Back To The Barbican

Me and that Swiss Adam bloke are currently engaged in a fiercely fought game of Japanese psych band tag (although he may not know that yet).

I opened with Nagisa Ni Te. He raised the stakes with Yura Yura Teikoku. It requires a strong response so I'm going with Barbican Estate, originally from Tokyo but now based in London, much closer to the brutalist block from which they took their name (and where I used to work many years ago).

To make sure they were the right choice I went to watch them live in the hipster haven of Hackney last week. My friend Mr F saw them last year and has been raving about them ever since. He was right to do so, they were great. Their records don't fully prepare you for the storm of sound they conjure up live.

Barbican Estate are Miri on vocals, bass, flute and mellotron and Kazuki Toneri on guitar and songwriting. Koh Hamada has drummed on all their records to date but he's back in Japan so for gigs they have a rotating cast of drummers (probably because the poor buggers need to go for a lie down after a few sets). Go and see them if they come to your town.

You can find their back catalogue on Bandcamp. I have picked a track from each of their two most recent EPs, "Viscum" (2024) and "The Fall" (2022).

"Barn Burning" - Barbican Estate

"Reconquista" - Barbican Estate

Pun Fun 5: The Theme

Hello, Pun People! We are back with a fifth instalment of this feast of fun, timed to help those of you who celebrate Easter to retrieve your minds from a chocolate haze.

Our themes are chosen with the aim of providing food for thought. So this time round we are paying our respects to the people who literally help to put food on your table, including our most recent winner George and his goats-to-peanuts agricultural empire. The theme is:

DOWN ON THE FARM

Animals, crops, workforce, buildings, equipment, anything to do with running a farm is in scope. The only things I might rule out are repeats of entries received when we did fruit and vegetables back in Pun Fun 2.

You are all familiar with the rules by now -  one entry only, to be sent to leggies27@hotmail.co.uk by Sunday 12 April. Voting will open next Monday.

I hope to get a bumper crop of cringeworthy puns. Maybe these hordes of horny-handed sons of the soil from the 1980s can help inspire you.

Competitive Wailing

I was leafing through the latest issue of Uncut the other day. When I reached the last page there was Ziggy Marley telling us all about his favourite records. Obviously his Dad featured, and we learned that the album that means most to Ziggy is "Survival" (1979). 

It is also my favourite of Bob's albums, but its not the album by one of the founding members of The Wailers that I listen to most often. That would be Bunny Wailer's "Protest" (1977) followed by Peter Tosh's "Bush Doctor" (1978). 

Here's one from each of them, then one from them all together.

"Ride Natty Ride" - Bob Marley & The Wailers

"Moses Children" - Bunny Wailer

"Pick Myself Up" - Peter Tosh

Pity The Fools

In the wise words of Kevin Coyne, the world is full of fools - and never more so than at this time of year. Here are just a few of them.

A personal request. Please read this before midday or Etta James will be singing her song to me.

"The World Is Full Of Fools" - Kevin Coyne

"Fool" - Trees

"Liverpool Fool" - Browning Bryant

"Immaculate Fools" - Immaculate Fools

"A Fool Will Fail" - Wailing Souls

"You're The Fool" - Etta James 

Lucas In London

My live music experiences this month have been mostly Brazilian. After Nyron Higor and the gang in Brussels in the middle of the month, last Friday Mr F and I went to see Lucas Santtana nearer to home at the 229 in London's groovy Great Portland Street.

Mr Santtana was in town to promote his new album "Brasiliano", the tenth of his career that now stretches back a quarter of a century. It features eight different language and a long list of collaborators from Brrazil and elsewhere of which Gilberto Gil is the best known.

According to the blurb, on the album Lucas "questions cultural heritage, identity, colonial memory, and the possibility of a shared language" - something he evidently feels strongly about as he had a bit of a rant in response to a comment from an audience member that I didn't catch. The gist of the rant was that Brazilian culture and language was much richer than just its colonial inheritance. 

On first listen I quite like the new album and I think it will be a grower, but it is a lot mellower than the only other album of his that I have - "3 Sessions In A Greenhouse", described by Mojo on its release in 2006 as a "futuristic splicing of samba with Black Ark-style dub". Maybe that is just the effect of time passing.

As for the show itself, I enjoyed it. Lucas was fronting a four piece band so had to manage without some of the nuance and enhancements you can get in the studio, but they got all our toes tapping and our hands clapping. I particularly enjoyed the louder and more up tempo numbers on which they were almost able to drown out the idiots talking.

For your delectation and delight here is a track apiece from the new album and "3 Sessions In A Greenhouse". The latter features an American journalist reading extracts from Virginia Woolf - because you can - and clocks in nearly nine minutes for you long Monday fans. 

"Cuando Mi Lengua (feat. Maria Lado)" - Lucas Santtana

"A Natureza Espera (feat. Phylis Huber)" - Lucas Santtana

Oceanic Consistency

On Wednesday evening I was inside the Japanese Embassy in London's swinging Piccadilly. I can't say why but hopefully the Cadbury's Milk Tray reached the intended recipient. 

More importantly for the purposes of this post my visit prompted me to dig out some albums by my favourite Japanese band, Nagisa Ni Te. It is only a few months since they were last featured here but it is never too soon to have them back.

This time out we have a couple of tracks from their most recent album "Newocean", released in 2022. Between them the two songs clock in at 15 minutes so purists may want to wait until Monday before listening to them.

Thank you once again to the Random Adjective/ Noun Generator which I used last time The Nagisas joined us for the title of the post. It seemed suitable for the album title. Two of the other options that the generator offered up were "fanatical words" and "oily allegiance". Its randomness appears to be in sync with the randomness of the so-called real world.

"Despair" - Nagisa Ni Te

"Something Wicked This Sky Comes" - Nagisa Ni Te

Elyse In The Fields

According to my search function it is 13 years since Elyse Weinberg last appeared on these pages. As many of you weren't even born then it is time for a long overdue comeback. Her debut - and for many years only - album "Elyse" has long been a favourite of mine.

Elyse was a Canadian singer-songwriter who hung out with the likes of Neil and Joni in Toronto in the mid-1960s. In 1968 she followed them down to L.A. where she was signed up by the Tetragrammaton label, best known (if at all) as being the label that released all the early Deep Purple albums in the US.

"Elyse" came out to moderate acclaim the following year. Produced by Don Gallucci, the former keyboard player with The Kingsmen (thats him playing the opening riff on "Louie Louie") and later the producer of The Stooge's "Fun House", backing was provided by a band called Touch and allegedly an uncredited Neil on some tracks.

Neil was definitely involved in the planned follow up LP "Greasepaint Smile", produced by David Briggs and also involving the likes of Nils Lofgren and J.D. Souther. Unfortunately the label went bust before it could be released. It finally saw the light of day in 2015, after Elyse had been rediscovered by hipsters and lured back into music from her steady job selling insurance in Oregon.

Sadly Elyse died of lung cancer in 2020 aged 74. She never really got the recognition I think she deserved in her lifetime but she left us with one great record, which is more than can be said for most of us.

"Band Of Thieves" - Elyse Weinberg

"Spirit Of The Letter" - Elyse Weinberg

I have not been able to find any clips of Elyse or even of Cher doing her version of "Band Of Thieves" (renamed "Chastity's Song" for the purposes of a terrible film). But here are Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee a few years back covering "Houses" from the second album. There is also a very poor quality clip on YouTube of Jeff Tweedy having a go at the same song last year.