Music PREVIEWS
TRUMPETER AND HIS TROUPE LEROY JONES BAND The Spiegeltent, Fri 22 Jul, and ‘We Love Louis’, Queen’s Hall, Sat 23 Jul, part of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival
‘I was in an episode two weeks ago with my local quintet. I was performing one of my original compositions for about a minute and twenty seconds.’ Bandleader and trumpeter Leroy Jones is bubbling with pride over his recent appearance in an episode of Treme, the new New Orleans-set politics and crime drama from the makers of The Wire. ‘Yeah, it’s a pretty exciting scene, we are doing one of my tunes and we got to trade fours and play out which is a lot of fun.’ Jones chuckles easily, charmingly balancing jazz phrenology with easy grace. Jones, a veteran, if that is the right word, of the south’s swing, bebop and jazz scenes, has performed with everyone from Dr John to Harry Connick Jr. Now in his early 50s he is returning to the Jazz & Blues Festival for the first time since 2001 to perform two very special gigs. On the Friday night he will be doing what he refers to as his ‘performance rabbit piece’ when he and some of his US band (including his Swedish wife) join forces with a local rhythm section to perform some of Jones’ remarkable solo compositions. On the Saturday Jones will also be getting involved in a Louis Armstrong tribute show alongside vocalist Todd Gordon at the Queen’s Hall.
Speaking from his humid hometown of New Orleans, Jones is looking forward to the ‘camaraderie’ of the shows; anyone who has ever seen Jones perform will know that a sense of family, nurture and education is at the root of all his performances. ‘I love to inspire and show what I know to young musicians if they are interested.’ (Paul Dale) ■ See the Edinburgh Festival Guide, page 107, for more on the Jazz Festival.
LOCAL HEROES LINE-UP KING TUT’S SUMMER NIGHTS King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, until Thu 28 Jul POST-ROCK GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR The Arches, Glasgow, Fri Jul 22
‘Britain’s Best Small Venue’ – as voted last month by the NME but perhaps better known to music-loving punters as plain old ‘King Tut’s’ – continues its successful run of seasonal live programmes with this month’s annual ‘Summer Nights’ series. A cavalcade of emerging homegrown talent, this fortnight of mega-value, multi-band bills encompasses the city’s finest cantankerous noisemakers and miniature orchestras, with acoustic sessions and DJ sets strung in between.
Highlights include Song of Return, who headline on the 21st. Rising from the
ashes of acclaimed electronica outfit Union of Knives, they’ve spent the past few years slowly but surely kicking up a storm around Glasgow. They’re joined by the skin-tight grooves and smart-mouthed lyricism of Otherpeople, plus the always energetic The King Hats. Still frighteningly young, The Seventeenth Century front a wave of new Glasgow artists with a penchant for lush instrumentation (and an overt folk influence) on the 26th. They share a bill with veteran melodic dreamers Endor and the spritely Crow Road, with lo-fi heroes Randolph’s Leap playing downstairs. The following night welcomes back charming modern-day hippies Haight-Ashbury after a successful whirlwind year’s touring in support of debut album Here In The Golden Rays. The pick of the final week surely comes on the 25th, when magnificent multi- instrumentalists Meursault close an Edinburgh-themed night of new talent with atmospheric electronica duo Capitals (pictured), the lovable and joyously eccentric Over The Wall and Glasgow’s own Miaoux Miaoux, with Errors DJing in the bar. You can’t do much better than that for six quid. (Ryan Drever)
One should never underestimate the power of the bagpipe. It played a key role, after all, in F# A# ∞ (F-sharp, A-sharp, Infinity) – the official debut from Canadian post-rock deities Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The anarchic, enigmatic (not to mention staunchly camera and interview-shy)
collective embraced the skirl on ‘East Hastings’, one of three sprawling, long- form tracks on their aforesaid 1997 calling card (it was preceded by a cassette, All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling, limited to 33 copies, in 1994). But Godspeed’s assimilation of bagpipes into their beatific instrumental arsenal wasn’t the only noteworthy incident on their inaugural album: its haunting and sublime terrain of neo-classical grandeur, field recordings, loops and samples drew breaths and plaudits from all who encountered it, and the band’s relentless audio-visual gigs followed suit. Godspeed’s gargantuan, salient psalms prompted the NME to crown them ‘the last great band of the century’ and render them cover stars in the late 90s, while Danny Boyle used ‘East Hastings’ as the musical centrepiece for his post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later. Top Gear got their fingers burnt though: they once played a clip of ‘9-15-00’ and swiftly had to apologise to the anti-consumerist rabble for doing so. Godspeed surfaced from a seven-year hiatus to curate ATP’s Nightmare Before
Christmas last year. While revered offshoots like A Silver Mt Zion had filled the dire gap in our ears and hearts, they were welcomed back with open arms. They re-emerged, abstruse as ever: swathed in myth and baleful beauty; peerless orchestrators of the end of days. (Nicola Meighan)
66 THE LIST 21 Jul–4 Aug 2011