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Showing posts with label Gaggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaggle. Show all posts
Friday, November 9, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
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| Best gig poster in ages. |
The solar eclipse is a beautiful phenomenon; a perfect convergence of cosmic bodies creates a spectacle like no other. ‘Lysistrata’ at the Electrowerkz last night was impressive in the same kind of way, symbolic, musical and political elements fitting together neatly like thecomponents of a particularly well made pocketwatch. I last saw Gaggle, a 21 piece all women choir, in early July at the Village Underground and they impressed the hell out of me. They're the kind of band that makes a solid and powerful statement standing silent and motionless in their costumes, but then they crank up the volume and let loose with jet engine turbine voices and utterly dominate a room. But last night was no mere gig, it was interactive performance art, political statement and simply, great theatre.
‘Lysistrata’ is a play by Aristophanes first performed in about 411BCE. It tells the tale of the eponymous Lysistrata who stops a war by gathering together a disparate group of women and engaging in a pacifist revolution. Women across Greece barricade the banks, starving the army of funds and deny their husbands sex, giving them serious blue balls. It’s easy to see why this story of weaponised femininity and women working together for a common political aim appeals to Gaggle, as they’re in many regards doing the same thing.
I think most bands would have settled for merely appropriating some imagery and lyrical quotes from the play, but Gaggle aren’t most bands. The ambitious project here is to take over a large building for one night, redecorate it and transport us into a theatrical world. The setting is the atmospheric Islington Metal Works. Inside it's an aesthetically pleasing labyrinthine scumhole (this is not a criticism I'm a big fan of scumholes). The history of its industrial past can be seen in the metal fittings poking from walls and ceilings, coupled with weird passages that maybe were once used to shift horses around the place. There was what looked like bondage equipment scattered around at the back of rooms, which adds a little kinky frisson to the atmosphere.
Ascending the stairs on entry we see that the walls are plastered with sloganeering political posters that set much of the tone for the rest of the evening. In terms of visual design, a lot of what we’re about to experience is borrowed from the iconography of the Occupy movement or other appropriate campaigns of political resistance from around the world, notably Pussy Riot and the Greek anti-austerity protests. So we see posters with ‘NO SEX UNTIL YOU CALM DOWN’ plastered on the walls, Gaggleized bank notes and signs imploring us to “BARRICADE THE BANKS”.
There’s an uneasy feeling as we gather waiting for something happen. Nobody really seems to know what form this gig is going to take, and the slightly nervous tension is increased by the group of people silently staring at us with blue lipstick smeared in an X over their mouths. This fear of the unknown is in some regards a fun bit of anticipation but in others I get a minor feeling of dread that this is going to be too interactive. The stage seems set for confrontation after all; ‘Lysistrata’ is about pitting two sides against each other but which side are we the audience going to be on? Are we going to be siding with Gaggle or fought against as representations of a patriarchy?
After short wait Gaggle make their way to the main stage. Even though I’ve seen them before it’s still a remarkable experience listening to them burst into song as one, being rigorously disciplined and impossibly liberated and anarchic at the same time. The music tonight, aside from one song, is all from Gaggle’s debut album “From the Mouth of the Cave”. The first song they play here is, I think, the introduction song, which serves as both an opening to the album and a way to get us into the spirit of the evening.
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| Gaggle performing, photo courtesy of Zoran Veselinovic |
We’re given a window into the philosophy of the night and Gaggle set out their grievances with a world run by men in power who make bad decisions day in/day out. A world where things get worse by the day, where those with least are expected to bail out the cruelly wealthy. We’re reminded that Lysistrata is a Greek play, and invited to consider the parallels between the current economic climate and the historical misery in ancient Greece that preceded the production of Aristophanes’ play. It primes us for the kinds of political statements and posturing that we’re all looking forward to. But first some Icelandic pop-punk!
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| This is Sindri Eldon |
It’s difficult to say whether Sindri Eldon was the 'support act' tonight because it just wasn’t that kind of night. Rather than exist to get us warmed up and nicely lubricated for the main act, he was sandwiched between two parts of the Gaggle act. Musically the band is high-energy, poppy punk. I don’t know what he looks like normally, but he’s made a concession to the theatricality of the night by painting his face blue and white, which looks great. Unfortunately I don’t think his band fit into the musical and visual aesthetic of the night. I’m not even really sure that the night even needed another band playing. Everything I’d experienced so far had had the effect of sucking me into a constructed reality of Gaggle based imagery. Gaggle warped the space around them so effectively that Sindri Eldon (or indeed other band) felt a bit out of place.
After this the meat of the night begins. As we entered the building audience members were given one of three coloured wristbands. Based on this colour the audience is split up, I was in the white group and led by a woman waving a white flag we headed to the back part of the central room and the ‘parliament’ section.
Here we met Lysistrata, as played by Natalie Sharp. She sat regally in the middle of a group of seven Gaggle members regarding the audience with a superior, disdainful look. Her face was made up carefully and dramatically, with very heavy eye makeup and a third eye painted in the middle of her forehead. She wore a high head-dress, with fabric draped down over her body. The quasi-mystical get up reminded me a lot of some of the outfits in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘The Holy Mountain’ (like this, but um, not like this), and this sense of absurd but powerful ritual permeated much of what she did. She began to hector us on the state of the nation, and of the woes of those who would stand against her. If Natalie Sharp wasn’t so damn innately authoritative this might come across as a bit silly, but she totally sells it. It’s a rare talent that she can so quickly command the rapt attention of a room. Next to me someone starts fiddling with his phone as she’s talking, and I for a moment imagine I see her eyes flash at him in fury, like she's about to decapitate him.
After her speech we hear two songs, 'Happy is the Country' and a cover of ‘War Pigs’ by Black Sabbath. This exposes a minor problem with the arrangement. One of the best things about seeing Gaggle is the effect of 21 women all singing angrily and passionately at you. When they’re cut down to seven, the effect is necessarily diminished. This doesn’t mean that the portion of Gaggle we’re seeing isn’t giving their all, but the music loses a bit of potency the fewer people there are singing it.
After this finishes the woman with the white flag returns and leads us to through a winding corridor to the next set piece. It’s a miniature recreation of the Occupy Camp outside St Pauls. Behind a few scattered tents is a backdrop of a bank surrounded by placards. I’ve seen a few things recently that have used imagery from the Occupy movement to varying levels of success. Some productions merely appropriate the aesthetics of the movement without taking the political aims into serious consideration, which always manages to annoy me. I’m happy to say that Gaggle don't do this. Every bit of iconography they use feels earned and authentic.
As we stand watching the tents, members of Gaggle unzip them and crawl out. They sing 'Money', and a projection behind them shows protests around the world. It’s graphic, powerful footage ranging from the uplifting (Pussy Riot performing their punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and what looks like footage taken at a Slutwalk), to the disturbing (women getting beaten up by riot police, and in one particular brutal clip, a woman’s chest being repeatedly stamped on as she’s held down on the ground). It's a good reminder that what we are watching is essentially pantomime, a portrait of an ideal world without consequences like violent police beatings and being pepper-sprayed or tear-gassed.
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| The 'Block the Banks room, photo courtesy Zoran Vesilinovic |
Throughout this performance the tents are illuminated from inside by stage lights, and the performers hold individual electric candles in their hands. This feels more choreographed than the other Gaggle performances I've seen: it's overtly theatrical rather than a musical performance.
After this,we move onwards into a red-lit area with a big bed in it. There was some kind of dance going on between two actors here, with members of Gaggle singing behind them and a harpist, but this room was a bit smaller and filled up fast. I ended standing near the back and I couldn’t really see what was going on. It’s a pity, because what I could glimpse seemed pretty interesting. I tried my best to stand on tip toes and peer between people but although I could hear everything well enough (and they were singing 'Gaslight', one of my favourite songs from the album) it was a bit frustrating. Oh well.
This was the final small room to see, and with a ‘party’ song playing we were encouraged to dance back to the main area. Gaggle reformed into one group on the main stage, and launched into what felt like more of a traditional set for them. I was a bit disappointed that they repeated many of the songs they'd played earlier in the night. It’s not like Gaggle don’t have enough songs to fill out a setlist, one of my favourites is ‘Bang on the Drum’ which was used in the opening ceremony of the Paralympics, and I don’t think they played it once! Nor did they play their stunning and haunting cover of ‘Waterfall’ by the Stone Roses.
It always seems a little nitpicky to criticise Gaggle too much, because while they were playing music we’d heard once already that night they were knocking it out of the park. Gaggle leader Deborah Coughlin stands at the front conducting them like she’s landing a plane. She’s got a fury to her movements that’s a bit scary, but I suppose to get a machine like Gaggle working smoothly you’ve really got to put your back into it. But I was a little disappointed at the end that we didn’t get a big finale; the members of Gaggle trooped off stage one by one to rapturous applause, but there was no glitter cannon as there was at the Village Underground gig. Still, as they finished I was feeling perky and swept up in the moment along with everyone else there.
This night was an ambitious (and obviously expensive) undertaking. Just in technical terms there were essentially four stages to run, as well as audio/video projections and backing music. On top of this you’ve got to move three large audience groups around the building without them bumping into each other, not to mention making sure the 21 members of the band itself are in the right place at the right time. It’s giving me a logistical headache just thinking about it. But as far as I could see everything went off without a hitch, whoever was in charge of fitting all this together should be very pleased with themselves.
I more than think it achieved its artist targets though. Gaggle fit perfectly into a retelling of Lysistrata, and they added new relevance and immediacy to a millennia old play. I though it was interesting that the revolutionary anti-establishment actions we saw acted out are entirely pacifist in nature. Gaggle don't seem reactive and pacifistic at all - at times it feels more like they're raring themselves up to charge the gates of parliament, flaming molotov cocktails in hand. But this slight philosophical mismatch works in their favour, their aggressive behaviour means that the peaceful nature of the protest we're seeing feels fiercer than it might in other hands.
It was easy to forget last night that that 'Lysistrata' isn’t intended to be a feminist text, and can be argued presents female resistance tactics as intrinsically passive and is a bit sexually regressive. On some level the denial of sex as a punishment to their husbands overlooks the fact that their wives are denying themselves of sex as well. The fact that only the men feel the negative consequences of enforced chastity can be interpreted as supportive of the Victorian notion that for women, sex is something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
Even when their actions are obstructive and pacifistic rather than proactively revolutionary, Gaggle cannot help but seem radical and dynamic. In a ‘regular’ gig they radiate a dangerous power on stage but here, enveloped in an environment of their own design and surrounded by their own iconography they seem almost omniscient. In some way Gaggle’s individuality feels a little ironic; they define themselves as a separate entity in their dress and makeup, but then surrender their individuality to the Gaggle gestalt. What this did last night was allow them to seem everywhere and nowhere at once. In each of the rooms it doesn’t matter which members of Gaggle we’re seeing at any one time, or who is singing which part of each song, we have to consider them as a single entity, a legion; “My name is Gaggle and we are many”. Here, drenched in their imagery and surrounded by their propaganda we can begin to feel the same thing happening to us in the audience.
So a very enjoyable night out. It's a shame that this is a one-off show, as I think with a bit of word of mouth they could easily fill a space for a week. Roll on the next Gaggle event!
Photographs of the gig courtesy of Zoran Veselinovic (www.photozoran.com)
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
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| Gaggle |
There comes a time when a person gets sick of watching an endless parade of guys with floppy fringes mopily playing guitars on stage. It was in this spirit that I headed out to see Gaggle at the Village Underground (and, admittedly, also because I know one of the members). Gaggle are a 21 piece all female-choir who dress in outlandish costumes and sing powerful, provocative sloganeering songs. They’ve just released their first album “From the Mouth of the Cave” and seem to be on the up and up. So, to Village Underground in the very beating heart of Shoreditch.
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| AE EA |
First on the bill is AE EA, fronted by ex-Selfish Cunt frontman, Martin Tomlinson and (behind the scenes) Dario Vigorito. AE EA describe themselves as a “Live Music Video Art Performance Group”, and what this translates to tonight is a bizarro piece of confrontational performance art performed by an androgynous, vaguely threatening and loose-limbed artist. Ze stands, wearing the skinniest of skinny outfits, alone on stage, cut up video feeds projected over hir whilst ze sings/screams/speaks to a dissonant noise soundtrack. Doing a piece like this is flirts with cliché so much that it’s like painting a giant bullseye on your chest to invite calls of pretension (incidentally, literally doing this would achieve the much same result).
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| I have to admit the guy can pose though. |
A performance like this can succeed in two ways: the first is doing it with unabashed sincerity, if someone gives the audience the impression that they truly believe in what they’re doing it’s difficult to poke too much fun without feeling like an arsehole. The second way is with a nod and a wink, almost saying “I know this is ridiculous, but bear with me here and at worst you’ll be entertained”. This, unfortunately is somewhere in the middle: it veers so close to the cliff of parody that you wonder if we're being made fun of for attempting to genuinely analyse it on its own merits while ignoring what seems like semi-ironic poses and themes. The thing is, I liked this act, but I liked it because it reminded me of 60s performance art pieces, or the brilliant “This is my Rhythmbox” scene from ‘Liquid Sky’, or the ‘Vulva’ scene from Spaced. If the intention was to shock or provoke the audience then it failed (and perhaps artists need to find new ways to shock without using what have become rather tame clichés of sexual ambiguity and loud, dissonant noises), but nonetheless it fit comfortably into the aesthetic of the night and after all all, it wasn’t boring.
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| Sylver Tongue |
Next on is Sylver Tongue, fronted by ex-Ash member Charlotte Hatherly. Things look good as she takes to the stage, decked in fur with her partially bleached hair dramatically swept over one side of her face. It’s a post-apocalypse punk look, like a refugee from the set of Mad Max – glamour tinged with a feral, home-made survivalist air. It looks damn cool, and also obviously quite 80s. 1980s synth music has made a bit of a comeback of late, partially I suspect due to the amazing soundtrack to the film ‘Drive’. These expressly artificial synths have just about escaped being considered cheesily retro, and now embody an ice cold emotional detachment. With their kickin’ outfits and synthesisers Sylver Tongue are standing primed for triumph, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite work.
The major problem I have is that this is a very static band. Three of the members are standing behind various keyboards, meaning that by design they have to be rooted to the spot. This sucks a lot of the dynamism out of the performance, and in a relatively small venue like this, if the band are still then it rubs off on the audience very quickly. It’s telling that the most exciting parts of the performance are the rare times when Hatherly steps out from behind her keyboard and picks up her guitar. For brief moments we see something that can almost be described as iconic, a stark rock n roll snapshot of fur, fringe and guitar. Finally there’s a sense of motion and rhythm on stage! All too quickly though she’s back behind the keyboard, arms in, motionless and somewhat rigid. Eventually, this feels a bit standoffish, something that’s exacerbated by the fact that the band rarely acknowledges the audience, not even to let us know the titles of the songs they’re about to play. The ice-queen electrosynth diva image is very effective when played right, but in a fairly intimate venue like this we want something back from the band.
There’s also the annoying situation with the projector at the back of the room. I have no idea who’s in charge of it but it frequently cuts out the visuals and projects the Mac desktop toolbar across Hatherly’s face, which instantly dispels any atmosphere that’s been built up. At one point the projection swings madly and distractingly around – you wish someone would hold it still. But when it does finally settle, it unfortunately illuminates just the top of half of the band’s faces. It seems a bit amateurish: aiming a projector at the right place on a wall and keeping it still is not exactly rocket science.
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| More of this please! |
But, despite all of these faults there are moments where everything comes together very nicely. I’m a total sucker for slap bass, and there are some great slap basslines in Sylver Tongue’s songs. When everything is just about working well, and when you get the rare sense that the band are actually having a good time on stage it all works. But throughout I was waiting for the crescendo, the moment where Hatherly would suddenly become the synthesiser goddess she wants to be. It never came. I thought they were going to get there with their last song ‘Peaches’, but again, they fell just slightly short, lacking some essential spark that would push them over the edge. It’s a pity, they’ve got the look and the talent, but something essential that I can’t put my finger on is missing.
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| Gaggle |
And now the reason why we’re all here: Gaggle. Gaggle were shimmeringly excellent. Not only were they excellent, but they were excellent in a fresh and unique way. I liked pretty much everything about them. It’s an interesting contrast to the support acts who both seem to have aimed for an already well defined set of aesthetic principles. Whereas their end-game feels sharply defined and well-worn, Gaggle is striking out on a path less travelled. There is a feeling of adventure, of not really knowing what a 21 piece avant-garde all female choir is going to do, of where they’re going to go and how they’re going to do it.
As Gaggle take the stage, there is a buzz of expectation in the room. Things already feel different. The members are dressed in what looks like home-made felt dresses, with strips of brightly coloured cloth pinned to them, they wear turban-like headpieces and they each have a Joker-like glittery blue smile painted onto their face. They take the stage, directed into position by Deborah Coughlin, the conductor, leader and brains behind Gaggle. As the crowd quiets down we hear a faint sharp intake of breath as 21 people breath in deeply, before talking as one. The first time you hear Gaggle talking as one is a deeply weird experience. The uniforms and facepaint all give them a shared visual identity, and this, coupled with the synchronised voices gave me the kind of feeling you get when trapped in a room with a tiger. They seem feral and untameable, the blue face paint suddenly reminiscent of Celtic woad and the dresses of Boudicca. It’s almost overpowering, and having 21 women all aggressively singing in unison at you is initially a bit psychologically intimidating.
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| Super-conductive. |
Very quickly I realised that it’s easier to consider ‘Gaggle’ as more of an instrument composed of women rather than a collection of individuals. Standing in front of the stage, with the audience a respectful distance from her, Deborah Coughlin conducts like someone bringing a jumbo jet in to land. With a sweep of her arms she conjures up the weirdest polyphonies from across the stage, multiple voices singing harmonies and counterharmonies, pointing out people to do what seem like impromptu solos. When I had first heard the concept of Gaggle I had assumed wrongly that it was some kind of semi-chaotic collective, but watching them live you quickly understand that there’s a leader with a strong personality and clear vision that’s able to corral this many people into a single identity.
This single ‘Gaggle identity’ is an interesting construction. It creates a deindividuated space, where personal identity is subsumed into that of the group. I don’t like to assume anything about the women who make up Gaggle, but I think it’s fair to say there must be a mix of personalities within the members - some people must be more naturally outgoing than others with a range different political and social philosophies. The ‘Gaggle identity’, whether arrived at by some group consensus or imposed upon them (is there a Gaggle rule book?) ignores all this, fusing its members into one organism. With an imposed identity comes boundaries, but it also creates a performance space that allows the members to act out extroverted behaviour within an acceptable social sphere. It all seems very liberating, and this sense of liberation rubs off on the crowd.
Dissolving your identity into a crowd seems to be somewhat in vogue at the moment, and Gaggle are, consciously or not, riding this wave. There is a direct line though the 'V' masks of Anonymous and the masked faces of the London Riots last summer to the deindividuated yet entirely coherent and focussed anger in many of Gaggle's songs. We live in a society where we're encouraged to nurture the notion of the individual above all else as much as possible. Facebook encourages us to view our life as it's own epic story, profiles on all kinds of sites encourage us to create personalised avatars to set aside me from not-me. In the cult of the individual, anonymity and depersonalisation are the new societal taboos. The themes of destruction of the self, and adding your voice and mind to an impersonal multitude has become one of the few non-violent and genuinely subversive acts of the 21st century, a concept which I see Gaggle as seizing wholeheartedly.
As a large group of people chanting, screaming and singing at once, their music sounds tribal and at times weirdly medieval, like something chanted to scare opponents before a battle, to terrify the inhabitants of a besieged castle. Due to the nature of the band, there’s not a huge amount of room in Gaggle’s songs for complex wordplay, but they excel at sloganeering. It’s a bit hypnotic, and chants like “I hate the power of money, making people rich or poor!” get drilled into your head as if you’re being successfully brainwashed. While the music can initially sound like its degenerating into chaos, the more you hear, the more you realise its very, very tightly controlled. Everyone seems to know what they’re doing all the time, the band is synchronised like a tightly drilled unit. Songs like ‘Army of Birds’ or ‘Gaslight’ occupy their own ‘Gaggle-ised’ genres, ‘Gaslight’ being best described as a show-stopping drum n bass musical number (...I accept that this is not a particularly clear description). Before hearing them you could be justified in suspecting that this band is a concept-led novelty act, where the very idea of a radical 21 piece choir carries them forward rather than the quality of their work. But these are great songs, great songs which stem, if I understand correctly, directly from Deborah Coughlin. I think this is a useful reminder that the group cannot function with everyone pulling in different directions. One of the main reasons it succeeds musically is because there is a specific and unique 'voice' behind their lyrics which has definite ideas it wants to express.
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| This is what 21 feminists look like. |
Even if Gaggle didn't explicitly identify as feminists, it's likely they'd be labelled as such purely on the composition of the group. The very fact that this is an all-female collective seems to drive some to fall back on tired cliches. The review of their album in the NME contains this sentence which the author should be embarrassed to have written: "A number of Gaggle will own literature by Germaine Greer. They will have at some point been described as ‘quirky’. They will talk openly about their menstrual cycles with no embarrassment." This is precisely the kind of lazy, dusty old cliche that makes it a bit radical that a band even dares to identify themselves as feminist, a crushingly depressing thought. The Gaggle concept of femininity seems to be refreshingly inclusive, even while taking into account that the costumes make everyone on stage look fairly similar anyway. The aggressive, confrontational stance that the band take in their lyrics and performance is probably going to rile up some people, but frankly these are precisely the people that deserve to have a bee put in their bonnet anyway.
Aside from feminism the band also set out their politics in 'Power of Money', (which they dedicated to current top scumbag Bob Diamond last night). They also set out their opposition to the military-industrial complex in 'Army of Birds', saying in the opening lines "Excuse me Sir, you may not have heard, but I'm not in your army, I'm in an army of birds". There is another fully female choir that has risen to prominence lately which this song seems to be a reaction against; the truly execrable 'Military Wives Choir', who murder music with the same gusto and efficiency with which their husbands and boyfriends murder Afghans. The Military Wives Choir seem in most respects like the antiGaggle, but Gaggle effortlessly demolish them with laser-guided lines like:-
"You should be ashamed of the bomb bomb bomb, blowin' them up like it's fun fun fun."
It's hard for me to pick out anything I don't like about this band really, everyone about them exudes quality. They neatly sidestep the dangers of relying on novelty value, it'd be incredibly disappointing if they'd squandered this unique setup for banal music, but they've followed through on the strength of their premise. It was a damn great gig.
[disclaimer: Please take into account that I know a choir member of Gaggle very well, but I think even if I didn't I think I would like them exactly as much]
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