Wolf Alice, On tour
Twenty-odd years on, it’s worth remembering that grunge was a great sound. The woolly, superfuzzed guitars; the quiet moments, crushingly followed by the loud ones; the ad hoc attempts at guitar solos: Wolf Alice have all those, just slightly slicker. Though it seems a contradiction in terms, this London quartet offer clean grunge: as powerful as the noise is that they generate, the voice and angular guitar of Ellie Rowsell are more clearly articulated than you might imagine. And with the band taking five years to come up with their debut album, there’s the suggestion of a plan at work here.
JR
Courtney Barnett, On tour
A Sea Of Split Peas, the first UK release by Courtney Barnett, introduced us to a format (the “double EP”) and a talent as singular as one another. A singer-songwriter from Melbourne, Barnett didn’t reinvent the wheel – offering fairly scruffy slacker rock with wry lyrics (Pavement have been mentioned) – but she did so while maintaining a crazy schedule, including working a day job and running her own label. The fact that she was a prolific songwriter wasn’t only completely at odds with her manner, but showed admirable time-management. Barnett’s debut album proper, Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit, seems to provide a more accurate representation of her situation. There’s still the site-specific local detail, and a great charm, but the music has mounted in intensity, as if to suggest this is someone who knows precisely where they are heading.
JR
Errors, On tour
While their patrons and labelmates Mogwai are post-rock, Glaswegian trio Errors are thought to occupy a more scientific-sounding genre: post-electro. If that initially sounds a little forbidding, it’s worth exploring how Simon Ward, Stephen Livingstone and James Hamilton make it work. As it applies to their fifth album, Lease Of Life, it’s by creating 80s synth-pop, but as if it has been exploded in space: a place of diffuse elements, pleasantly burbling sequences and vocal refrains, coinciding in fortuitous alignment. It can be a sad business; when they head towards more conventional songs, they sound a bit like the Blue Nile gone techno. In terms of fellow travellers, you might want to think in terms of a solar system, with Zombie Zombie, Umberto and Fuck Buttons nearby, relative to everything else, but still many light years apart.
JR
Fennesz And Lillevan, Leeds
Quoted as a key early influence by Oneohtrix Point Never, Fennesz’s music is characterised by impressionistic sweeps of expanded guitar lines and laptop effects, which here will be paired with abstract moving collages by audiovisual artist Lillevan. Starting out as a guitar player, Fennesz became obsessed with distortion, which emerged as a signature sound, centred around slow decay. He hasn’t strayed far from that path since, with a string of releases on the Touch and Editions Mego labels, among others. Although not the first time the pair have worked together, this collaboration is a UK first. It takes the work of Gustav Mahler as source material, over which Fennesz plays what he calls a “live remix”, generating heavy clouds of disintegrating melody augmented by washes of painterly, textural visuals from Lillevan that typically slip out of focus, just as you think you can make out a shape.
Howard Assembly Room, Sat
JA
Håkon Kornstad, London
Norway’s Jazzland label has brought the world some remarkable musicians, and Oslo-born saxophonist Håkon Kornstad (playing the second of three Jazzland shows at Kings Place) comes very high on the list. Kornstad discovered John Coltrane via the work of his own compatriot Jan Garbarek, but his evolution under those influences soon took some unusual turns, into opera, as well as highly imaginative use of samples and loops. Kornstad’s shows have been described in terms of symphonic music rather than unaccompanied performance, and his 2007 solo album Single Engine was widely admired for its rare blend of edginess and lyricism, displaying an emotional warmth even in its most abstract episodes. He has also been a creative collaborator, alongside Pat Metheny, Bugge Wesseltoft and Sidsel Endresen, who plays the last Jazzland gig on 22 Apr.
Kings Place, N1, Wed
JF
Total Immersion: Boulez At 90, London
Although he was only in charge of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for four seasons from 1971 to 1975, Pierre Boulez’s impact on musical life in London was immense and permanent. The 20th-century classics that he championed and conducted so lucidly are now a regular part of the repertoires of most of the capital’s other orchestras, while his meticulousness has set the standard for premieres ever since. Boulez celebrates his 90th birthday this week, and in tribute, the BBC’s latest Total Immersion day offers three concerts plus films and talks.
Barbican Hall, EC2 & LSO St Luke’s, EC1, Sat
AC
