGR who did some live remixing while they played/sang.  I wasn't sure if I was going to like this much, as I'm not usually very into electronic stuff, but it was really good.  I particularly liked  the new version of the "imaginary 8-track" section in "Sackville Sun", which even featured some carefully choreographed "dancing" from the band :-)

More photos over on the Threads Of Sound flickr page.