Live music listings: July 2006Roll over the dates on the calendar to see who's playing, then click for the full listing and ticket info.Click on the mailing list link to enter your email address and we'll let you know, at the start of every week, what's going on around here. Roll over dates on the calendar above to show event details.
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Tue 25th The French Disconnection presents The Summer Collection, curated by Piney Gir BERTRAND BURGALAT + The Konki Duet + DJ Oof
Doors 7.00
Following the phenomenal success of The Spring Collection – completely sold out, with people stuck ticketless outside trying to claw their way up the side of the building - The French Disconnection brings you live sets from Bertrand Burgalat and The Konki Duet. Piney Gir is curating the whole night, and DJ Oof will be on the decks for the first time ever in the UK, and warming up for his audiovisual DJ set at The Big Chill.
It's almost as much of a coup for The French Disconnection to have booked Bertrand Burgalat for The Summer Collection as it was to have Jean-Claude Vannier for The Spring Collection. With a career spanning over twenty years, he's provided a constant – and constantly active – point of reference and inspiration. Burgalat has supported, arranged and produced Slovenian post-punk band Laibach, avant-garde Berliners Einstürzende Neubauten and the dream-metal of Jad Wio as well releasing sparkling pop gems, riotous rock and electronic soul on his own label Tricatel, plus recorded exciting collaborations with a number of writers such as Houellebecq and Jonathan Coe, worked with legendary diva Ingrid Caven, remixed for Depeche Mode and arranged strings for Anita Lane. His latest album, 'Portrait Robot', is bombastic and nervy, fantastical and stylish. The subtle harmonies, violins, strange electro and celestial choirs form a dreamlike atmosphere that is structured and swept along by a syncopated rhythm section, accompanied by Tony Dammit, a member of that famously mysterious band The Residents on drums. As Burgalat said himself a few years ago: "I am going to make the most honest, beautiful album, and they can all go fuck themselves." This will be the first time in a long while that Bertrand Burgalat has played with his full band. An opportunity not to be missed.
The Konki Duet are like something from a dream. A French/Japanese/Russian hybrid, all girls, they create barely-there, surface-sweet ice-sculptures of songs, mesmerising and transporting. Visit www.thekonkiduet.com and you're greeted with the message "hello, lose yourself", and you can't help getting absorbed into their music. It's spectral, precise and delicate yet immensely powerful, and there's plenty of shade among the light – like opening a toybox and finding a flickknife in the Lego. While listening to their debut album, 'Il Fait Tout Gris', it's easy to forget which language they're singing in (and they sing in at least three), or even that it's one from Earth, but suddenly you realise you're giggling or that there are tears in your eyes and you don't know why. The seeming fragility of their music is deceptive: it will weave itself around you and is substantial enough that you won't forget it when it's over. They've played gigs in forests and described themselves as "the next best thing after silence and the next worst thing after a sentimental breakup", and they do the most elegantly, astrally spooky cover of Visage's 'Fade to Grey' you're likely to hear. And what of "konki"? "Most because of two Chinese characters, reading "Konki", which means 'Perseverance' in Japanese. This is all about a tattoo, to say it all."
DJ Oof will be on the decks for the first time ever in the UK. DJ Oof is renowned for his unique Cinemix® audiovisual freestyle DJ sets where he mixes music with synchronised videos [produced by Oof and other directors] drawing from '60s/'70s films, video clips, rock, funk, hip hop, electro, bootlegs, concerts and TV shows. DJ Oof has taken his show to prestigious music and film festivals such as Cannes, Montreux, Montreal, St Petersburg, Tokyo, Mexico, Berlin... |
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