La mia Recensione: The Maitlainds - Live in Oldham

 The Maitlands 

Live at Whittles @ Tokyo

Oldham - Manchester 

Friday 29 April 

Siamo nomadi, figli del vento, randagi e anime pilotate dal desiderio di movimento. E la musica sublima tutto questo.

Ci si può spostare molto, oppure poco, ma è sempre un viaggio che non conosce arrivo, perché lascia dentro la sensazione che tutto ciò continui.

È così mi ritrovo a Oldham, luogo che sembra chiuso dentro il sorriso dei prati, a circondare una cittadina fresca e curiosa.

Sono qui per rivedere The Maitlands, la band più brillante di Manchester al momento, che amo per il suo approccio alla cultura e per la curiosità di chi non sente il bisogno di legarsi solo al mito della città. Come persone umili, non desiderano un rapporto di complicità con la storia decennale di questo luogo divenuto celeberrimo, ma cercano una autonomia ed una individualità che permetta loro di non essere parte di una scena.

Questa sera lo hanno dimostrato ancora una volta con il loro miglior concerto che io abbia mai visto.

La compattezza dei ragazzi ora risiede nell’aver eliminato tensioni, gelosie. Erano già molto bravi ma ora lo sono di più, sono un insieme di bellezze che ruotano dentro la complicità che rende la performance eccitante e coinvolgente.

Sembrano brani nuovi.

Dopo averli visti recentemente con una formazione ridotta a quattro membri, questa volta la nuova line-up ha potuto dimostrare tutto il loro valore: considerando che non hanno molte occasioni per stare insieme, il risultato è ancora più stupefacente.

Le canzoni questa sera erano dotate di un impianto spettacolare di colori: le note gravitavano dentro il cuore, la musica era un volo continuo, potente, e insieme ci hanno trasportato verso la consapevolezza di una gioia sempre più crescente, perché i The Maitlands rompono il limite dei confini.

Le chitarre di Rob Glennie e di Mike Foy sono api che pungono, ma in grado di donarci miele con il loro affiatamento perfetto.

Tom Sillitoe è il mago della tastiera che conferisce melodia e nerbo ai brani rendendoli completi, mentre Matt Byrne, con leggerezza e precisione, ha preso il suo basso e l’ha reso armonioso.

Saul non è umano, ammettiamolo: il suo amore per la batteria è così grande che tutta la tecnica e l’impeto si coniugano in un lavoro magistrale.

Poi c’è Carl: la sua voce, la modalità del canto, è poesia e, come uno sciamano, ci porta all’imposizione seducente, totale.

Una band con il presente solido che può permettersi di guardare al futuro sorridendo: hanno canzoni intense, capaci di far riflettere e di ammaliare, sono veicoli sani di bellezza e solo l’ignoranza di un mondo disattento può non tributare loro il successo che meritano.

Dodici brani a rendere denso il locale di profumi eccelsi, ritmo e melodia e ricchezza interiore che coniugandosi hanno fatto di una sera lo spettacolo dell’incanto.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

4 Maggio 2022

Matt Byrne Basso

Mike Foy - Chitarra

Saul Gerrard - Batteria

Rob Glennie - Chitarra

Carl L. Ingram - Voce

Tom Sillitoe - Tastiera

My Review - The Maitlands - Live in Oldham

 My Review 

The Maitlands 

Live at Whittles @ Tokyo

Oldham - Manchester 

Friday 29 April 

We are nomads, children of the wind, vagabonds and souls driven by the desire for movement. And music sublimates all this.

You can move a lot, or a little, but it is always a journey that never ends, because it leaves you with the feeling that it will continue.

And so I find myself in Oldham, a place that seems to be enclosed within the smile of the meadows, surrounding a fresh and curious town.

I'm here to see The Maitlands again, Manchester's brightest band at the moment, that I love for its approach to culture and the curiosity of those who don’t feel the need to bind themselves only to the myth of the city. As humble people, they don't want a relationship of complicity with the decades-long history of this place that has become famous, but look for an autonomy and individuality that allows them not to be part of a scene.

Tonight they proved this once again with their best concert I have ever seen.

The compactness of these guys now lies in having eliminated tensions, jealousies. They were already very good but now they are better, a set of beauties that revolve within the complicity which makes the performance exciting and engaging.

They sound like new songs.

Having seen them recently with a line-up reduced to four members, tonight the new one was able to demonstrate their full value: considering they don't get many opportunities to stay together, the result is even more amazing.

The songs this evening were endowed with a spectacular array of colours: the notes gravitated into our hearts, the music was a continuous, powerful flight, and together they carried us towards an awareness of ever-increasing joy, since The Maitlands break the boundaries.

Rob Glennie's and Mike Foy's guitars are bees that sting, but able at the same time to give us honey with their perfect harmony.

Tom Sillitoe is the keyboards wizard who provides melody and vigour to the songs making them complete, while Matt Byrne, with lightness and precision, has taken his bass and made it harmonious.

Saul is not human, let's admit it: his love for drums is so great that all the technique and enthusiasm are combined in a masterful work.

Then there's Carl: his voice, the way he sings, is poetry and, like a shaman, leads us to seductive, total imposition.

A band with a solid present that can allow itself to look to the future with a smile: they have intense songs, capable of making us reflect and of enchanting, they are healthy vehicles of beauty and only the ignorance of a careless world can fail to give them the success they deserve.

Twelve tracks to make the venue full of sublime scents, rhythm and melody and inner richness that combined to make this evening the show of enchantment.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

4th May 2022

Matt Byrne - Bass

Mike Foy - Guitar

Saul Gerrard - Drum

Rob Glennie - Guitar

Carl L. Ingram - Voice

Tom Sillitoe - Keyboard

My review: The Maitlands - Live in Salford, March 2022

My review

The Maitlands live in Salford

5 March 2022

Every city has its own delays to deal with, because there are traumas and difficulties to pay attention to.

Manchester is no exception.

And about an aspect of music interest and sharing, the issue increases given its importance.

Life goes on and music comes back to show its face, its muscles, its passion, its ardour, its need, its pride, its need to legitimise itself.

Among them are The Maitlands, a splendid reality that does not want excessive visibility, nor does it seek approval whatever: it exists for the pleasure of it, without ambitions or exaggerated dreams.

Their joy lies in writing songs and playing whenever possible.

At a time when the line-up is changing, some of the new members were not in time to play with the band tonight.

In a four-piece line-up, but with a sound that seemed to be the product of more musicians, they showed all their class with a nine-song set at the Eagle Inn on the Salford/Manchester border, playing in front of an attentive and amused audience.

Having appeared as a Special Guest for a couple of songs at Academy 3 in August 2020, Heavy Salad guitarist Rob Glennie is now a permanent member of The Maitlands and his contribution strengthens the sound of the quartet, whose set shook, moved and led attendees to an articulate thought, given the depth of Carl's lyrics.

The three members of the line-up, Carl L. Ingram, Saul Padraig Gerrard and Matt Byrne, for their part, were totally at ease and able to express their talent, having found in Rob the best ally.

A perfect setlist that combined singles and lesser known songs with extreme fluidity and the ability to keep the tension and beauty of their compositions constant.

Mention must be made of the opener "Dead Slow", which after 4 years seems even fresher and able to show the band's endless musical roots, and of the always clamorous "When it Rains, it Pours", an atomic ride which, thanks to Matt's granitic bass, Rob's twisted and sensual guitar and Saul's acid drumming, allows Carl's singing to bring out his powerful and catchy melodic line.

All the songs demonstrate their total disregard for the need of other bands to feel part of a hypothetical Manchester music scene.

They wisely go in a different direction, drawing from the globe and different decades to make their music something compact and not morbidly tied to the Mancunian city.

That’s the sort of concerts that brings good cheer, a predisposition towards unquestionable artistic skill and joy, because their ability to be on stage is a robust smile capable of taking root in the heart.

Welcome back!

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld 

Salford

March 6th, 2022

La mia recensione: The Maitlands - Live in Salford March 2022

 La mia recensione

The Maitlands live in Salford

5 Marzo 2022

Ogni città ha le sue lentezze da gestire, perché vi sono traumi e difficoltà cui prestare attenzioni.

Quella di Manchester non fa eccezione.

E su un aspetto di interesse e condivisione della musica la problematica aumenta vista la sua importanza.

La vita continua e la musica torna a mostrare il suo viso, i suoi muscoli, i suoi impeti, l’ardore, il bisogno, la fierezza, la necessità di legittimarsi.

Tra questi vi sono The Maitlands, una splendida realtà che non desidera eccessiva visibilità, né cerca consensi a prescindere: esiste per il piacere di farlo, senza velleità o sogni esagerati.

La loro gioia sta nello scrivere canzoni e suonare quando è possibile.

In un momento nel quale la line-up sta mutando, alcuni dei nuovi membri non hanno fatto in tempo a suonare con la band stasera.

In una formazione a quattro, ma con un suono che sembrava essere il frutto di più musicisti, hanno dimostrato tutta la loro classe con un set di nove canzoni all’Eagle Inn, al confine tra Salford e Manchester, suonando per una platea di persone attente e divertite.

Dopo aver partecipato come Special Guest per un paio di canzoni all’Accademy 3 nell’agosto del 2020, Rob Glennie, chitarrista dei Heavy Salad, fa ormai parte in pianta stabile dei Maitlands ed il suo contributo irrobustisce il suono del quartetto che nel loro set ha scosso, emozionato e condotto i partecipanti ad un pensiero articolato, visto lo spessore dei testi di Carl.

I tre componenti della formazione, Carl L. Ingram, Saul  Padraig Gerrard e Matt Byrne, da parte loro, sono totalmente a loro agio e capaci di esprimere il loro talento avendo trovato in Rob il migliore alleato.

Una scaletta perfetta che ha saputo unire i singoli e canzoni meno note con estrema fluidità e capacità di tenere costante la tensione e la bellezza delle loro composizioni.

Citazione d’obbligo per la opener “Dead Slow”, che dopo 4 anni sembra ancora più fresca e capace di mostrare le infinite radici musicali della band, e per la sempre clamorosa “When it Rains, it Pours”, cavalcata atomica che grazie al basso granitico di Matt, alla chitarra sghemba e sensuale di Rob e al drumming acido di Saul permette al cantato di Carl di esibire la sua linea melodica potente e accattivante.

Tutte le canzoni palesano il totale disinteresse della band verso il bisogno che invece dimostrano altri gruppi nei confronti del sentirsi parte di una ipotetica scena musicale di Manchester.

Loro, saggiamente, vanno in una diversa direzione, pescando nel globo terrestre e in decadi diverse per fare della loro musica qualcosa di compatto e non legato in modo morboso alla città Mancuniana.

Sono concerti come questi che portano buonumore, la predisposizione all’accoglienza verso abilità artistiche indiscutibili e la gioia, perché la loro capacità di stare sul palco è un sorriso robusto che sa come mettere le radici nel cuore.

Bentornati!

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld 

Salford

6 Marzo 2022

My Review: Current93 - Halo

 Current 93 - Halo

Live at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

"Even Death is better than this useless life".

An evening at the theatre, where the stage, dimly lit as the show progresses, seems to sink into the bowels of a planet too suffering to be able to support different feelings that have not a rope around the neck.

Because there is no doubt that with Current 93 you always go to the theatre.

For this concert they chose a real one and the setlist confirmed that the 16 acts were full of intensity, where the plot was perfectly carried out, ending up cluttering your thoughts, exciting your nerves, shaking your muscles even if not stimulated by dances.

The fog of civilisation surrounds our fears as we listen to these songs, petroleum-stained feathers are sticking more and more during this esoteric torrent in which no light appears except the beauty of the authenticity that Monsignor Tibet and his musician disciples distribute in this tragedy.

A concert that becomes the artistic journey of a band that has always had little consideration, but has always been able to maintain the balance of its coffers.

Songs like prayers, with needles and thorns in a bloody envelope where lumps are a blessing and not a curse.  

Musical notes like continuous shrieks with a tail made of tremors able to frighten. As if theatre taught horror films how to create endless fears.

Listening to this gig, you might wonder how the boundaries of time are, how we have come to lose essential energy. You really do enter the temple of pain, not the crumpled up sheet metal one of Christian Death, but a more refined and subtle one.

The whole neurotic row of the darkest feelings sticks to the songs, with the dominant feeling that restlessness is the real queen of the stage, creaking even though there are atoms of sweetness and enchantment.

Decadence, medieval battles, sounds swollen with soft vibrations, the light held in the throat of an increasingly tired and opaque candle: this and much ferments in the barrel in which the songs make room for us.

David Tibet organises everything as if it were the last performance: we feel his tension and, for the way some songs are modified compared to the versions on the albums and his recitative and scratchy interpretation, we can only thank him for having offered us a show that exalts and goes beyond expectations.

With him, of course, you don't waste time hoping for some songs over others: everything is a ritual, defined and ending with our fragility in the depths of the night...

Everything becomes sulphurous, almost diabolical, with the feeling that a camouflaged storm is hitting us, a deception that from the bowels grabs our ankles.

The Gregorian chants, John Contreras's amazing cello swell our bellies with astonishment and the sensation of a godless mass of sounds, more severe than the universal judgement which makes us lost, becomes more and more real.

In all this 4 Hypnagogue 4 is the summa, the whole thing that settles like incense in our eyes, the drama of words that make room for the introduction of a piano with a smile, then the guitar to support it comes and later David: the stage turns into a devastated parvis among pains, sins and the darkness that awaits us. And the chest that remembers, in a fire of time. 

With, for example, the moving Sleep Has His House, dedicated to his father, David and the piano are the breath of intense thoughts that scratch Monsignor's uvula ending up turning us into witnesses of a black-nailed mood.

Simply devastating.

And it is this atmosphere that crosses our soul and leads it to surrender which makes us not only witnesses but accomplices of those mental territories from which we often want to escape.

The sumptuous The Death of the Corn, with its razor-sharp opening, its adherence to the primordial protocol of Industrial music, only to become a classic neo-folk ballad, is an experience to be done, without brakes.

But I don't want to give the idea that listening to this album could become traumatic (it wouldn't be a tragedy given the quality of the considerations and emotions that spring out like mushrooms), because there is a positive plan, a beauty dressed in white that manages to find its space and become the smiling princess who walks between the notes with a black coat and the collar lifted up: where there are connections between extremes there is in any case a hope that plants its flag.

Even if it is in our lungs.

We only have to listen to this show because, when quality triumphs, from the theatre you go home with a heart that has found a way to expand its emotional potential.

And that final voice of a little girl in "God is love", in the nervous Locust, shows that everything can continue with a glimmer of hope...

There are bees that are indefatigable....

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

16th February 2022

My review: Ist Ist Live in Manchester 2nd February 2023

 My Review

Ist Ist - live in Manchester

33 Oldham street

2nd February 2022

In the air.

It was in the air of this beautiful dark Manchester that all souls present would be shocked once again by the class, the style, the passion of the four Mancunians who displayed a grit that brought us all into an idyll we all longed for.

I think they know very well that around their music is a following of people more and more involved and excited, and this small stage, without any distracting lights, revealed their powerful ability to create images before our eyes.

Second consecutive gig here and the impression that they have become ready for the big leap to fame.

With two albums behind them and the impossibility to play these jewels because of the COVID situation, they give the impression that they have been playing concerts every day instead, such is the amalgamation and their impetuousness on stage.

The pleasure of listening to an excellent song that will end up on their third album is great: tireless knights of beauty, they make our mouths water and we are already ready to hear what will be another splendid album.

Twenty songs skilfully inspect their already rich catalogue, the setlist glides through the power of compositions that reveal a talent that has grown older, and a compositional growth that exceeds all expectations.

The old songs are as if restored, full of additional strength and pathos, showing that the road travelled has not made them old and worn out: on the contrary, they still sound fresh and capable of shaking.

To listen to them is to see how time passing is not always a wound but a chance to always start again from what has been done.

Night's arm is still a song capable of making us mute, servants of its every desire.

And, like all the others from the early days, it reminds us that we were not mistaken in being very impressed.

The songs on The Art Of Lying are finding great sap in being played live: they seem to be born the moment they reach our ears, giving us shivers without escape from our skin.

And if each of their concerts resembles a journey, here we become suitcases in which to put the songs as absolutely necessary clothes so to dress ourselves with unique emotions.

What becomes pleasantly unbearable is the amount of beauty that we have to see living inside our hearts, like a pleasant torture that prevents us from leaving this small and enchanting hall.

Then: they know how to sew to the obvious approach of sadness that permeates their compositions a series of vibrant tensions, of frustration that is purified as an act of conscious shamans, like a whipping that serves to make our skin awake.

And it is inevitable that we reach a delirium that shuts our mouths, makes us dance only in our minds because our legs are in a perpetual state of arrest, it would be enough for example to see what happens to us during Fats Cats Drown In Milk, with the sky that seems to collapse the vault of 33 Oldham street.

The impact between the guitars and the synths sublimates everything during the concert, giving even more prominence to the bass and the drums, which are continuous sabre rattling, to which the mere idea of opposing would lead us to pain.

Ist Ist are also joy: because they make us feel repressed feelings, they console us, they activate our qualities in a listening that matures and pushes us to improve.

The new song Fool's Paradise is a scissor, a double blade that cuts through the veins because it is full of neurotic beauty, its march irresistible and puts us in line like soldiers who are not given the chance to speak. Another Gem shines in the casket of these arresting Architects of emotion.

I also love their ability to smile when incidents occur, like during the opening Wolves which suddenly saw a song coming from the speakers that covered theirs: nothing, smiles, Andy, the bassist,  finding time to have fun and the machine continues as if unaware of the fact.

This being serious but not taking themselves too seriously makes them even more engaging and likeable.

With The Waves and If Taste Like Wine we flew through the sky intoxicated, free, stupendously attracted by the lack of gravity, songs that like an engagement ring brought us joy and serenity.

Heads on Speaks: it was also time for tears, of a disruptive force that crashed us, with Mat's keyboards that like a broom took away the fake joy that we inevitably live every day, "You are the reason I want to be alone" and away we went, with our tissues full...

So much more happened in this evening where the right and useful things for us came together in these songs to make us savour the taste of our existences.

Alex Dematteis 

Salford