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Sunday 30th June 2024ADRA promotions and The Puzzle Hall Inn as part of The Victoria Theatre’s Antidote series presents …
An Antidote Alldayer - a day of experimental and eclectic music with live performances from …
Ustad Noor Bakhsh (Pakistan)
79 year old virtuoso electric benju player from Balochistan on his first UK tour.
Holodrum
Stripped down version of the synth-pop disco postpunk group from Leeds / Sowerby Bridge.
https://holodrum.bandcamp.com/album/holodrum
Holly Blackshaw (Wales)
Hull born progressive psych folk formerly of Crooked Weather
https://hollyblackshaw.bandcamp.com/
Expo 92
One half of dance duo Galaxians makes music for 90s shopping malls
https://expo92.bandcamp.com/
Death-static
Minimalist synth melodies and drones from Gareth S Brown out of Hood / Canvas
Pefkin
Ayreshire’s Gayle Brogan of Burd Ellen/Meadowsilver nature-channelling dream-folk
https://pefkin.bandcamp.com/
Magpahi
Otherworldly folk from Todmorden-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter
https://madalitsoband.bandcamp.com/album/musakayike
Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra
Calderdale’s ever-evolving young people’s experimental music ensemble
https://backupdiscs.bandcamp.com/album/box-freedom
at Puzzle Hall Inn, 21 Hollins Mill Lane, Sowerby Bridge, HX6 2RF
2pm - 10pm (music finished in time for last trains to Leeds/Manc). FREE ENTRY with donations for bands gratefully accepted.
The Antidote series is on tour as part of Culturedale: Calderdale’s Year of Culture 2024. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
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Ustad Noor Bakhsh
Ustad Noor Bakhsh, from near Pasni, Balochistan, is a maestro of the Balochi Benju (a keyed Zither), which he has played since he was a child. Noor Bakhsh is well known as a legendary instrumentalist throughout the Makran Coast but only garnered wider attention after his most recent recordings and videos. The Benju, was once a Japanese children’s toy called the taishōkoto before it was adopted by Balochi musicians and made into the refined folk instrument that it is today. Noor Bakhsh plays an electric Benju, getting his sound through an old pickup and small Phillips amp he bought from Karachi 2 decades ago. He carries forward the legacy of his teachers and inspirations such as Bilawal Belgium and Misri Khan Jamali but his own music elicits influences from various traditions and musical forms far beyond Balochistan. His virtuosic playing is deeply rooted in Balochi musical forms and enriched by his knowledge of South Asian Raags, which he also renders in his own, experimental style.
His repertoire includes Persian and Kurdish tunes that have probably floated in his land since before the modern borders of Iran and Pakistan were set up and Balochistan, divided as it were. In one of his recent recording sessions, he even played an Arabic Ghazal on his Benju. Needless to say, he also renders popular and folk tunes in all the major languages spoken across Pakistan. His Sindhi repertoire is particularly novel in that it reflects a beautiful conversation between the neighbouring musical cultures of Sindh and Balochistan. No surprises that Noor Baksh plays several Bollywood songs too, after all, he has soaked the sounds around him like a sponge, including those of all birds in the mountains and the jungle near his village. Other than his diverse repertoire, he has several original compositions too, including one inspired by bird songs. His debut album, 'Jhingol', is due for release in May 2022.
For listeners unfamiliar with Balochi music, Noor Baksh’s electric Benju tone and his melodic ornamentations will be reminiscent of Ali Farka Toure’s style, and polyrhythmic sixes and eights with so much groovy innovation and improvisation will make the body move in ways very similar to the music of West as well as East Africa. This is unsurprising, given the well documented migrations and seafaring, historical, intimacies between Balochistan and Africa, via the greater Indian Ocean world. It is this world that his music brings back to life.
Recordings
Boiler Room
Guardian Article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/19/totally-full-of-spiritual-energy-ustad-noor-bakhsh-the-pakistani-musician-discovered-on-the-side-of-a-road
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Holodrum
Holodrum are a new disco-infused synth-pop group, who feature members of Hookworms, Yard Act, Cowtown, Virginia Wing, Drahla and more.
Maybe Holodrum were destined to start at this point. This might be the first time they’ve all officially worked together, but between Emily Garner (vocals), Matthew Benn (synth/bass/production), Jonathan Nash (drums), Jonathan Wilkinson (guitar), Sam Shjipstone (guitar/vocals), Christopher Duffin (sax/synth) and Steve Nuttall (percussion) they’ve shared bands, mixed each other’s records, promoted live shows and made music videos together in and around Leeds. As Holodrum, this is the seven-piece’s debut album, but the interlocking grooves and hot headiness of their repeato-rock-via-CBGBs dopamine hits have in one way or other been fermenting for years.
“When it comes to doing music most bands fall between two extremes of doing it for some goal or as an end to itself” says Shjipstone. “I think Holodrum is about the joy and complexity of living, and I just hope to god everyone gets to have a good time doing it.”
Ultimately the core of the group comes from Shjipstone and his former Hookworms bandmates Benn, Nash and Wilkinson. After their abrupt dissolution in late 2018, the four of them spent six months apart; Benn still had Xam Duo, his ongoing project with Virginia Wing and some-time James Holden & The Animal Spirits live member Duffin, Nash remains vocalist and guitarist of long-running DIY rockers Cowtown and helms his solo project Game_Program; and Shjipstone plays guitar with Yard Act. However, the four of them missed the sixth sense synergy they’d built-up playing together over a decade and soon enough demos were being swapped and new ideas were discussed.
The vision of a large live electronic ensemble formed quickly. Friends were added: Duffin and Nuttall – who was keen to resurrect the double percussion interplay that he and Nash had been exploring as part of motorik trio Nope – joined first. Then animator and VIDE0 singer Garner crystallised the line-up by joining on vocals.
“Apart from Emily, all of us had actually played together before in a covers band at a New Year’s Eve party at the Brudenell Social Club a couple of years ago, so we knew we could have fun together” says Benn. “So we set up to be a live party band early on. We wanted lots of people on stage having fun, playing for people that also wanted to have fun. It makes sense we take inspiration from bands like Tom Tom Club and Liquid Liquid; they were trying to help people to party at a point when New York was quite a scary and dangerous place – we’re doing the same, albeit in the face of a decaying world and a global pandemic.”
Covid-19 hasn’t given them much opportunity to do that yet, with two fledgling shows in late 2019 to their name before festival appearances at the likes of Bluedot, Sounds From The Other City and Gold Sounds were scuppered last year. However, the six tracks on Holodrum crackle with the energy of the dancefloor. Opening cut 'Lemon Chic' – described by Garner as their “workout track” – starts out sparsely, with tight drum claps and burbling synths holding a teetering suspense before the whole thing’s prised open, allowing beaming saxophone skronk to shine in. Garner’s vocals bob and weave around the syncopations of the track’s building cacophony.
It sets the stall for an album heavy on euphoria, built atop crisp interplaying percussion and acid-flecked grooves. At times Shjipstone provides a raw counterpoint on vocals, while elsewhere - like on the strutting, swirling disco of 'Free Advice' and 'Low Light'’s late night ping pong synths - the pair indulge in playful call and response as the instrumentation builds and contorts around them. 'Stage Echo' provides a respite of sorts halfway through, a swirling, fever dream of a track that peaks with big squelchy frequencies and cavernous reverb, before the album returns to its repetitious exercises in body-moving catharsis – underpinned at all times by a relentlessly propulsive rhythm section.
https://holodrum.bandcamp.com/album/holodrum
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Holly Blackshaw
Yorkshire Progressive Folk Rooted in Radnorshire. Never being much of a city girl, Holly was born and raised in and around Hull, East Yorkshire, but always found sanctuary in what wild she could in the warp lands. Holly grew in psych/rock/folk band Crooked Weather, where world wide travelling and touring ensued, before parting ways in 2020. During the pandemic Holly uprooted and moved to Radnorshire, Mid-Wales where she honed her sound as a solo artist and now, her first release is eagerly anticipated. Holly still holds all the places she’s set foot and settled close, carried by her lilting vocals and guitar playing.
https://www.hollyblackshaw.com/
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Expo 92
Also known as Jed Skinner, 1 of 2 persons existing in the live dance band Galaxians from Leeds. It's 1993 and you have just entered a shopping centre. As you move through the entrance, you gaze upwards at the glass dome that rises above your head, like a cathedral, its crystal-like structure shimmering against the sun. Shafts of light fall through, landing on the water feature that greets you in the centre of the welcoming vestibule. Among the chatter, the footsteps, the aromas of perfume and fried food, you hear music. This is that music.
https://expo92.bandcamp.com/
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Death-static
Gareth S Brown is a Leeds-based musician. Recordings released under his own name (and, previously, The Unpleasants) have been in a post-minimalist/modern classical vein but he's also released noise/electronic albums under the names Jerstice and Royal Librarian. He's a former member of Hood and Canvas and a current/occasional member of Memory Drawings and The Declining Winter. He has collaborated in the past with Western Edges, Joshua Norton Cabal, and Soar Throat. Brown was the hype man in Collapsed Lung
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Pefkin
Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, creator of slowly-unfolding, ritualistic hymnals that draw heavily on the landscape and natural world. Pefkin emerged after the retro-futuristic psych / electronic duo Electroscope went into hibernation in 2000. Her first solo show was supporting Pram in spring of that year. Influenced by Nico, Hood, Movietone and Syd Barrett, she created a fragmentary, more stripped-down version of Electroscope’s bedroom psychedelia but retreated from live performance in 2001. Pefkin has released over 10 albums on labels such as Morc, Wild Silence, Reverb Worship, Digitalis, Pseudoarcana and Siren Wire as well as several sold-out lathe cuts on Sonido Polifonico. Pefkin returned to live performance in 2013 and has played across the UK and Europe, including Fano Free Folk Festival and Woolf II in 2019. She most recently toured in May 2023 with Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper.Her sound comprises a mesmerising and enigmatic layering of vocals, violin, synths, zither, electronics, found objects and field recordings. Pefkin’s music has received comparisons to Coil, Popul Vuh and Nico.
Her most recent releases were a 10" "Observations of Land and Sea" on Sonido Polifonico and an LP "The Light Bends Inwards" on Muzamuza. Gayle is also half of innovative folk duo Burd Ellen, as well as a member of electric psych-folk trio Meadowsilver. She has recorded an album with Heartwood Institute's Jonathan Sharp under the name Greenshank, to be released in autumn 2023 on Woodford Halse, as well as an album about bird folklore with Alison O'Donnell, to be released in the future.
“Spooked-out twilight listening that is both unsettling and compelling, drawing you into a private world.” (Ed Pinsent / Sound Projector)
“Something akin to what it must have been like hearing Nico's 'Marble Index' when it was released; alien yet curiously familiar, beautiful yet stark, hypnotic yet troubling.” (Grey Malkin / Active Listener)
Gayle co-promotes a series of gigs in a Tudor museum in Sheffield with Paul Cross of Sonido Polifonico.
https://www.pefkin.com/
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Magpah
Magpahi is the enigmatic and haunting music of composer, visual artist and curator Alison Cooper. In a connective exploration of sound she works to develop new understandings between narratives of landscape, material culture and human interaction. Influenced by the intriguing nature of archive and museum collections, Alison’s work bridges historic narratives bringing them into a contemporary space. Narratives and emotional spaces which can never truly be replicated, only re-visioned. The collecting and research of deeply personal accounts & anecdotes, studying of archives, folklore, material culture and landscape are central to her work.
As a song writer and composer, writing lyrics, melody and various instrumental accompaniments give her the freedom to compose witout limits. Skilled with a unique vocal style and adept multi instrumentalist Alison works across both acoustic (guitar, flute, piano, recorder, harmonium) and electronic instruments (analogue synthesisers, Fx units and samples). Recording in her home studio gives the flexibility to create unique sounds. Alison’s enigmatic vocal style has been described as an “abstract(ly) hint at higher powers, as if she is immersed in a primeval choir that has somehow been beamed into the 21st century.” (The Quietus)
Having toured the UK and Europe she also has numerous releases via labels Twisted Nerve, Bird Records, Finders Keepers Records, Folklore Tapes and A Year in the Country. Alison works as a visual artist in a variety of mediums including photography, printmaking, animation, textiles and has a foundation course in herbal medicine.
https://www.magpahi.com/
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The Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra
The Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra was first formed in 2014, and since then has had a rolling cast of primary school aged children. As well as working on more conventionally notated pieces, we have focused on improvisation and group composition. Using this approach, the children develop their listening skills whilst exploring the possibilities of a variety of instruments. Traditional ideas about musical ability and whether or not a child is taking instrument lessons have never been a boundary to participation. The work the various incarnations of the orchestra have produced has ranged from exploring the idea of the Earth’s youth escaping to space to the theme for a western movie.
In 2022, the PPYO were the opening act at Tor Fest in Todmorden and they have played at number of youth music festivals and concerts in West Yorkshire.
https://markswilliamson.co.uk/primitive-percussion-youth-orchestra
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Antidote
Antidote is for audiences that like to challenge their understanding of live music and features some of the UK’s finest performers. Each event is unique, and guest curated by Andy Abbott (ADRA Promotions). As part of Calderdale’s Year of Culture 2024 we’re taking our experimental and eclectic Antidote music series on the road, working in partnership with some of Calderdale’s most exciting and characterful grassroots music venues.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Puzzle Hall Community Pub, 21 Hollins Mill Lane, Sowerby Bridge, HX6 2, United Kingdom,Halifax, West Yorkshire
