MUSIC preview
d
ROCK
Therapy?
Edinburgh: Venue, Wed 4.
When Dante roamed through Hell, he must have missed the dark corner where Therapy?’s frontman Andy Cairns sat writing songs with titles like Bowels Of Love and Misery. Now, after a quiet couple of years, Cairns has been let out of his infernal pit for good behaviour. New single Church Of Noise even launches into a knees-up, boogie-woogie mid-section as the band recapture the melodic post-punk intensity that saw breakthrough album Troublegum sell millions.
’To be totally honest with you, we kind of lost the plot in 1995 when we did Infernal Love,’ says Cairns in his chirpy Belfast tones. 'I was so up my own arse then, too self-conscious, trying to be dark and lyrical and poetic. We took some time off and got inspired by music again and stripped it right back down to what the band was about. This time we wanted to make a good, noisy, stomping rock 'n' roll record.’
The fresh outlook isn't Cairns’s doing alone. In the period since the band last assaulted our eyes and ears, drummer Fyfe Ewing has been replaced by 22-year-old Graham Hopkins, while guitarist/cellist Martin McCarrick
Therapy? got their baby teeth in Edinburgh
officially turned the three-piece into a foursome. New album, Semi-Detached, bursts forth on 30 March, and a full UK tour is planned for later in the year. But first comes a trip round some of the country's smaller venues.
’We want to take away all the bullshit and bombast that has got associated with touring,’ says Cairns, promising this round of gigs isn't just a warm-up jaunt to allow the new line-up time to rehearse. 'We just want to enjoy ourselves, play the new album and some stuff from the back catalogue, and get a bit more full-on with the fans again.’
Anyway, he admits, the Venue in Edinburgh has a special place in Therapy? history. ’That's where we kicked off, basically. When I first had a demo tape of the band, I saved up and got the boat over because I wanted to see Silverfish at the Venue. I met Lesley Rankin and gave her a copy of the tape, thinking she’d probably throw it away. That was on the Saturday night, and on the Monday morning we got a call from Wiiija Records saying they'd like to put out an album. So if I hadn’t come to Edinburgh, we wouldn't have released Baby Teeth.’ (Alan Morrison)
W Church Of Noise is released on Mon 2 Mar
JAZZ
Charles Earland Edinburgh: La Belle Angele, Fri 27 Feb.
Charles Earland: organ razer 42 THEUST 20 Feb—S Mar 1998
The Big Beat at La Belle Angele is pretty well-attended at the best of times, but it is likely to need shoehorns for the first-ever Scottish appearance by this soul-ran. legend Earland started Out as a saxophone player, but after a spell in Organist Jinirny lvlc‘Griff's band in the early 60$, saw his true way ahead, and SWitched his attentions to the Hammond organ (although he still breaks Out the horns on occasion)
’I played saxophone in Jimmy’s band for three and half years, and | used to doodle around With his Hammond on the intermissions at gigs,' recalls Earland. 'I guess I kinda taught myself, and I learned to change my sound a little so that I could find my own identity, I really attack the instrument, and my technique separated me from the other cats, because they had a more slurred sound than I was using.
‘I learned stuff from guys like Jimmy Smith and Don Patterson and Larry Young and Groove Holmes, and then
I kinda took all those things and combined it With my own musical ability and my own direction, which was coining out of playing saxophone I played organ more like a horn man would, and that gave me my own sound and my own feel ’
The Hammond’s greasy, down home soiind became a Quintessential element in the soul-jan movement Once Jimmy Smith had laid down the template in the late 50s. Earland QUickly acquired the nickname The Mighty Burner for the eXCiting, groove-heavy style which made his narue, and it proved irresistible all over again when the jazz-dance and Acid Jazz crazes hit the club scene in the late 80s.
Earland suffered a heart-attack in I991, but bOunced back wrth no perceptible loss of the fire and groove-power which won him his nickname. His take on the jazz repertory, soaked to the roots in blues, gospel and funk, is still burning. (Kenny Mathieson)
DRUM ’N' HOP Third Eye Foundation
Since rising from the post-rock swamps of Flying Saucer Attack a few years ago, Bristol’s Matt Elliot has been busy on new project Third Eye Foundation, swapping drone- riock guitars for rough-sketched drum ’n’ bass and hip hop.
What's it all about then?
Well music is basically just pretentious most of the time. But I've got newer stuff that’s not out yet. It‘s laid back hip hop, about BObpm. Just mad noise, really.
A lot of sitting around in your bedroom then?
It's better to work alone, you don’t have anyone to answer to.
So can anyone in Bristol be in a band?
Basically everyone in Bristol is pretty cool. And there’s one guy Fat Paul, he basically holds it all together, putting on bands and all that.
Lo-fi drum 'n' bass for the millennium anyone?
Idon't have any special attachment to Io-fi. That's bollocks basrcally. As for the millennium, it affects everyone, whether they believe it or not. I know it’s going to happen.
So any work from other Bristol big- knobs?
I'd love to work With Tricky, he’s a genius. I really like remixes, I've had a few done in the past. I really like Aphex Twin, Bowery Electric and the last Pastels mix I did.
A future as remixer—to-the-stars?
I love remixing, basically, it’s less work and you don’t have to bother with clearance for samples. Usually I have to do loads of weird things so people won’t recognise it and sue me.
What next?
l’rn off playing arOund the c0untry soon. But there’s not enough interesting stuff coming out at the moment. I really love Leila, yOu know, on Rephlex Records, I'd love to do something with her. But generally there’s more peOpIe than ever doing music. It just seems to be going downhill in quality. But maybe it's a passing thing. Roll on the millennium. (Craig Reece)
fl G/asgow: 73th Note Club, Thu 26 Feb.