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Brave Captain
Her Space Holiday and Weevil
At Anglia ARU SU Bar, Cambridge
A gig running at the same time as the Cambridge Folk Festival in a town with the students gone home for summer is surely headed for trouble. Factor in malfunctioning machinery, and a troublesome PA, and said gig could be viewed as a shambles.
Certainly Bravecaptain, aka former Boo Radley Martin Carr - the headline act on Wichita Recordings' ‘Music Machines Tour’ - would agree. Thanks to the aforementioned gremlins Carr shambles on stage some 30 minutes late, mumbles a bit, press a few buttons, makes a few Squarepusher-esque noises for about, ooh, ten minutes, apologises, then says “Goodnight”. Sure we can’t blame him for the shortened set but it would have been nice to see Carr sitting at that piano of his and at least attempting to rescue things. Based on this we’ve no idea what Bravecaptain’s new album, ‘All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace’, sounds like, and that’s a real shame.
Ho and indeed hum. Which pretty much sums up Weevil, although to be fair this correspondent only caught the end of their set. Weevil are pretty much two blokes prodding buttons making pedestrian indie with added squelchy bits... a vague description for a vague sounding act.
Thankfully though, Her Space Holiday are much more focused. Fronted by Marc Bianchi (pictured), HSH open with a classy take on ‘My Girlfriend's Boyfriend’, from 2003's ‘The Young Machines’, and turn the technical gremlins to their advantage with a melody of hip hop, breakbeats, dub-heavy bass, indie guitar and even a bit of R Kelly for good measure. A friend of a friend of mine keeps referring to them as ‘Her Space Odyssey’, which seems an apt description. It's a shortened journey into sound for sure, but taking a trip with HSH is a trip worth taking. Wish you were here?
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Brave Captain
The Brave Captain records so far have been ace, although I haven't got the new one yet. The Boo Radleys were hardly obscure but were still one of the most underrated bands ever. And Martin Carr is a genius. Having said that, I saw Brave Captain live once (before the recent 'machine' makeover) and the best thing all night was a cover of the Boos' "The News Stand In Hamilton Square"... -
Brave Captain
I think the review is a little hard on bravecaptain. They couldn't work out his gear then he was told that he had only five minutes to play. He played until they turned his laptops off and then he jumped on his piano and played as much of 'good life' as he could (with the aid of HSH bass player who joined him on drums) before his piano was also turned off. He only arrived at the venue shortly before he was due to play because of some radio show and put anyone who asked on the guest list for the following night in london (myself included). -
Re: Brave Captain
thanks for pointing that out as I didn't know about this! Didn't mean to be too harsh on bravecaptain. fair play to martin carr for putting people on the london guest list.
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