Some musings from Alan Dearling at this live gig featuring three sets of performers
Headlining, from London, the Jonny Halifax Invocation took up their places in a darkened room, this was extraordinary, doomily psychedelic – mesmerising. Visually they resemble a ragged collection of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds. Swampy grunge, a pulsating collision of blues, Kraut rock and jazz. Weirdly wonderful indeed. They are something of a live phenomenon. Takes me back to my days in the cosmic maelstrom of the later 1960s witnessing the early Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson, Arthur Brown, MC5, Can, the Doors…a mind-numbing journey along the never-ending River Styx.
Rattles, ethereal vocals, thumping drums, wailing sax, screaming harps, distorted guitars, stratospheric lap-steel, keys picking out the thematics embedded in the songs…Definitely way ‘Out There’! The Jonny Halifax Invocation take no prisoners.
I’ve included this link to an immersive, strange and extremely atmospheric live film of ‘Living the Dream’ from a show in Walthamstow. Fab sounds and lights: https://www.facebook.com/reel/964505449249847?locale=en_GB
The Invocation resemble a one-off musical explosion, an experience of epic proportions. Back in my hippy days, this would have been called a ‘wig out’, a ‘happening’, a ‘Be-In’. You are on the bus, or not on the bus… know what I mean?
Get hip, get invocated… Hendrix would have asked, ‘Are you Experienced? Are you, also, Invocated?’
Dark Matter Promotions wrote in advance of the gig, “We are delirious to have this act back on a local stage”, sharing the promo information:
“The primitivist free blues outsider, sonic shaman of the acid fuzzed lap steel guitar, demented blower of the howling harmonica of doom. His new band project now combines avant swamp blues heaviosity with kosmic free jazz experimentalism in a fluid collective of godless raag brut improvisations – sonic visions of an hallucinatory apocalyptic near future.”
Their recordings include: Acid Blüüs Räägs : Vols. 1 & 2 and Living the Dream.
Supporting the Invocation at the Working Men’s Club in Todmorden were two bands. First, three members of the post-punk, Knitting Circle, formed in York. Visually, purposefully eccentric. Tom-tom drumming, a gangling stick-insect, Ramones-style guitarist, and the atonal lady singer-guitarist, who looked, knowingly, methinks, a little at odds with her colleagues in her (perhaps) Laura Ashley dress. It was rudimentary punk, absolutely de rigueur in 1976 West London. The stand out song was all about one of the last Witchcraft trials in the UK, which saw Helen Duncan convicted in the Old Bailey. Hebden Bridge nearby to Todmorden has a long history of witches including the White Witch of Coldon Valley. ‘Deciduous Climbers’ is their self-released EP.
The 3 Electro Knights from London brought along a cornucopia of electronics, keys, samplers, switches – lots of gizmos. And a stellar array of insistent bass notes, loops, strange sonics – a little reminiscent of Tangerine Dream in a meeting with Cabaret Voltaire. Self-described as ‘a science fiction band for the 21st century’. Their little lights attached to the cosmic electronics added to the visual show and they switched places and instruments throughout. ‘New Adventures’ was one of their musical excursions and they ended appropriately with a nod in the direction of David Bowie’s Berlin period with Brian Eno. They have a number of music releases available on Bandcamp.
.