Original bands, original music from Lincoln & Beyond

Blue Book Project

Thursday, 02 September 2010

15th May 2005, The Attic

Review by Dappy

The Attic is a place where you constantly feel in the way. It's low-ceilinged and narrow-walled, making it über-intimate. But intimacy isn't a crime and, relaxed by the soft focus lighting and ambient tracks percolating into the room, the small, but tightly packed, crowd stand, waiting, in the long corridoresque main room. They form an odd, cubist horseshoe facing where the ceiling folds upwards into a naive, creating a hollow church of space where the band were set up under a Tibetan flag and "No War" posters. Their PA speakers and the back window are draped in thin, colourful fabric of exotic designs and the stage area is spotted with lamps that give the room even more of a yellow homeglow.

The crowd is sporadically filled with quasi-familiar, but nameless, people whose faces echo back to that magical evening at The Jolly Brewer when I was outplayed and outwowed by two members of the Project on Djembes - drums that stand gobletlike, and clasped, potently, between seated legs: filled to the brim with potential, ritual and history.

And the Djembes are where they start tonight, four of them, for four of the five members. Sitting in a semi-circle, they start the first pattern in unison: Simple. Pure. A sound like the bare feet of children on a hardwood floor involved in some chasegame -running together then breaking apart, hiding and tumbling - the fragments becoming scattered and shard-like, layering over themselves to build as Chris, the ring-leader - all smiles - stands, drum double-draped over his shoulders, and ups the complexity of the game; the hard high sound of the rim cutting through the warmth of the skins as it all builds, then ebbs, then dies.

They have pulled me in.

The second drum-piece comes to an end and the circle breaks - its members heading towards the more conventional line-up of guitar, drumkit, bass, djembe and samples and I realise how perfect this venue is for this band.

They lower us gently, like a newborn child, into the cradle of their set - Hip-hop drumming, light guitar motifs, propulsive bass, African rhythms from the Djembe and unintelligible samples that spill out of no-where envelop us like our first blanket. I begin to speculate how they would cope anywhere bigger. They rely so much on drawing the audience in that I wonder if, maybe, they should also be giving something out. They seem to close up on themselves in a very physical way, everybody facing inwards - a band turned in on itself -making it feel that you've stumbled in on a practice session and that your presence is a mere insignificance. But that's also part of the charm - the informality.

There was a lot of unfamiliar material that greeted our newborn-ears, even to owners of their album, from which only two tracks were played in the first half. The fantastic "Friday #3" ended the first section spectacularly, the memorably simple guitar echoing from mouths long after the track had built up - Chris vocal-scratching Rahzel-style - and faded away.

A fifteen minute interval follows before the second half and I contemplate one of the band's few weaknesses; their lack of a focal point. Both aurally and visually there feels like there is a musical and ocular hole. Chris often fills in this gap with his freestyling, scratching or melodic-percussive playing but The Project come across as a band in the background. Whilst you admire the restraint of all the members for not taking off into wild solos you feel that there is space there that soloists would kill for and that either a strong lead instrument or visual projection could give the audience something to focus on. But, on the other hand, I can't help but admire the way that they so carefully create and accentuate the mood and how the tracks are allowed to wash over and encompass me rather than bludgeoning me, Muse-like, into submission - which would be the obvious danger with a lead instrument.

Rich, weird, unearthly bass splutters and coughs resonate from the mouth of the didgeridoo as "Wolf-craft" from their album, begins, the Australian instrument pulsing and choking over Djembes and drum-kit, the rhythms interlocking, then exchanging, then ending. This is followed by one of the stand-out tracks of the night "Proper African Hang Kit", which showcases not only a groove-heavy and danceable instrumental but, also a beautiful instrument, the Hang, which more than fills the focal hole I mentioned earlier. Chris is playing it cross-legged and it sits - a metal flying saucer - on top of folded knees, dents in its side which his fingers nimbly hit as the chugging African rhythm slowly causes the crowd to move. It's made of burnished metal with a silver dome on top - just like where you would expect the aliens to be staring out from, petrified as fingers blur past, filling the dents precisely and eliciting a resonant steel-drum sound. The Hang comes into play again on the more familiar "Hangles" which sits half-way into the set. But the best is still to come.

The evening climaxes with three fantastic tunes: the eerily familiar, yet unplaceable, "Tenacious", the real stand-out "No Mo Ebo" and the BNP-denouncing "Dogs Face" on which Chris freestyles rhymes condemning the Party's policies which, despite the drummers "free Tibet" T-shirt, the "No War" posters and Tibetan flag, highlight a political mentality which is otherwise surprisingly absent from the music. None of the tracks are on the album, a fact which indicates what a huge reservoir of material they have behind them.

This is one of the best gigs I have been to, the setting truly doing the music justice, in creating exactly the right mood, which the band manage to pick up on and develop in the most spectacular way. I left, lightened, relaxed and uplifted and I only hope they can bring this sort of magic to a larger venue.

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