Alice Ruth White

/ Mind Made Up In Blue /

2009-12-29T13:12:00.000-08:00

Mind Made Up In Blue Issue One (Print) / Distributed in venues around Manchester / Jan 2010 :

"This small magazine project began in January 2009 with the stunted launch of 'An Apathetical Reader', a publication devoted to supporting and encouraging young 'creatives' in our city. The aim was to create a product fulfilling our ideals of 'proactivity' and react against disillusionment, malaise or apathy - especially during a time of increased unemployment. The original proposal was idealist and ambitious, presenting an open public forum for 'artists' of any kind, and for local individuals to connect and discuss their ideas freely. The Internet was the apt tool, where participants could contribute their work, share their ideas and discuss in real time. This print edition hopes to represent the same ideal of a public sphere, is demure. In this format it has no relation to illusions of personality. It is not an instant space. It will only be what it exists to you now. It stresses the importance of starting small, being earnest and retaining the innocence of small gestures."

With music reviews:
/ Former Bullies www.myspace.com/formerbullies /
/ Hyacinth Girl wwwmyspace.com/hyacinthgirls /
/ Waiters: www.myspace.com/kuwaiters /
/ Nathaniel: www.myspace.com/nathanieltheband /

Illustration:
/ David Bailey: www.itsmountpleasant.com /
/ Emily Carew Woodard: www.myspace.com/ljtiny /
/ Alice White (boy): www.alice-ruth-white.blogspot.com /

Typography:

/ Lucy Vann: www.lucy-vann.blogspot.com /

Photography:
/ Martin Wilson: www.herearephotos.co.uk /

/ Alexandra Shah: www.alexandrashah.blogspot.com /

Poetry:
/ Max Wallis: www.poethesis.com /

Prose:
/ Alice White: www.alice-ruth-white.blogspot.com /
/ Darcy Eleanor Fox: www.darcyeleanorfox.wordpress.com /

With mix cd from Comfortable On A Tightrope promoters: www.comfortableonatightrope.blogspot.com

....ONLINE VERSION AND PRINT EDITIONS ARRIVING SOON....

When Your Old School Burns Down

2009-12-13T13:02:00.001-08:00

Rec.tangle

2009-12-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Adrien Rhodes comments about his latest work with Rec.tangle and the debut album, "Heavy Maple", claiming it exists as a "soundtrack to a late night documentary on sea turtles". His use of synthesizer, sitar, zither and harp, amongst a range of instruments that make this new work wholly departed from Topo Gigio, relates to Sven Libaek's work on the Life Aquatic soundtrack, where a playful and ambient sound exists with romantic and almost idealistic use of percussion. Rec.tangle similarly feels like a voyage, and one with an 'enterprised' aesthetic of discovery. Beautifully minimal, abstract synthesizer on 'Seaharp' whirls, picking up drums, guitar, percussion and strings and writhing instrumental layers expand into vast soundscapes.

Have a listen: www.myspace.com/rectangularmusic

Cover art: Yuko Michishita (www.yukomich.co.uk)

Boy

2009-12-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

Deaf To Van Gogh's Ear / Well Wisher / Hyacinth Girl @ Crack Yr Skull

2009-11-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

Last night saw the first Crack Yr Skull ‘fucking sweet happy night’ that featured live bands – moving from existing strictly as an emo, punk, rock, post-hardcore and surprisingly screamo disco to supporting a range of different but thematically loud 'party' bands in Manchester. With a DIY ethic, Crack Yr Skull is an earnest encouraging forum for emerging artists and happily avoids twee inaccessibility. Matching homemade baby photomontages for band visuals with the Beastie Boys and Nirvana was a mean feat.

Headlining were Heaton Chapel’s finest, Deaf To Van Gogh’s Ear, a young math pop band with mature influences. For a band so young it’s refreshing to hear a deliberated sound, a sound steeped in modern classical influence, technical, creative initiative and calmer pop. DTVGE stop and start with intricate rhythmic structures, interspacing bass, trumpet, guitar, drums and keyboard last night for a sound that displays their interest in emo sensitivity (Evan’s lyrics are jerky and soft (in a very British way, no US twinge here), electronica and melodic pop. This emerging band who sound like they work damn hard, with all their influence, are not pretentious or poseur and, frankly, they should be travelling the world with their balloons very soon.

Deaf To Van Gogh's Ear... “…could give Carol Vorderman a severe brain ache’…” MEN

Joined were Well Wisher, a loud, thrashing, spasmodic pop band with a lead singer that twist, jumps, turns and shrieks emo until your ears bleed loveblood (got carried away there) and Hyacinth Girl, noise-pop in the vein of Abe Vigoda, straight outta Withington. Both Well Wisher and Hyacinth Girl suit the punk tastes of Crack Yr Skull and made for a drunken riotous night, with split bass drums and all.

Check them all out below...

www.myspace.com/deaftovangoghsear

www.myspace.com/wellwisher10

www.myspace.com/hyacinthgirls

“Well Wisher…pulling down pants across the UK”

This came in the post for free yo...The Cribs / We Share The Same Skies

2009-11-26T10:00:00.001-08:00

After a few listens to the brilliant new single taken from Ignore The Ignorant, you come to understand the extent of The Cribs’ mature progress, perhaps focused on Marr’s inclusion and their ascendance up rock hierarchy. But, just listen to their lyrics:

“A strange union the other day

It's a dead Russian, the papers say

But it would be nice if they realised

That she thought 'he is mine”

The Jarmans’ writing may focus still on tensions and anxieties in day-to-day dalliances and looking back at ‘You Were Always The One’, or ‘Learning How To Fight’, there always are reflections on restless and deliberated love with naïve rhythmic patterns and regional, gravelly chants. Within We Share The Same Skies, however, there are cleaner moments of vocal harmony and thankfully they drift away from the ‘real’ laziness of, say, “And I know I said I needed some time alone, and I know I never seem to pick up the phone, and though you will see me with someone else, you were always the one.” The Cribs still retain the same youth rebellion and discordant pop melody as they slip past peers The Paddingtons or The Others to find success, and these smoother songs from Ignore The Ignorant allow Marr to thicken their guitar pop and the band remain one of the best pop rock acts out there, departing from grey Northern Wakefield skies to broader horizons. The Cribs clean up, let’s just wait for a Jarman collaboration with butterman John Lydon.

“I have decided it's best that you know

I'm still thinking about

Old ties as north-west skies grow cold”

Oxjam Manchester website

2009-09-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the Oxjam Manchester festival website. All articles composed and administered by Alice White.

www.oxjammanchester.org

Pretty Little Neighbour

2009-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

UH OH! Giant Drag are back after three long years of no baby-faced fucking, hearts, or unicorns.

Annie Hardy has an independently released Swan Song EP, which was played out in L.A’s Troubadour post imminent drop from Kickball/Interscope Records. Reunited with bass/drums Micah Calabrese, Drag emerge again with power chord grunge-pop, but seemingly with leanings to softer material on ‘Hearts and Unicorns’. ‘White Baby’ retains themes within ‘Pretty Little Neighbour’ – a sweet sexualized love song – her vocals in supreme adolescent form, reverb and saccharine melody.

Hardy seems to have put a lot of effort into marketing her gig, and maybe struggling balancing formal and creative exercise. They ask their Myspace audience to donate for the continuation of Giant Drag, coordinating ways to beat free downloading.

“If you don’t buy the record, just donate”

They’ve sidelined the material for survival. In new material, expect similar lyrical theme and genre style. It seems like Hardy and Calabrese are monopolizing on a successful model – we should just hope there’s tougher stuff in there.

They’re touring with The Charlatans in Californa-yay.

No One Owns It

2009-07-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

“Come…come…come…come…nuclear bomb”

If you walk around the area it seems like a desolate wasteland. The flats are empty, the pubs are closed down, the social centres are burnt out and a few inhabitants wander the area in search for something. There’s a sense of community in the rows of shops, in Post Offices and launderettes, Probation offices and libraries that hedge the blocks of high rises and boarded up council flats. Collyhurst seems empty, simply forgotten about. It seems to be in waiting for the wave of ‘regeneration’ that sweeps North Manchester and the local press.

Collyhurst is a North Manchester neighbourhood and as widely publicised, has suffered incredible losses in employment and investment. It has a population of just over 5,000 and self-reported rates of poor health are 70% higher than the national average. The dispersal of population as the inhabitants move to more prosperous areas has left the village in a desperate state.

Graham Stringer, former leader of Manchester City Council and MP for the Blakely constituency that includes Collyhurst, strongly believes in the importance of community for regeneration. But Stringer seems as disillusioned as many in his constituency. This is a tired councillor, who has made a puzzling switch from leadership to provincial status, a man who was exiled during the spending cuts of the council in the 1980’s and now sits representing dead ground in the 00’s.

“It is fantastical to imagine a redevelopment of housing in action in Collyhurst. Maybe 5 years ago but definitely not now, with the current climate,” Stringer said. “Our main aim is to support the idea of community by giving people schools, churches and buildings, and a respect for the relationship between them.”

Stringer added, “Many people are frightened or apprehensive of possible changes. Hulme was an absolute disaster, and Collyhurst’s general design followed a similar pattern.”

Historian Liz Naylor has compiled an enlightening essay entitled Various Times – Inhabiting an Industrial Ruin: Manchester 1979-1982, which maps possible similarities between the 1970s in poor areas such as Hulme, and the current housing situation in a place like Collyhurst.

Hulme estate’s regeneration in the late 70’s was a planning disaster; comprising of quick-construct crescents and groups of medium rise blocks developed for high densities of people, who were to live in structurally unsound buildings. A lot of frightened individuals remained within the site; that packed in 200-300 people per acre. The diverse social and ethnic community that remained in the area, including original tenants and students, promoted a list of social problems including crime, violence and depression, and the destruction of these new plots was desired for a reconstruction of society.

‘Horrendous living conditions were the result of a lack of urban planning that was due in part to the speed of industrial growth,’ Naylor claims, as the rapid growth in industry created almost a quarter of a million new dwellings by Manchester County Council between 1953 and 1973.

The North Manchester Regeneration Team lead by Richard Jones, aims to rebuild Collyhurst community spirit in around 10-15 years. The Local plan outlines extensive plans that hope to ‘create high quality mixed neighbourhoods building on their setting within the landscape,’ and aims to ‘bring families together’ with active residents.

In 2006 the North City Library was built in the Collyhurst/Harpurhey area as an example of what could be achieved. The sustainable, community-based project, as Martin Poydell, from library architects Walker Simpson said: “The City Library has definitely had a positive impact on regeneration…I definitely feel this is a start of an update for areas surrounding the centre.”

The modern building connects the centre to Greater Manchester in many ways, and could predict the future for such places as Collyhurst. This provides an enlightening view of what could be possible, the library as a model brings together a mixture of individuals in such a progressive setting as an education centre. The question of housing is still unsteady however, as the library shows the extension of the city centre – a modern hi-tech building, reflecting that the same could happen with housing. Do the current inhabitants want modern expensive flats, and where will they go if these are built at any time?

John Wood, 53, of Collyhurst said: “I think the library brings us together and gives us a sense of prosperity in bleak surroundings. But it leaves us wondering how housing developments will improve, and when they will. I certainly wonder where most of us will be in a few years time.”

Animals In The Working Man's Club

2009-07-12T10:17:00.001-07:00

The approach to Leeds’ Woodhouse Liberal Club is a humble and human effort. With bruised brown windows, grey brick and a crowning slatted roof, the building is plotted directly from stale eighties planning – providing clinically safe, intoxicating shelter for the work and weather-worn. Travellers to the venue flock around its’ concrete benches again tonight, to anticipate entertainment, this time, in the form of Animal Collective’s Dave Portner (Avey Tare), Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) and Brian Weitz (Geologist). Fans will coolly drag cigarettes on the footprints of past barflies and assorted stories.

Animal Collective are an impossibly unique act that could transcend the potholes of ‘image’ and ‘defined meaning’ and fit well in a Yorkshire back alley club. And they do, their tour bus parks in front of the venue with a mini white trailer attached for equipment but you could easily picture it as staple burger van for all-night revellers. Animal Collective have a spanning discography that has remained profoundly connected to a sense of nostalgia, of humble beginnings, of naivety. The Animal sound that we now understand, as they create something as immaculately accessible as Merriweather Post Pavilion, remains as intense and simply euphoric as Feels’ Banshee Beat while compressing Tare, Bear and Geologist’s experimental, complex technical abilities. Their equipment is vast but their show is subtle; while standing in audience you’re reminded of early Flaming Lips promises that grew into mammoth creative projects with an unbounded, utopian dream. This could be the future. Their glowing white lamp tables are the impressionable, bright humanistic creatures below mechanic synths, keyboards and touchpads.

The two hour long set that collects Portner and Lennox’s paired vocals: Panda Bear as seen in solo album Person Pitch is soothing and ethereal, just as idiosyncratic as Tare’s unusual, soaring and abrasive voice providing funk and circumstance. The breadth of the vocals at the live show epitomises the dexterity of their act – while remaining indie and pop they have fused dub beats, breaks, electro, funk and ambience into a neat, innocent package. It exists as anything you want, as overheard at the gig: “It crosses the boundaries of electro and dub, so the raver can join the guitar player. We’ve all been fooled.” With Tare’s banshee howl and writhing preaching with Strawberry Jam’s sweet melodic'Fireworks' he inserts pedal voice samples, animal noises, forest sounds…. ‘"What's the day?" "Whats you doing?"

"How's your food?" "How's that song?" Man it passes right by me it's behind me, now it's gone I can't lift you up cause my mind is tired, it's family beaches that I desire’. Sadly there’s no circus ride of Jam’s Unsolved Mysteries tonight, no humour of lyric ‘so womanly I go to kiss her’, which showcases Tare’s blissful bleating comfort and the importance of those mostly intelligible lyrics.

The majority of Merriweather featured (Lion In A Coma/Also Frightened/Daily Routine/Guys Eyes/In The Flowers) and unusually, hints of ‘Water Curses’, ‘Grass’, ‘Slippi’ from Here Comes The Indian - assorted past material floated in and out of the set, disguised in the aesthetic of the latest album. 'My Girls', the euphoric and encapsulating single from Merriweather is the final bow, summing up the AC philosophy: ‘I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status, I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls’. Modest and technical both at the same time. In this most humble venue.

Self-revelatory bliss.

On: http://www.4ortherecord.com/Animal-Collective-Woodhouse-Liberal-Club-Leeds-25.03.09.html?searched=animal+collective&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highlight1+ajaxSearch_highlight2

Tests Of Manhood

2009-07-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Many abilities have been bestowed to J. B. Priestley; the ‘common-man’, the Bradford-born writer of novels, epigrams, anecdotes, short stories, biographies, travel-logs, plays, essays and journals. Priestley’s life, charged with conflicting man-making elements of physical work, politics, warfare and Cambridge-borne intellectualism, has produced the most brilliant art on human sympathy. With three of his scripts An Inspector Calls (1945), Time and The Conways(1937) and When We Are Married (1938) currently in theatres, what makes his personal tests of manhood so poignant today?

“I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little Englander. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself.”

John Boynton Priestley, was born in 1894 to a mother who died in her son’s early years, and a schoolmaster father. He studied at Bradford Grammar School and worked as a clerk in the cotton industry, while ambitions to become a writer brewed. Priestley’s time in a cotton mill, if not ‘ard graft’, would prove to install the pride he had in the Victorian architecture of his small Northern town and more significantly, its people, as he revisited in 1933 for his book English Journey. As one in a vast number of industrial towns that have been part destroyed in the name of modernisation and progress, Bradford is an important symbol of the town pride that ebbs away from its population. Gavin Stamp, in his 2007 book Britain’s Lost Cities, angrily claims that wartime destruction was simply an excuse for the destruction of a Victorian heritage. Post WWI, “old buildings had a limited life” as “Victorian architecture was at best unfashionable,” and Priestley idiosyncratically answers on his return, that reconstructed Bradford was a “lost city…not good enough for the people that lived in it." The Nazi mess enacted a complete redesign regardless of cultural identity, and the population were habitually caught in the wave.

As the Bradford model of this common planning story has a dead ending, with Bradford City Regenerations (BCR) £3 million plan left disbanded this month, this town in left cheaply reconstructed. Perhaps something that we all can understand is this transformation of hometown, and the profound effect it can have on the old memory. Priestley, through his visits back to Bradford and his book English Journey, earnestly documents the forgotten beliefs of the people that exist in an old town. He is an icon of ‘Northern character’, and this particular part of his work helps to preserve the proud and strong attitudes of ‘home’ – a place that helps to construct you. What’s happening in your hometown?

“I thought Bradford was a bad place for rain, but it’s the Sahara desert compared to this place”

Priestley’s journey took him from home to the physical toil of trenches in an otherworldly age of conscription. Serving in WWI with the Duke of Wellington and Devon regiments, this is a part of Priestley’s life that remains the most obscure, partly due to his reluctance to talk about experiences. Only pieces can be fathomed from personal documentation, in the form of Letters From The Trenches. This collected writing from the age of 21 emphasises the passion of the writer from his practices of poetry and journalism first sparked in the cotton mill, perhaps for want of something different. Tom Priestley, James’s son, found the letters underneath his bed and he and historian Neil Hanson have published the pieces as a collection, professing the importance of the works in shaping a literary career. The voluntary choice to serve in the war deems surprising, as critics have reflected on a career staunchly Socialist or Left-wing, but as Tom Priestley reflects, his choice was purely adventurous, “Every young man needs an adventure, and it was a way for him to establish life on his own, keeping contact through letters.”

Adopting a light-hearted tone for his audience, Priestley maintains a sense of commitment to entertainment even in such terrible conditions that may remind us of video footage we see of soldiers cheerfully eating rations in Afghanistan. His enjoyment of physical training probably stirred some momentum, keeping his creative mind alert while externally bombarded. Later, however, throughout the letters what increasingly appears is cynical sentiment on the triviality of daily activities. Documentation fails to continue in 1916, after a mortar landed near his trench and he was buried alive. Emerging from the shells as a vociferous opponent of fascism, Priestley is the original champion of the ordinary man at war, dedicated to his roots of home and pushing for the rights of the people that battled. While Churchill heralded the war effort, Priestley questioned what Britain would do after the war, searching for peaceful answers and campaigning against nuclear weapons. Priestley was drowned in the horror of war, and emerged to use his position in the media throughout the Second World War to question. As the first BBC presenter without received dialect, 14 to 16 million people would listen to his radio programme before the news and hear from their boys in uniform.

“I suppose I am a man now and am certainly going through an ordeal. Perhaps it would be as well if everybody went through some test of manhood.”

John Boynton’s time of physical work fighting for his country comes to an end and broadcast halts, there spells the start of an academic refinement – realising a life that spans the class function rule. Priestley begins study at Cambridge University in 1919 and this implants the seed of experimentation. With no understanding of idleness, the young student begins to pen literary criticism that would spell the beginnings of The English Novel (1927) and Western Man(1960). Finding inspiration from philosopher J.W. Dunne, Priestley began a fascination with space and time, which would provide the content for metaphysical plays such as I Have Been There Before (1938), Time And The Conways (1964), and a novel, Man And Time (1964). This superbly active mind would approach intellectual theories, unravelling the mysteries of precognition. From daily destruction in wartime, his cerebral efforts would surely feel trivial to a shocked mind, yet Priestley seemed to have no bounds for adventure.

Many poets, actors or playwrights could be thought of in this way - never existing off the page - yet Priestley truly owned a public life in art and media. This public life unravelled with no celebrity sediment and he continued as an honest, common man, retaining his identity only tainted my personal choice. A life so startling now, would perhaps not be so modestly accepted and never so earnestly kept.

‘Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes’

In a recent Guardian review of Time And The Conways at The Lyttelton, London, it seems Priestley’s human focus prevails. Michael Billington disregards Priestley’s ‘intellectual’ efforts for honest human observation, claiming the “best performance comes from…the shy, nerdy brother who finds happiness in a decent ordinary, dullness. Finally, it is Priestley’s broad human sympathy that seems more significant that his intellectual theories.”

Although his plays, including ‘An Inspector Calls’, ‘When We Are Married’ and ‘Time And The Conways’ are socio-political dioramas that provide great insight into families and class divisions in Britain throughout the war, what is unmistakably overriding is Priestley’s focus specific human character. His work becomes more vividly psychoanalytical than much else, as much of his paranoid, jealous, possessed characters may be openly explored as if an Iris Murdoch novel. Unsurprisingly, the working classes usually portray the more agreeable sides of character and as the rather cold and calculating upper middle classes function well in a capitalist society, Priestley’s plays reinforce the attitudes that may have first taken shape in the trenches or as he campaigned for nuclear disarmament. Brilliantly, he exposes the triumphs and foibles of the rich and the poor - always effacing and displaying vanity for all its pointlessness. As he separates the rich Birlings from Eva Smith, the missing, moral, working class girl, in ‘An Inspector Calls’, he ridicules the wealthy as they are played with by mysterious puppet-master Goole. When watching ‘When We Are Married’ at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, a play that focuses on the traditions of marriage, you can feel Priestley’s resentment for anything ‘la-di-da’ as he makes panicking fools of local councillors. This is where the playwright is most experimental, where he simply calls a spade a spade.

John Boynton Priestley conveys the great beauty of the practised art of writing and significantly destroys the myth of ‘with age comes experience.’ His brilliant talent provides natural humour, stories of home, of crime, of society and of character and the precise flow and wisdom of his writing, even at an early age, portrays the importance of pen on paper to impart your version of the world. This chameleonic personality is life affirming, and begs the question - Which are your tests of manhood?

The Milk Man Visited the Deaf Institute

2009-07-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently Deerhoof are ‘unclassifiable’, according to our mystifying music press. Swept away in the tide of nu-genre invention, Deerhoof can be ‘abstract-noise-pop’, as Giant Drag may be ‘nu-grunge’ or The Thermals ‘post-post-punk’ (‘putting a post before anything makes it all sound cool’). Looking within David Browne’s Sonic Youth biography‘Goodbye 20th Century’, he has claimed parts of their discography, which he loaded onto his ITunes, was similarly ‘unclassifiable’ in the genre bar. Browne thinks Mr. Macintosh is a truth-teller. Who needs a computer to tell you what you might like, because you thought you favoured ‘art-pop’? Only the live show can do the talkin’, particularly with Deerhoof…

In Manchester, with Ed Rodriguez on guitar, the band are one fluffy pom-pom beacon for the power of the record. Without the grand ferocity of Jack White, personally creating vinyl in his steam-powered Third Man Studios, Deerhoof sold their own merchandise at the live gig. Cleverly, it puts the ‘customer’ in the shit yourself position, where you can’t opt out of buying the £10 record as the man who made it stands in front of you. They’re compromising our free download sprees and helping to drive a sense of context to music, (instead we’d be shuffling our Ipods mindlessly.)

Deerhoof even seem to move the hardest Lancashire lad to childlike clappy bopping, as observed when Marc Riley red facedly punched the air in joyous amour along to Panda Panda Panda (Apple ‘O). When Satomi takes the stage, in the child manner she provokes with real-minimal lyrics, chirping "basket ball, basket ball, basket, dribble, pivot, pivot, pivot, escape" (Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back, Offend Maggie) she’ll mock reactions to her ‘otherness’. In fact, although Deerhoof appear particularly niche on their recorded material, you couldn’t get rawer live music as they use drum, guitar, bass and vocal and their roots in true rock’n’roll. This modernist performance has tempestuous jazz drummer Greg Saunier sweaty skifflin’, Ed Rodriguez in a classical blues drive and John Dieterich performing seemingly impromptu as ‘a John Lennon to Rodriguez’s George’. Satomi, absorbed in abstract lyrics and angular body poses, transforms these traditional elements into a thoroughly innovative ‘art’ act and the band recreate their music into live original pieces.

Deerhoof, then, are as close as we can get to punk – they rely on an art embedded in reactionary sentiment. Within Dummy Discards A Heart, lyrics "Play to the Queen of Heart, Play King of Club, Play Jack Of Spade, Play Ace of Diamond" are memoirs of ranting punk with Deerhoof’s sweet vocal distortion. As they play The Ramone’s 'Pinhead' with Saunier’s even softer vocals, you understand their jazz punk purity.

Friend Opportunity’s 'The Perfect Me' and '+81' highlight Satomi’s pop.

This is a true masterclass in musicianship and the instantaneous movements of sound, it’s only sad to say softer, string tracks such as'Whither The Invisible Birds?' could not have been played with.