Castanets

Castanets, Carla Bozulich, HRSTA, Phosphorescent, Sparky Deathcap at Upstairs @ The Phoenix, Manchester, Greater Manchester, Fri 27 Oct

Review by Sam Lewis

Towards the end of a long evening that began with a brutal traffic accident outside the venue, middled with someone in the audience collapsing and ended with a wondering performance from the Castanets in a venue lit only by two UV lights and a tiny, trailing spotlight, lead Castanet Ray Raposa articulates the general mood, accurately identifying the presence of “weird vibes”...»

Upstairs @ The Phoenix

»

Castanets

The core of the Castanets is the lyrical and musical talent of Raymond Raposa. The son of expatriate journalists, Raposa tested out of high school at the age of 15 and traveled the U.S. via Greyhound bus off and on for the next four years. This unusual educational experience spawned a musical vision that reflects a disquieting sub-strata of American life. Castanets create music that is epic and inspiring. From somber love ballads to haunted tales of frustrated redemption, the delivery is potent and devoid of cliche or sentimentalism. Echoes of the The Velvet Underground, No Neck Blues Band, and the delta harness a strain of ancient Americana that even today pulses through a subdivided and paved landscape; the result is avant-country. After the 2004 debut LP 'Cathedral' and a US tour with Wooden Wand and The Vanishing Voice, Raymond has just returned with 'First Light's Freeze' on the ever-wonderful Asthmatic Kitty label. The album possesses a dark mutant-country sound, infused with strands of free jazz and new wave - a late-seventies Nashville big-radio strut, hi-jacked by post-punk unravelers. The result is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown travelogue and subversive anti-war boogie, simultaneously flirting and dismantling "New Americana" venture capitalism.»

Carla Bozulich

Bio taken from Southern website:

Carla Bozulich needs no introduction. Her work with Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella, The Red-Headed Stranger (with Willie Nelson) and many others spans over twenty years of uncompromising sound, driven by a voice and vision that consistently delivers spine-tingling beauty, originality and directness. Carla's new album (her first on Constellation, and the label's first release by a non-regional artist) is a devastating, elegaic, brutally honest song cycle that finds her voice unleashed with unprecedented emotive depth and determination. Evangelista is a heartrending, gut-wrenching crawl down the aisle and up to the secular altar, where isolation and desperation are redeemed by incantatory sonics and out-reaching, soul-saving lyricism. This is an unbelievably compelling exorcism of a record, churning and channelling out of loneliness to heal and rebuild connective tissue through sound.

Her website: here
Her myspace: here

HRSTA

»

Phosphorescent

»

Sparky Deathcap

»