Post-punk folk-funk
New Bloods.
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 24may08.
It is with a juvenescent coyness that New Bloods assume their positions, circling around one mic to the left of the stage, like a young, feminine Travelling Wilburys given to hanging around the kids playground after dark for exclusive use of the swings.
They begin with a short acapella number that barely acknowledges its audience, butyet instantly captures their attention. Perhaps it is the frailty and the honesty of the human voice working alone, or in delicate harmony, that makes it so much harder to ignore than instruments amplified to inner-ear troubling levels. To open with this suggests New Bloods know how to pace a set.
Falling into their more usual role as players, they still use their three voices to good effect, working with and against each other as each situation sees fit. However it is bassist Cassia Gammill who is the regular lead immersing a robust vocal anchor to the click and flip rhythms that smooth the serrations of post-punk and dub-soul and slides them alongside the unpolluted, endeavour-driven folk-funk.
They are a school assembly !!!; a Gil Scot Heron if he was to become sonneteer-in-residence at K Records; an Electrelane for a relatively sedate venture scout campfire freakout. While the non-linear escapades of Adee Robertson’s drumming and the keen sweep of Osa Atoe’s violin might occasionally start to blur songs together, they have a sound which can fuse the responses of the head, heart and feet, which is by no means an easy combination to get right.
New Bloods @ MySpace
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 24may08.
It is with a juvenescent coyness that New Bloods assume their positions, circling around one mic to the left of the stage, like a young, feminine Travelling Wilburys given to hanging around the kids playground after dark for exclusive use of the swings.
They begin with a short acapella number that barely acknowledges its audience, butyet instantly captures their attention. Perhaps it is the frailty and the honesty of the human voice working alone, or in delicate harmony, that makes it so much harder to ignore than instruments amplified to inner-ear troubling levels. To open with this suggests New Bloods know how to pace a set.
Falling into their more usual role as players, they still use their three voices to good effect, working with and against each other as each situation sees fit. However it is bassist Cassia Gammill who is the regular lead immersing a robust vocal anchor to the click and flip rhythms that smooth the serrations of post-punk and dub-soul and slides them alongside the unpolluted, endeavour-driven folk-funk.
They are a school assembly !!!; a Gil Scot Heron if he was to become sonneteer-in-residence at K Records; an Electrelane for a relatively sedate venture scout campfire freakout. While the non-linear escapades of Adee Robertson’s drumming and the keen sweep of Osa Atoe’s violin might occasionally start to blur songs together, they have a sound which can fuse the responses of the head, heart and feet, which is by no means an easy combination to get right.
New Bloods @ MySpace
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posted by skif at 10:41 am
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