Magic Arm & Beth Jeans Houghton: swalf 16 launch

Saturday 23rd May 09
Magic Arm album Launch
with special guests
Beth Jeans Houghton
Homelife

Deaf Institute
135 Grosvenor Street
Manchester
M1 7HE

Doors 9.00 pm / £5

In the past year 18 year old Newcastle based singer/songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton has garnered a reputation as an antidote to the current crop of acoustic songstresses. With her alternative blend of experimental folk, Beth has been hailed by the NME as “a Joni Mitchell for the anti-folk generation.”

With influences ranging from Frank Zappa, Vashti Bunyan, Fourtet and Love, Beth has cultivated a sound that is truly her own. Since her first performance in August 06 Beth has played alongside a diverse collection of artists such as Bon Iver, Adem, Imogen Heap, Fionn Regan, Jeffrey Lewis, Scott Matthews, Bowerbirds, Josephine Foster, Woodpigeon, White Magic, King Creosote, Alasdair Roberts, PG Six, Dead Meadow, Voice of the Seven Woods, Tom Brosseau, St Vincent, Euros Childs, Diane Cluck, Jack Savoretti and Stephen Fretwell amongst others. Golden is out on Static Caravan, produced by Adem.

Sirconical has always been our favourite artist on the Twisted Nerve imprint, having been part of its originally bijou roster more or less from day one… His album has been in the making for at least a couple of years now, fusing his love of the thrumming folk and classic Hip Hop with an insatiable appetite for modern production techniques, electronics and complex rhythms, imbuing him with a sound that can veer from lazy, dusted breaks one moment to a hyperactive rhythmic attack Squarepusher would be proud of the next, while all the while harbouring an admiration for the kind of melodic transitions Plaid have imprinted on so many heads in the last decade…… “Waving At Planes” is a hugely charming and thoroughly disingenuous affair that takes shimmering blocks of electronic building material to construct deceptively simple compositions that range from the playful (‘Joulouville’) through to the epic (‘Gone’) and the downright unsettling (‘Rose’).