Section Boyz, On tour
Croydon is more than just a home for a big Ikea. With their Mobo awards and the patronage of Kanye West, MCs from the area have been winning huge acclaim in recent months. Still, you wouldn’t want to pin the place down to one particular sound. The six-strong Section Boyz, from Croydon’s Whitehorse estate, fall somewhere between the glossy, hooky work of Krept And Konan and Stormzy’s raw delivery. Their Don’t Panic album suggests they don’t have one standout MC, but instead rhyme about girls, drugs and social media in a strong and unified voice.
JR
Anderson .Paak, On tour
Not just a city, Compton, California, is a state of mind. In the latter years of the 20th century, it became a byword for rival gangs and gangsta rap. Now, Compton is back again, the spiritual centre of a musical scene that has Dr Dre and hip-hop at its roots, but also branches out into R&B, jazz and psychedelia. A little bit like Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak is a point of confluence for these forces. Paak himself is a major feature of Dre’s 2015 album that was named after the city, and his music is informed by social issues but also by church, and even time spent working as a wedding singer. He has taken a while to break out, but his recent work (such as the Venice album, or his new one Malibu) shows it has been worth the struggle; his music a twisted modern funk, his voice somewhere between Frank Ocean at one extreme and grainy old soul at the other.
XOYO, EC2, Thu; The Ruby Lounge, Manchester, Fri; touring to 27 Feb
JR
Foxes, On tour
Louisa Rose Allen – otherwise known as Foxes – began her career in a way that seemed absurdly blessed. Fortunate? Hers was a story designed by a fairy godmother. Signed by Simon Fuller, she won a Grammy award for her appearance on Zedd’s hit Clarity two years later. This she followed up with an album of strong-voiced dance pop, sportswear sponsorship deals and, as was obligatory in 2014, a cover version of Pharrell’s Happy. Pharrell heard it (so the story goes) and asked her to tour with him, which should have been the singer’s happy-ever-after moment. Except that lately Foxes has come down to earth with a bump, with romantic disappointment intruding into her world and giving rise to a more confessional second album, All I Need. There’s nothing too depressing here, but it does show that there’s fractionally more to Foxes than vaguely ecstatic dance-pop.
The Limelight, Belfast, Tue; Whelan’s, Dublin, Wed; Plug, Sheffield, Fri; touring to 12 Mar
JR
Alter/Static Shock Mini Fest, London
Opening in the wake of numerous venue closures in the capital, DIY Space For London is a grassroots project built on positive resistance. A cooperative off south London’s Old Kent Road, its live music programme is now getting under way, with a strong run of DIY bands filling the bookings. This day-long mini-festival of acts on hardcore label Static Shock and Alter, the punk and experimental noise label run by Luke Younger, is one highlight. On the bill are six-piece sad grot-rockers Pheromoans, Danish harsh industrial duo Damien Dubrovnik, the fury-filled Perspex Flesh, plus Younger’s own punk band the Lowest Form.
DIY Space For London, SE15, Sat
JA
John Law, on tour
John Law, the British pianist and composer, was a prize-winning classical pianist once – but the jazz skills he began revealing as a student in the 80s suggested a different kind of promise, and this creative lone wolf has been fulfilling it ever since. He first worked with free-improv stars including Evan Parker and Louis Moholo, but in the 00s turned towards the hypnotically grooving slow-burn sound of Brad Mehldau’s trios. On this long UK tour, Law makes another change, reacting to the groove-driven rhythm-pattern music of contemporary groups like Phronesis. Young saxophonist Josh Arcoleo, double bass virtuoso Yuri Goloubev and drummer Dave Hamblett join Law to perform These Skies In Which We Rust, which mixes glimmering electronics, fluent uptempo improv, time-juggling twisters and intricate minimalism, and even a little of the Brahms Requiem.
Pizza Express, W1, Wed; touring to 9 Sep
JF
The Book Of Disquiet, London
It has taken Michel van der Aa’s dreamlike music-theatre piece, based on Fernando Pessoa’s posthumously published work, seven years to reach Britain. For this London production, which will be directed by the composer himself with the London Sinfonietta delivering his jagged, gritty score, Samuel West will play the protagonist, unassuming Lisbon bookkeeper Bernardo Soares. It’s Soares’s apparently disconnected musings, his snatches of autobiography, fantasy and home-spun philosophy, that provide the framework for Van der Aa’s 75-minute piece, around which he arranges multiple layers of ravishing video, depicting characters that Soares remembers, including a fado singer whose two numbers provide the only singing in the entire work. The result is an elusive and often magical fusion of words, music and images that, like so much of Van der Aa’s work, is impossible to categorise.
AC
