Last Saturday, Newcastle's Discovery Museum played host to another showcase of new musical talent from the North East (you can read my write-up of last year's event here). It was promoted as a free afternoon event by the local music development agency Generator as "Transmission - the NEw Wave" (capitalisation intentional; see what they did there?).
This year the catchment area extended south to Teesside. A panel - consisting of Bob Fischer from BBC Introducing at Radio Tees, Kingsley from The Chapman Family and myself - were invited along to offer comments and encouragement to five new local acts in a strictly non-competitive setting. And, once again, two established headliners were booked to round off the afternoon's entertainment.
First up, Cult Image had the unenviable job of opening the event in a large room that was only starting to fill up. A dark, powerful four piece with the classic Smiths/Joy Division lineup, they laid into their set with an authority and conviction you'd never guess from the early demos on their MySpace page. Kingsley admired the vocal stylings and startling cardigan of frontman Sean McMahon but it seemed to me the real kingpin was Fintan Dawson behind the kit, whacking out the backbeats with metronomic precision and a wonderful feel. Bassist Anthony Hethrington and guitarist Chris Knight simply locked into place around him, Knight creating a wide ocean of sound without any flashy posturing - or even apparent effort.
This is a group that will never need a rhythm guitarist. To overtake the competition they perhaps need to move up a gear with their songwriting but for players this good it's simply a question of putting in the hours: the more you write the better you get. Watch this space - with a batch of memorable and well-recorded anthems under their collective belt, Cult Image will be unstoppable.
Next up were Ajimal (formely Ideogram), a shapeshifting beast of a band that hasn't yet decided quite what it wants to be. Tyneside guitar legend Mick Ross (currently with Frankie & The Heartstrings) rates Fran O'Hanlon as one of the region's most important songwriters. A thoughtful, widely-read individual fired by a restless curiosity, Fran's material is dense and ambitious. Yet hearing him with Ajimal it was clear that as a live entity, the trio of songwriters he now fronts is still in experimental form. Violinist Stefan Noons and multi-instrumentalist Jan Rezner are strong players but - awash with digital sound from Fran's piano and Rezner's electronic wizadry - the whole was somehow less than the sum of its parts.
Interestingly, Ajimal are named after a Haitian witchdoctor and when, beset by technical problems, they ditched everything to play an unamplified last number - we finally heard a hint of the primitive, elemental spirit in O'Hanlon's best material. Technology is often liberating in the studio - but live it can also be a severe liability. Audiences don't go to gigs for the joy of hearing a particular sound played back through a speaker. We go to shows in order to witness a performance.
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Teesside was represented by the Stokesley five-piece Toyger, playing only their sixth or seventh gig, since forming in Spring this year. The only hint to their lack of experience came from a slight unsteadiness in the powerhouse drumming of Wayne Mizzi, that left him slightly at odds with the rest of the band. It's a problem common to young musicians that soon solves itself with gigging, and wouldn't even have been noticeable had they been slamming out hamfisted garage rock. But Toyger have set the bar remarkably high, delivering brave, ambitious music with panache via the twin guitar attack of James Diggins and Wayne's brother Dean plus the excellent Nick Short on bass.
As Brian Eno once wrote, "an arrangement is where somebody stops playing" and Toyger's songs were arranged with a subtlety that escapes many professional musicians twice their age. Their not-so-secret weapon is Rory Duffy, easily the most charismatic vocalist of the afternoon. Completely at home behind the microphone he made easy eye contact chatting with the audience between songs - and delivered each lyric as if his life depended on it. And, a rarity among bands of any calibre, you could hear every single word.
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|11:48 UK time, Thursday, 30 September 2010
