On Thursday 30th September I attended a special, underground arty event in Liverpool. All thanks to Kill The Radio, new promoters in town - armed around singer/songwriter Anna Kunz and her band Torture and the Desert Spiders.
Anna had organised a chilled out night of spoken word and gentle psych music in the background. The venue, Quarry, is just up from the Liverpool North Docks and in a railway arch, it contains a venue, multi media centre and recording studio and the couple that run it seem confident that it has a future. The ambience is good, and there is a truly great sound system built for rave nights so able to take anything on.
The gentle background music and core of some impromptu jams is provided by Ivan Thunders (Thee Lucifer Sams) and he provided low key insistent guitars aided by echo effects, theremins and keyboards throughout most of the proceedings. On occasion this led to ad hoc jam sessions with some cool and chilled out vibes emanating from the stage.
The gentle psych out provided a rhythmic background for a succession of folk taking the mic’ and throwing out some poetry/spoken word sets that were funny, ironic, experimental, deep and showed some talented people trying out different things in a chilled out environment. The whole night allowed performers to take a chance on something different with no feeing of wrongness.
Jamie Roberts takes over on guitar backing and the sound engineer hit some drums to accompany host Anna who read more words over the spontaneous sounds. It felt like a real rock show and Anna's performance was reminiscent of Patti Smith. As the evening progressed, things got more and more loose.
Different folk soon ended up on stage and a very spontaneous jam finished the night off. Shakers, tambourine, theremin backed readings and low key singing of lyrics over repetitive drum beats. If felt messy and primal, like a tribal gathering or an ancient ritual. No one seems to remember how long it went on for... ten minutes? Twenty? But after it was all over everyone silently agreed that the night had reached its climax and it was all over. Mission accomplished.
Kill the Radio plans to turn Coatcheck into a monthly event. Make sure to follow then on facebook and instagram to keep up to date.
We saw performers just standing, swaying and adding amusing narratives, reciting their bands lyrics in a completely different context that highlighted words, following, sometimes fighting the rhythmic backing sounds until things came together in a blur of almost music and words with a small audience (I suspect this will change as the night gets established) supporting and enabling some new things to be tried.
Words: Captain Mad John Silver/RBY, Photos: RBY
Kill The Radio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KillTheRadioArts
QU A RR Y Venue: https://www.facebook.com/QUARRY.Liverpool
Comments