Cameras at the ready, Alan Dearling shares some of the musical vibes and images…
What a wonderfully varied musical showcase organised by Dark Matter Promotions at the Golden Lion in Todmorden. Kicking off was WYSE, a lady offering an array of strong songs and powerful guitar riffs. Then, Ben Tangle – a modern day folk troubadour with added shruti box! And rounding off this complementary show, Toby Hay on acoustic 6 and 12 string guitars with Aidan Thorne on double bass. Cascades of guitar notes. Indeed, a murmeration of sound from this talented duo.
And outside on the local Rochdale Canal, the UFO glitter ball provided a totally appropriate backdrop for the event!
WYSE
WYSE at times reminded me of Sinead O’Connor. Uncompromising, a tad confrontational, or, as ‘Loud Women’ proclaimed: “Fierce, emotion-packed.” The advance publicity suggested that:
“If Radiohead, Bjork and The Cranberries had a gaybie, they would sound a bit like Wyse.”
From the get-go, WYSE made connections with the audience, sharing her own personal journey into accepting and then embracing being gay. It was very intense emotionally and musically. She was performing solo, without her band, who are based down south. She herself is now based in Yorkshire, but she is still billed as an alternative artist/producer from Portsmouth in Hampshire. She utilised an array of her band recordings, loops and sounds to create a layered, sonic wall. She is an original talent, powerful, assertive, versatile. Her electric guitar solos are searing, edgy events – it’s in yerr face, it’s a performance-art, but also engaging. Very impressive, and her acoustic ‘Wedding Day’ song was a show-stopper. And she had everyone singing along too: “Get your shoes off, boy!” As an opening act, it left a considerable, and very positive lasting impression: Punk folk from a lady on a mission. WYSE riff (you need to sign into Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/reel/1606749783573804
“Immensely talented.” Janice Long, BBC Radio Wales
Ben Tangle is a natural performer with a ‘back-to-the-land, back-to-the-garden’ vibe about him. His smile and personality are a significant part of his rustic charm. To look at, there’s a lot of George Harrison about him, but musically he’s more of a blend of ISB (Incredible String Band) and early Donovan at his hippy-est!
Here’s what the promoters said about him:
“A Dark Matter favourite, Ben delivers Earth treading cloud staring river side folk music from a boat dwelling dreamer. Ben Tangle is a psych-folk minstrel conjuring rich soundscapes with guitar, flute, bodhrán, and shruti box. His immersive live shows blend storytelling, surrealism, and 60s-inspired mysticism—offering a strange and hopeful escape from the everyday.”
Ben and his music and muses live amongst fields of mushrooms. Pastoral scenes, kaleidoscopic psychedelic skies, a lyrical world with plenty of naïve wonderments. “You are the river, You are the sky.” Imagine yourself surrounded by pixies, elves, goblins and unicorns. That is Ben’s world!
https://bentangle.bandcamp.com/
Billed as a “Formidable duo of guitar player and composer Toby Hay and electric and acoustic bass player Aidan Thorne will be playing their album live.” And so it came to pass…
Album link – https://cambrianrecords.bandcamp.com/album/after-a-pause
This was a master-class in instrumental dexterity. Instrumental interplay of the highest order. A weaving of soundscapes, mostly gleaned from their album, ‘After a Pause’, but with some new material like ‘Helibor’ added into the intense mix. Their combination of guitars and double-bass is totally integrated, waterfalls and cascades of sound.
“What Davy Graham and Danny Thompson might have got up to if they were both in their prime in the 2020s.” – Richard Williams
“Toby Hay’s mid-Wales cottage industry of gorgeous, largely instrumental folk music reaches its highest peak yet with After a Pause (Cambrian), a record he made himself over three summer days with double bassist Aidan Thorne. Tracks like Bard flow like warm waterfalls, Hay’s cascading arpeggios landing on the soft supportive bedrock provided by Thorne’s supple strings.” Jude Rogers, The Guardian
This longish commentary on the music of Toby Hay’s compositions and the playing of Toby with Aidan Thorne, comes from writer and landscape environmentalist, Robert Macfarlane.
“The tracks of this album – quick-fingered, deep-felt – open landscapes in the mind’s eye. It feels, listening to them, as if they have a little of the power – the power that linguists call ‘illocutionary’ and magicians call ‘conjuring’ – to summon things into being, or bring pasts briefly back to life. It came as no surprise to learn that Toby has sometimes hoped that the playing of ‘Starlings’ (in which the notes teem and swoop and swarm) might one day call up an actual murmuration. Place, memory, nature, loss and dreamed-of geographies are the subjects of this beautiful music: that gathering of feelings that go by the untranslatable Welsh word hiraeth. There is a sadness at what has gone here, but not a nostalgia. The world’s dew gleams on this music, but the world’s dust swirls through it too.”
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