Live music listings: April 2008Roll over the dates on the calendar to see who's playing, then click for the full listing and ticket info.Click on the mailing list link to enter your email address and we'll let you know, at the start of every week, what's going on around here. Roll over dates on the calendar above to show event details.
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Wed 23rd Phuckit and Faculty Music present JOHN & JEHN + Joe Gideon & The Shark + Duke Garwood
Doors 8.00 This night will be dedicated to the celebration of the release in April 2008 of the eponymous first album of the French London-based duo John & Jehn. (Phuckit! / Faculty Music)
John & Jehn are a visually arresting, explosive, dueling boy-girl set up, where he plays guitar and she plays Farfisa organ and bass. Both sing. They play the whole thing through old Leslie amps. Live, they are slightly unhinged yet super–focused. They are very, very, very good and this is the part where I say that the Myspace songs don't do them any kind of justice. They sound sanitized, whereas their live shows are unhinged, super-focused affairs. I can personally 100% guarantee entertainment.
“John & Jehn’s physical presence alone is mesmerizing. John, the feed-back-favoring guitarist, has cheekbones that could cut-glass, while his band mate Jehn manages to pull off being both gawky and sexy. She’s a little girl lost and femme fatale in equal measures. And their music doesn’t fail to disappoint either.” [Artrocker Magazine] Joe Gideon plucks six strings, dreams stories and sings. Kid sister Viva, a.k.a. 'The Shark', plonks, stomps and honks. Formerly members of Bikini Atoll, Joe Gideon & The Shark released two albums on Bella Union, second album recorded by geeky genius Steve Albini. Then, they formed a family band and spent summer 06' getting drunk in a barn writing songs on their 8 track recorder. It's been a year now and in this time they've been invited to play with great bands and musicians around europe; Archie Bronson Outfit, Sons & Daughters, Scout Niblett, Michael Gira to name but a few. Their tales are beginning and their tails are wagging... “How to describe London-based duo Joe Gideon & The Shark without you being in the same room as me… it's tough, for sure. Without waving hands and pulling shapes it's tough to convey what this music can – and usually does – do to a body exposed to it; it's rough, ragged, blues in its veins. It's dark, atmospheric, oddball and surreal; it's on your doorstep and in your airspace, alien yet talking the same language about the same ol' trials and tribulations of a life lived. Uppers and downers: expected and accepted.” [Drowned in Sound] “Once Jehn said to me about Duke Garwood 'Well, if this man touches his guitar like he touches a woman, I’ll try to marry him'. I answered: 'No way! Because I will propose him first.' The Duke is the kind of man you envy for his style and talent. In his music, he plays with silence, for real. Every move on his guitar, every word seems to be at the right place, at the right time. It looks like The Duke cannot be wrong when he plays, he is where he has to be. Duke Garwood is not playing Blues, he is the blues, and I hate to say that but, I think I found a master.” John “Also part of the indie-rock trio Archie Bronson Outfit, Garwood has been compared to Mark Lanegan, who has himself been compared to Tom Waits; certainly, there's a sepulchral, basement-register Waitsian rasp here, not to mention a comparably startling surrealism to the lyrics. It's like traditional country blues subjected to a barrage of 21st-century urban noise, (…) It's music from the margins, but from the margins of several genres.” [Guardian review of the album ‘Emerald Palace’] |
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