Boat Ting

What a great evening! I've been to Boat Ting before and that was great too- two out of two ain't bad. Last time there was a power cut and the whole thing happened by candlelight; this time, the performances happened downstairs in a room with giant portholes looking out on to the Thames; the occasional pleasure-cruiser cruisered past and the boat tilted gently from side to side. We fantasised about the boat slowly breaking loose and drifing off into the North Sea without anyone noticing, being tootled and parped at as we vanished into tomorrow's sunrise.
Joan and I (she's the animator who's making the film about fields and hares) went to see Steve Beresford, who had set up chains of miniature electronic instruments which emitted a sort of jumble-sale of sounds as he clicked buttons, slid faders and whizzed things about his head. Even just by himself he was a sort of performance artist, intent on sonic weirdness and digging about in our eardrums with extraordinary noises. He was accompanied by Steve Noble on drums (what a fantastic drummer!) and Alan Tomlinson on trombone, whose style was rather violent; I guess you find the punk attitude everywhere but it's the second time I've been terrified of his trombone slider!
Next up was a trio (shoulda been a quadro but the tube strike struck one member off the register) that included the timeless Lol Coxhill on soprano sax (how can a man look exactly the same for 30 years?), John Edwards on double bass (as well as his playing we liked the relaxed holster-thing he kept his bow in), and last but definitely not least, Sharon Gal on vocals. We liked everything about Sharon, everything from her sheer ferocity to her lovely hands. She managed to be funny and scary all within the same sound. Amazing.
Next time we are going to take our sketchbooks and draw the lot of 'em.