Music / live music
Review: Holy Tongue & Shackleton, Strange Brew: ‘Fine musicianship and sonic extremes’
In recent years post punk seems to have changed its meaning. Basic guitar band with shouty vocals? Post punk mate.
But the term previously referred to the ‘anything goes’ spirit that flowed around independent labels from the late ‘70s. Hypnotic grooves and experimental production were in. Power chords and simplistic lyrics were out.
I’m not sure any post punk era band had a drummer as good as Valentina Magaletti but her band Holy Tongue are part of that tradition. Formed by Magaletti and producer Al Wootton, they were later joined by bassist Susumu Mukai, and the word was soon out about their intense, improvised live sets.
is needed now More than ever
Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare, their fantastic debut album, followed in 2023. Imagine if PIL / African Head Charge / The Pop Group had grown up listening to techno and dubstep? Well, now you don’t need to.
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They went further out on 2024’s The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now, a collaboration with dub-techno maverick Shackleton, who joins them at Strange Brew this evening.
To the album he brings mysticism and a hint of ritual menace, but in this live setting his role is more like that of a Dennis Bovell or Mad Professor. He’s a latterday dub maestro, enhancing and transforming the group’s performance in real time. And it’s arguably more fun.
Tonight’s biggest treat is hearing virtuoso percussionist Magaletti given the four dimensional dub treatment by a producer at the very top of his game. Snare drum, toms, timbales and cymbals take turns to enter Shackleton’s prismatic spotlight, as they’re variously reverbed, delayed and ring modulated into all manner of alien tones and textures.
Through all this, Mukai drives through the mix like the second coming of Jah Wobble, while Al Wootton throws in a surreal barrage of sound from eerie samples, shakers and electric guitar.
The result is a virtually seamless set of slithering, clattering jams drawing on all the good stuff from Can to This Heat; both proudly experimental and gloriously danceable. The peaks, when they arrive, are mind-meltingly trippy – a rare combination of fine musicianship and sonic extremes.
The warm-up set – from the superbly named Elijah Minnelli – is also good although harder to pin down. Starting with a squeezebox-toting neo-folk number that quotes the Lady In The Radiator song from Eraserhead – no doubt in tribute to David Lynch – he soon settles into a head-nodding chug with lashings of low end.
Blissed out dub is the connective tissue but his music pulls in rhythms and melodies from Latin and Middle Eastern music, British folk and even gospel. If the eclecticism seems a bit random the production is first class and it pretty much shows you can dub most things and make them better.
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Tonight’s promoters Accidental Meetings specialise in this sort of thing, having carved out a niche where experimental music meets soundsystem pressure.
Fans of bassy and weird things should note they’re doing a multi venue mini-fest in April with a massive lineup including Kode 9, Tim Reaper, Iration Steppers and MC Yallah. Tempting, isn’t it?
Main photo by Simi
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