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LIMA Orchestra at Fuseleeds06

The Orchestra gives Ken Vandermark some musical spacceLIMA’s first birthday at the Wardrobe for Fuseleeds06. The LIMA Orchestra were as good as I expected them to be (and this means VERY good). Ken Vandermark and 2 of his Free Fall fellow musicians joined the Orchestra for the second half. Too many saxophones, incendiary grooves, virtuoso performances and excellent song titles (rubber band, pigeons in the attic, um I think you’re a semi-tone out…) made this one of the best performances I have ever seen at the Wardrobe. Thank you LIMA and happy birthday!

View more photos here.

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Hot dogs, bingo and degradation

To celebrate the first anniversary of their first “proper gig” (Colin’s own words), Minghe Morte have announced another feeder gig! Last year, it was cheese toasties; this year, it will be hot dogs. And of course there will be a bingo interval with hopefully more unique and exciting prizes (if I remember correctly, one of last year’s top prizes was a Minghe Morte chicken dinner for one).

And if the promise of free hot dogs and bingo is not enough to get you down to the Packhorse on June 12, I have heard from reliable sources (Colin himself and the LIMA website) that Chris de Bezenac will be generating extra dirt with his brand new laptop. Yeah!

I’ll be there. Will you? (whoever you are)

Chris Bussey Colin Sutton on guitar Chris de Bezenac

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Last LIMA gig of 2005

Just come back from the Cardigan Arms where LIMA presented their last gig of 2005. I had the pleasure of discovering the incredible talent of Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers & Philip Gibbs. What a treat this was! LIMA presented these guys as a “world class improv trio” and I have to agree 100%. Great stuff.

We also got to see a short set by Kane/Sharkey/deBezenac. I don’t think I’ll ever get fed up of these guys. Their music just gets better and better. Both trios joined forces for an amazing finish. All in all an evening of the highest quality.

Apparently, the next LIMA event will be in February. Thanks for a great Autumn season! Can’t wait for what’s coming up next year.

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Jim Black tonight!

OK, I’m excited. Jim Black is back in Leeds and I’m going to see him. I’m getting ready as I type. This will be the fourth time I see Jim Black in Leeds! He’s been amazing every time so I’m really looking forward to tonight’s gig. Check this space for some photos (hopefully not as blurry and dark as my latest gig pics).

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Minghe Morte’s Requiem

Here’s my only photo of last week’s Minghe Morte gig at the Fenton.

Chris Bussey somewhere behind the blur

Maybe due to the nasty weather, the turnout was very low which impacted quite a lot on the atmosphere. Minghe Morte‘s music was again full of raw energy. Chris Bussey‘s drumming seems to get better and better every time I see him. One major disappointment (apart from the tiny audience): the sound ruined a lot of the performance. It sounded like a massive reverb was drowning most of the subtleties that make Minghe Morte so great.

I also saw Rumple Bombaclaat vs Don’t Lick the Knife. As laptop gigs go, this was pretty good with a few real gems emerging from the general chaos of noise generated by the 2 PowerBooks.

Rumple Bombaclaat vs Don't Lick the Knife

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David Last

In a previous post, I mentioned the excellent podcast from Resonance FM: Rhythm Incursions. The second Rhythm Incursions podcast was a session by David Last. According to the podcast description:

“Fusing dancehall-style rhythms with almost a minimal house kinda vibe, he weaves together a sonic collage that draws you in and hypnotises you from the get-go. Don’t be mistaken: this is post-club music at its finest – the kind of thing you put on when its 3am, you’re tired as hell and wanting to wind down after a night out on the tiles.”

Here’s my favourite bit from the podcast:

[audio:david-last.mp3]
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Barry Adamson is good, I am stupid

I just did something really stupid. Actually, no!! It wasn’t me, it was bad software design. I use this little programme to cut samples out of my mp3 files. It’s called mp3trim and it’s very basic. You choose where the sample starts and where it ends and you click Save! (more exclamation mark abuse, the Internet / computer world is littered with exclamation marks).

mp3trim screenshot

So, I was cutting a sample from the very excellent Walk the Last Mile by Barry Adamson so I could post it on this blog and I clicked Save! without thinking. You guessed it, I really should’ve clicked Save As. Maybe that’s why they added the exclamation mark. Well, it wasn’t enough to deter me. Thinking about it, it probably encouraged me. Now, I need to rip the CD again (I do own the CD by the way).

Anyway, here’s the sample: Barry Adamson‘s excellent voice on the intro of Walk the Last Mile:

[audio:adamson-walkthelastmile.mp3]
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I’ll be brand new tomorrow

Bought loads of stuff yesterday. New clothes, new music, new hair. New hair? Well, no, I didn’t buy new hair, I just got it cut shorter (very adventurous!). Anyway, got some new clothes, hence the new tiny-pic™ in the sidebar (can you just about see the new hoody?).

Sepultura: RootsCouldn’t resist a second-hand CD shop on my way back from town. Bought 3 albums:

  • Roots, Sepultura
  • Reinventing the Steel, Pantera
  • The Melody At Night, With You, Keith Jarrett

The guy in the shop told me: “There’s an odd one out here“. 😉 Anyway, it was really good to hear this again:

[audio:sepultura-roots.mp3]

By the way: the audio player above is also new. Expect more audio gem samples in the future.

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Highly recommended: Rhythm Incursions

Rhythm Incursions Like many of us, when I first heard of podcasting, I thought: “Great! Another source for interesting music!”. I explored the podcast directories I could find at the time but was quickly disappointed by the lack of quality music programmes. Until now, I only subscribed to 2 podcasts: BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything; both are talk radio shows although TOE contains some nice background music. Anyway, my point today is that I have finally found a really good music podcast: Rhythm Incursions. It comes from the excellent Resonnance fm radio station. Here’s how they describe the podcast:

“The Rhythm Incursions podcast is arguably the first ever music radio show to be podcast with the complete consent and involvement of the record labels it supports. Tagging itself as “picking up where hip hop stops”, the show covers all kinds of divergent beats, from the glitched out beats of the Planet Mu label to the leftfield hip hop of Bully Records, from the smoked out Crooklyn dub of the Wordsound stable to the mashed out junglism of the Mashit label. Trust us, this is a show you do not want to miss…”