Heads Up: Dirty Projectors @ Clwb
Heads Up: Dirty Projectors @ Clwb - Wed 25th March - £10/£12
After appearing on, and kicking off, the “Dark Was The Night” (http://www.darkwasthenight.com/) charity compilation with “Knotty Pine”, a collaboration with David Byrne (http://www.davidbyrne.com/), Dirty Projectors’ standing in the music blogosphere is at an all time high.
Although this is not always a good place to be, it seems that there long ascent over seven years will protect them from being chewed up and spat out within 6 months, like the mauling the Black Kids (http://www.myspace.com/blackkidsrock) got after they failed to fulfil the huge expectations placed on them by bloggers after only one EP and a handful of shows. You live, you learn I suppose.
To pinpoint and pigeonhole Dirty Projectors is a futile task. Although hailing from Brooklyn and occasionally employing similar West African tropes as Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend, they eschew obvious structures and draw from a wider pool utilising elements from raggaeton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaet%C3%B3n), folk, Hi-life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlife), Stockhausen (http://www.stockhausen.org/) string compositions, bluegrass, dusty acoustica and fidgety electronica, all topped with a skewed falsetto somewhere between Anthony Hegarty (http://www.antonyandthejohnsons.com/), the aforementioned David Byrne and someone with hiccups.
Dirty Projectors are truly out-there musicians, squirming with pent up energy, scared of atrophying if they stay within one genre too long, hold an idea for too long, are containable for too long. Somehow they’re not a mess and each of there releases has unveiled more of there beating pop heart. What I’m trying to say is expect the unexpected even if it’s the expected.
This notion is carried by the supporting bill.
Lucky Dragons (http://www.hawksandsparrows.org/) are big on organic electronics, audience participation, and layers of things that plink and toot and twang. They have songs that are under a minute and songs that last forever. Exactly.
Polar Bear (http://www.polarbearmusic.com/) are a post-jazz ensemble led by a man with gargantuan hair. His name is Seb Rochford. They were nominated for the Mercury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_music_award ) in 2005. I don’t like Jazz but I quite like this.
So if you fancy an evening of sonic inventiveness then you could do worse than head down to Clwb on Wednesday.
