Full Moon at The Comet Hotel - The Necessary Animals

Every now and again a record comes out that restores your faith in the idea of an album, of a concentrated collection of tracks not randomly put together but having a purpose and a unifying theme. 'Full Moon at the Comet Hotel', the latest release by celebrated art rockers The Necessary Animals, is one of those. Its expression of that theme is broad: reinvented new wave, ambient jazz fusion and (almost) classic rock somehow sit together as a logical whole. This is not concept rock however. It’s more an album that induces darkness, angst, anomie and loss, and that is just from its excellent hybrid musical creations. Many of the lyrics give further voice to this vibe.

As has been observed elsewhere, this record could, in places anyway, be a soundtrack to an edgy, period movie. However it equally allows itself to breath beyond dark shadows and queasy feelings. The wonderous seven minute plus experimentation of the album’s penultimate track, ‘Psychedelic Green’, gives leading Necessary Animal Keith Rodway a sci-fi movie villain vocal treatment, placed in a musical theatre that reinvents early '70s Miles Davis with driving rock drum patterns and an other-worldly groove. Keith gets the same vocal treatment on ‘Natalie Says’, the album’s opener, which could easily be the opening scene for that movie. One you can see, hear and feel. This is not film noire however. More a thrusting, musically bold, journey through modern feelings of breakdown, but combined with hope not despair.   

Cover art c/o Necessary Animals/Aldora Britain Records

As ever, Necessary Animals draw on an impressive network of accomplished musicians. In addition to Keith’s own distinct top-end bassisms, and Amanda Thompson’s inspired keyboard treatments, Kath Alsopp on fiddle (and some vocal duties), Hutch Demouilpied on trumpet, and Marcus Sullivan on guitar are among the many valuable musical contributors. A classy production job is provided by longtime Necessaries’ partner Fritz Catlin.

There are, it has to be said, two tracks on the first half of the album that start awkwardly, almost hesitantly – ‘Daddy Saw David Lynch’ and ‘Burning Angel’. This sense doesn’t go away on repeated listens. Yet by their close these two tracks have lifted you beyond any normal listening experience, as each performance builds and creates a logic out of what initially sounded faltering.

Not to take itself too seriously, the album also presents us with the hilarious but clever ‘Multi-Story Car-Park’. This is New New Wave with a modern twist. ‘I’m just a plastic bag in a multi-story car park,’ goes the, this time, untreated Keith lead vocal. I can relate to this.

As with past Necessary Animals’ records, many of the vocal duties are shared between a range of very different female singers. Maike Elena Schmidt brings a suitably haunting quality to ‘Rosalie Song’, and Amanda Thompson and Kath Alsopp combine very effectively on ‘Henry Walks Home’. Amanda, the other lead Necessary Animal, as well as the driving force behind The Big Believe, is once again the Necessaries' vocal star. The album’s closer, 'The Last News', is one of its strongest tracks, and Amanda’s sung performance on this is a joy to hear. In fact this will surely be the album’s hit single. It has that accessible ‘classic’ quality but a musical depth and interaction that is both rock and something altogether different.  ‘Still’ is a three minute gloriously atmospheric piece, in part reminiscent of ‘Heroes’/’Low’ period Bowie instrumentals, but again, never getting lost in retro land. It’s always, like all of this record, of its time yet somehow timeless.

Surely that is the mark of a classic album isn’t it?

'Full Moon at the Comet Hotel' by Necessary Animals was released on Aldora Britain Records on November 27 2024.

Post-Apocalyptic art rock in Bulverhythe

‘The Post-Apocalyptic Romance’ could be a slightly wordy name for a knowing rock band back in the day. It is in fact the name of Daniel Hartlaub’s art n’ music show held at Electro Studios Project Space. Over the weekend Daniel, originally from Frankfurt, showcased his drawn digital art at this happening art space in the hipper end of St Leonards. 

On Saturday night a selection of Hastings and St Leonards’ finest musical minds and players came together to both celebrate Daniel’s exhibition and to interact with it. Hartlaub had drawn an incredible series of images reflecting both the inner and outer recesses of his mind. Their exterioreality, I had assumed, largely came from the specifics of the artist’s lived experience in Germany. In fact his work takes you on an alterior journey that summons up several European capitals from a different, colder, wartime where power politics and different lived realities intersected. 

Daniel’s work took on a faster and more immediate meaning on Saturday night when it was projected on to two industrial-looking rusty metal doors in the main Electro Studios’ exhibition/workspace. International musician and avant composer Anthony Moore fed improvised treatments into his synth and then modulated the results, Keith Rodway’s electric bass tones punctuated proceedings, and Amanda Thompson’s keyboards and an electric violinist added further range to the ethereal sound n’ vision show. We were being driven at a furious pace through urban brutalism and romantic paranoia while Daniel’s signature image - a glass-eyed Kafkaesque figure - periodically emerged from the shadows. A swastika fleetingly appeared. Other arresting images arrived, and then departed just as quickly. 

This was a wonderful ending to an evening show that had actually begun with dance-meisters Simon and The Pope. I must confess that a different cultural event had prevented me from seeing this poptastic duo, and in fact most of Necessary Animals’ set. I can vouch for their shared entertainment value though from having attended some of their previous gigs. Necessary Animals feature yer man Keith, and art pop heavyweight Amanda Thompson from The Big Believe. I’m told that the Necessaries kicked off with the single they recently recorded for Hartlaub’s film of his graphic novel. I arrived to hear a slice of what i think was a track from their third ‘official’ album of original material, ‘Animalia’. This record is a regular feature in my MP3 headspace. It’s one that successfully utilises N. Animals’ celebrated art schtick while Amanda’s song sensibility prevents too much avant excess. I’d missed spoken poet Lucy Brennan Shiel guesting with her take on WB Yeats’ biggest hit. I did though catch another cut from the ‘Animalia’, the hit single ‘Driving Out of Town’ on which Amanda’s vocal craft and the band’s edgy urgency unite in a potent statement of post-Covid alienation and the spirit of what Tom Rush powerfully celebrates as “the urge for going.”

Two Necessaries

Daniel projects himself

Sonic violin

There then followed ‘17:17’, when for that time period Anthony Moore and an electric violinist held the audience in rapt attention for a transcendent, largely improvisational, drone-like trip in which Daniel’s hung images and the semi-darkness of the studio space combined to enhance sounds reminiscent of Bowie and Eno’s Neukolln’, Vangellis, and, in my warped mind, the violin solo from the Moore-produced album ‘Angel Station’, in a slow-burn wig-out. What is that cool electric fiddle player’s name? I definitely want to book him for the memoir readings I’m now planning to do at The Electro.

Hats off, and there were a lot of them on the men on the night, to Daniel Hartlaub and his musical collaborators. Let’s hope that The Electro puts on a lot more of these mixed media shows in Bulverhythe bohemia.

A phenomenal Daniel Hartlaub image dubbed 'post-apocalyptic safe room' by my oldest friend

Free and experimental music at the Kino-Teatr St Leonard's

Hastings and St Leonard’s music scene is re-emerging in difficult, even controversial, circumstances. However in the large, open and relatively safe space of the Kino-Teatr Gallery area, it felt ok to spend a Sunday afternoon hearing, for free, some top-notch performers. Masks are of course optional and they do make singing difficult, not to mention eating or drinking. We had witnessed music performed on a Sunday in the Kino-Teatr's Upper Gallery a few weeks earlier and therefore had a sense of what to expect on our return visit on August 1.

Back in July, ‘Simon and The Pope’ had excited the modest gathering with their funky, spacey vibe (‘punk funk drum and bass’, according to the description on Soundcloud) driven by a dextrous bass player (John Pope), cool drum patterns (Simon Charterton), and special guest Keith Rodway on keyboards/synth. However when Simon, The Pope, and fiddle player Robert Rosenthal get together they constitute something quite different; namely ‘The Aftershave’ . Dubbed ‘countrydelic’ in the Kino-Teatre’s pre-gig publicity, that genre, previously unbeknownst to me, more or less sums up what they do. 

Upper Gallery view of The Aftershave (Pic: Amanda Thompson)

I’d initially been reminded of McGuinness Flint as in a semi-acoustic catchy ‘70s folk-pop shtick, but there’s a musical versatility and an ‘otherness’ to The Aftershave that soon made them escape the confines of my initial impression. For one thing the fiddler knew how to make the relatively simple (and I mean no disrespect) sound out of this world. Simon kept things tight but loose on the drums whilst singing lyrics that were alternately funny or deeply moving but which probably escaped most of an audience that was seated below him in the lower gallery area. I heard an audience member express concern about the acoustics of the music space. However for the most part (aside from hearing the lyrics, which are never easy to discern at gigs) the bands came through well.

The Aftershave (Pic by Amanda Thompson)

Punters' view of Afrit Nebula performing in the Upper Gallery, Kino-Teatr

First up on on Sunday Aug 1 had actually been Afrit Nebula, named in part after an Arabian djinn, and at times, due mostly to the soprano sax playing of Elaine Edwards, they definitely had a Middle Eastern feel. Her first solo sounded more snake charming than ‘Naima’, but as the band’s set progressed Ellen’s playing eclectically tapped African-American, Arabian, and entirely her own vibes. Speaking of which, her keyboard provided a xylophone accompaniment at one point. Frontman, in a sense, is Ken Edwards, whose bass playing, like that of John Pope above, was stellar and conducted with feeling. On drums, percussion, and occasional bursts of acoustic guitar, was Yair Katz.

Afrit Nebula (Picture by Amanda Thompson)

This was Afrit Nebula’s first live gig since Covid, and it’s a new line up from the one that provided an inspired accompaniment to a Butoh dancer in the Kino-Teatr two years ago. Founder-member and vocalist and percussionist, Jamie Harris departed in May, but the trio, having recruited Yair Katz on percussion, have maintained the quality. What they lack – at least when they perform songs – is a decent vocalist. Having a confident and assured singer would in some way detract from Afrit Nebula’s equalitarian focus on the music; the songs though would benefit from a definably lead vocal. That said, Yair’s singing in both English and Hebrew on one number was in the emotional zone, as was the multi-musicianship he displayed at the same time. Nerves probably played their part in lessening the impact. 'Spoken singing' works for some renowned performers; it just needs assertiveness. Don’t get me wrong though, Afrit Nebula are excellent.

Necessary Animals should have been the stars of the show and, despite only performing as a duo with keyboards apiece and having technical issues, in some ways they still were. The difficulty in playing for a lunch time crowd is that in order to at least keep them in their seats, or better still up and bopping, you need to …eh…play to the gallery. 

Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson are the nucleus of a band whose music explores the outer reaches of psych, avant rock, cosmic pop, jazz, and all spaces within and without. Much of that was communicated in their set, aided by backing tapes and samples, but only if you were among the increasingly small number who were actually listening. Amanda’s vocals are always excellent, whether with the Necessary Animals or her electronica pop outfit ‘The Big Believe’ . However this was a hard sell, especially when the tapes included a spoken voice offering disconnected ‘commentary’. 

The number ‘Acceptance’ was introduced by Keith as, I think, an exploration of coming to terms with a stalker (maybe he meant ‘Stalker’ – Ed….). Some of the Kino’s passing trade voted with their feet, which was a real shame because this is a band that deserve a lot more attention. My friend commented, ‘F*** the audience.’ Whilst this is a sentiment I understand, they can have their uses.

Necessary Animals Keith and Amanda (Pic: Amanda Thompson!)

Necessary Animals did warm up though, a recent single ‘Driving Out of Town’ mined anomie post Brexit and mid-Covid, and by the time of their closing number they were decidedly hitting their stride. Their sense of having bombed though was evident in Keith’s muted goodbye; so muted in fact that it wasn’t clear that they’d actually finished, and a couple of fellow musicians had to get a clap going. My friend and me applauded as heartily as hand strength would allow. A possibly ironic ‘more’ was distinctly heard. In truth I can’t believe that Stuart Maconie and his wigged out (Sunday evening) ‘Freak Zone’ (BBC 6 Music) or the wonderful Mark Riley (ditto; Mon-Thurs 7-9pm) haven’t discovered them yet.

Anthony Moore is something of a musical legend; a term that gets tossed around with wild abandon in these hyperbolic times. However, having been a member of renowned progsters 'Henry Cow', played with Kevin Ayers, collaborated with Paul Young (sic), and both produced a wonderful album by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (‘Angel Station’) and written a song covered by them (‘Third World Service’), he really is something of a star. 

Playing to a, by now, much emptier gallery, Mr Moore is these days a one-man band. Various guitars were deployed as well as some peddle effects to accompany the man and his voice. Not exactly Caruso but full of emotional range, and with lyrics (if you strained you could make most of them out) that had a whole lot of edge. He’s almost 72. However, viewed from the Lower Gallery, he looked (and sounded) way younger but (forgive me Anthony) still old, though in a good way. Initially I was getting (contemporary) Roger Waters unplugged, but Anthony is very much his own man. So expressive, whether apparently lauding the ‘perfect English’ of the BBC World Service or musing on, I think, ‘The Blackhills’, this was a man whose oeuvre is probably for the older and more discerning listener. Too bad that so many who’d comfortably fit at least part of that remit had actually left the building. 

Anthony claimed that he was getting more nervous as his set wore on, and he was plainly putting a lot into the performance, including some deft playing alongside his impressive vocals. My friend and me were very moved, and I’d only consumed two beverages from the excellent adjoining bar/restaurant, and she was sober. I resisted shouting ‘Moore’.

Anthony Moore (pic by Amanda Thompson)

Closing the bill were ‘Simon and The Pope’. Anthony stayed resolutely in his chair, seemingly relieved to just be just strumming in a band setting. Keith once again guested on keyboards, offering some BBC Radiophonic Workshop touches. It’s not for nothing that Keith Rodway is increasingly known as the Brian Eno of the South Coast.

Simon Charterton and John Pope are the nucleus of this white funk punk combo. They kicked things off with the irrepressible ‘Space Bossa Noodle’, before the awesome bass riff of Miles Davis’ ‘It’s About That Time’ (from his earliest jazz fusion phase) greeted us. Two numbers later and the tune had morphed, more slowly, into ‘It’s About Time’, emphasised by Simon’s repeated spoken delivery of the phrase. Simon and The Pope are only the second band I have ever heard live covering anything by Miles – the first was an African-American outfit performing in The Cotton Club….a bar in Chicago that is. A musical musing on being ‘At the bus stop…smoking a fag’ funkily followed, while another number seemingly spontaneously segued into something for the remaining older folks, T-Rex’s ‘Get It On’. That went by largely unnoticed too.

As we raced for a train, Simon and The Pope were, sadly, performing their last number. However they’ll be back. In fact the Gallery at the Kino-Teatr, St Leonard’s looks set to be a regular venue for free gigs offering variations of the above acts, and probably others, for the next few Sundays. Check it, and them, out.

Simon and The Pope, with Anthony Moore (left) and Keith Rodway (inside right) (Pic: Amanda Thompson)

For a taster of the music performed in the Kino-Teatr Gallery on August 1, click here for Keith Rodway’s video selection 

 

Necessary Animals: The indefinability of 'Dark Jazz'

The beating heart of Necessary Animals, its nucleus and core creative partnership, are the musician, composer and musical auteur Keith Rodway, and the multi-instrumentalist, song-writer and singer Amanda Thompson. They are in essence the two surviving members of a five year old musical project that has always been highly eclectic; more a platform for a very diverse range of talents than some static ‘rock band’ churning out songs. In fact while the term ‘rock band’ doesn’t fit them, nor does ‘South Coast alt psych supergroup’, a label literally attached to their eponymous first album in a futile attempt at defining their shtick. (Although they may well be a supergroup). Necessary Animals’ latest album ‘Dark Jazz’ has classically-trained avant garde musician Paul Huebner on trumpet on the opening track ‘Driving Out’, and, like on their debut, the string musicians Camo Quartet are featured throughout. This is not a music that’s easy to pigeon-hole. In fact attempting to do so is pointless, especially if any such attempt is confined to the realm of one of rock’s many narrow sub-genres.

A cop-out definition that comes to my mind is ‘fusion’. However, while the instrumental ‘Driving Out’ has more than a trumpet to evoke Miles Davis, the man who invented several ‘jazz’ fusions, this album as a whole is a fusion of almost anything you can think of. There is a jazz, even a dark jazz, undercurrent heard in the sensibility of some of the playing, but what the hell does ‘jazz’ mean anyway? When Miles Davis invented so-called ‘jazz-rock’ fusion he’d left the established conventions of jazz long behind, other than the fact that he and Wayne Shorter were African-Americans playing brass instruments. On the ‘Dark Jazz’ title track the feel is more filmic than fusion. Keith’s synth treatments orchestrate proceedings while his ‘free jazz’ piano gels intensively with Fritz Catlin’s jazz-style drumming.

The cover artwork of 'Dark Jazz' c/o Necessary Animals' Bandcamp page

This album, consisting of various Necessary Animals’ musical collaborations from 2016-19, isn’t just instrumentation either. Ingvild Deila performs most of the vocals, as she did on the first album just before departing to play Princess Leia for a Disney-produced Star Wars movie. The Norwegian has also contributed some vocals to a third Necessary Animals album that’s currently in progress with various supporting musicians. Her suitably atmospheric vocal contributions on ‘Dark Jazz’ match the charged, off the wall, instrumentation at the core of Necessary Animals. In addition to playing percussion, Fritz Catlin, a founding 23 Skidoo member, mixed much of the album, as he did the debut LP.

Necessary Animals' image for the title track c/o its Bandcamp release 

‘You Took the South, I’ll Take the Twilight Skies’ is one of the most successful musical collaborations on this record. The drone-like interplay of the Camo Quartet’s Laurens Price-Nowak on cello and Bill John Harpum on viola, combined with Keith on synthesiser and Holly Finch’s spoken ethereal vocals, evoke the sound and atmosphere of a south Asian religious chant. Her religious text though was random sections of The Times Literary Supplement and, says Keith’s explanation on BandCamp, the musical inspiration was primarily a piece by La Monte Young (a man who influenced and collaborated with a wide range of musicians including John Cale, one time viola player in The Velvet Underground).

There’s a similar musical vibe on ‘Improvisation 1’, a wholly instrumental piece that was incredibly, as the title suggests, worked up in real time by Laurens and Bill on cello and viola respectively, before the result was mixed by Fritz Catlin. This track has an intense emotionality at its dark core; a soundtrack for a movie almost too unbearable to watch. It evokes a film scene running through the mind on a constant, nightmarish, loop until, eventually, the mood somehow lifts and things draw to a close with a vague, and very ill-formed, sense of hope.

‘Darkness Comes Over the Hills’ will be familiar to some because the song version was on the first album. This instrumental version features Keith and Amanda contributing different piano parts, while Keith is also on bass, and Steve Finnerty (of Alabama 3 fame) contributes some excellent bluesy riffs on guitar. Their combined effect is somehow both tight and loose, expertly and evocatively played with, again, a dark edge that can so easily take you to where you want, or don’t want to go.

Visual artist Lucy Brennan-Shiel adds her voice to two pieces that form a distinct element to this album in that on both she reads text from Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ against improvised music by Keith, Amanda, Lee Inglesden (on guitar) and, on one, even a bowed tree branch courtesy of Nick Weekes. On ‘Fox and Clock’ Keith took an audio sample of a vulpine visitor to nearby gardens, the musicians then weaved their contributions on top, before Lucy read words evoking a canine’s wild and ultimately fatal night while Nick also plays a pine cone to surprisingly good effect. As spoken text on top of an improv, it works. However ‘Bronze by Gold’ is an unnecessary version of a broadly similar idea but is done at much greater length. At over 11 minutes this is the longest track by far on the album. Its atmosphere is killed stone dead when Lucy switches from the spoken delivery that is her forte as a Joycean scholar, to sudden flights of sub-operatic style vocal fancy. It’s not her fault that this aspect wasn’t edited out of the mix. The whole thing put me in mind of the experimentation of ‘Horse Latitudes’ on The Doors’ second album (‘Strange Days’). Wild, even for 1967, it featured Jim Morrison intoning his own (supposedly inferior) text to what sounds (more or less) like improvised accompaniment. At least he, or producer Paul Rothschild, reined that in to less than two minutes.

However this listener’s discomfort with what is only one out of nine pieces shouldn’t distract from what, overall, is a fine musical collection by a fine bunch of musicians. ‘Familiar Heat’ for example instrumentally reworks a track that appeared as an extra on a very limited CD run of the debut album. It ranges, as does the whole of ‘Dark Jazz’, through many different tempos and styles, and features the deft touch of Peter O’Donnell on both guitar and piano and Alan Bruzon, a long time musical collaborator with Keith and Amanda, on ebow guitar (an electronic strings effect gizmo). The album concludes with ‘Snoen Falt ikwald’ (or ‘Snow Fell Tonight’) on which Ingvild sings her father’s lyrics to an accompaniment that includes Alan playing the kalimba, and Amanda and Keith on steel food bowls (natch). Together they somehow successfully acoustically evoke the dark white light of a Scandinavian night. 

Necessary Animals' image for 'Familar Heat' c/o its Bandcamp release

This isn’t the Necessary Animals ‘difficult’ second album. Rather it brings together projects outside of what Keith calls the band’s musical ‘day job’, some of which were conceived of before the first Necessary Animals’ record was recorded. Right now he and Amanda are continuing work on that third album, having just released a stellar Covid era number, ‘Above The Waterline’. Amanda is also very active with her own, highly melodic and highly impressive, indie pop band The Big Believe, while Keith has several film and archival music projects planned. In a sense ‘Dark Jazz’ is a slice of Necessary Animals’ musical history, but it’s no less fascinating for that.