Reviewed: Djangology live at The Hand & Heart, Nottingham

05/03/09

I’m pretty new to this reviewing lark and I revel in opportunities wherever I stumble upon them, so when I wandered into The Hand & Heart on Derby Road last night I knew I’d hit the metaphorical jackpot. What started out as a standard pub crawl ended up in one of the best nights of free music I’ve ever heard, and a red-hot gypsy jazz extravaganza! They obviously base their style on Django Reinhardt (clue’s in the name), but they bring so much more besides.

Djangology manage to pull off elaborate jams and jazz standards without a hint of pretension – by no means an easy thing to achieve, how many bands can you think of that can play Mack the Knife without seeming a bit smarmy? – and are technically extraordinary. In fact they sound like a collection of highly trained session musicians and are almost flawless in their playing, yet their style and the feel of their music is more similar to a group of mates having an impromptu jam. It’s that ‘almost perfect’ sound which makes them so special.

The musicians were all ridiculously talented, but two in particular stuck out. The fiddle player was so quick-fingered and inventive it was quite frankly a little scary, and the lead guitarist left us all utterly speechless.

A request by my eclectic and slightly mad boyfriend for some Spanish music resulted in an elaborate, pretty lengthy Spanish-influenced jam, complete with unaccompanied fiddle solos and some terrifyingly quick guitar work. These are the kind of people that make you want to give up music altogether because you just know you’ll never be that good.

A friend of mine who was with me who’s been going to gigs all over the country for the better part of 30 years, told me that he’s never seen musicians of that standard for free. Ever. If one statement could sum up just how brilliant these guys are, I think that would be it.

(Unfortunately I couldn’t find a website for the band, there’s a Djangology on MySpace but I don’t think it’s the same people. Come on boys, Google yourselves and find this so I can link to you!)

EDIT: They did get back to me! They have changed their name to Djongology (the ‘a’ is replaced with an ‘o’)  to avoid confusion with other bands. Here is a link to Ben Holder (the fiddle player)’s myspace: http://www.myspace.com/steppelli. Enjoy!

Reviewed: Kenelis (Live at @d2, Nottingham)

(This review post is waaay overdue, I was saving it for a possible linkup with an Insomnia Radio: UK episode featuring a song from the band, but it hasn’t happened yet and I’m impatient!)

15/02/09 Nottingham Pride Fundraiser at @d2, Nottingham

Kenelis are headlining Nottingham Pride on 25/07/09

(In classic Sarah M style I forgot my notebook so this review is purely from memory, but from the first song I knew this was something I had to write about. So here goes..)

In a performance well worth venturing out onto the cold, wet streets of Nottingham on a Sunday night for, Kenelis gave the Nottingham Pride crew a taste of things to come. But in contrast to their usual style of loud, crunchy guitars and powerful screaming vocals, the set was acoustic (they basically re-wrote their whole debut album for this night!). It was also brilliant – the transition from heavy to light worked perfectly and displayed a whole different side to the songs.

Mel Sanson (lead vocals) has, honestly, one of the most versatile and moving voices I have heard in a long time, switching from tentative, shy and quiet to screaming anger and back again with such raw emotion that you get pulled into the songs and aurally beaten until you empathise..

But blinding vocals does not a good gig make – you also need a solid rhythm section and some great melodies. Fortunately they had them in bucketfuls; beautifully played lead guitar, and good grounding bass and rhythm parts smushed everything together in a nice big musical confection.

Because of the aforementioned lack-of-notebook I won’t try to regale you with a song-by-song reliving of the performance, but mark my words – if you ever get the chance to see Kenelis live, do it! (Especially if that involves coming to Nottingham Pride ’09!)

Kenelis have won my affections in one killer gig. They are powerful, emotional, passionate and fantastically talented musicians who will blow you away with their great songwriting and raw performances.