Live review: James Holden, Meltdown Festival, London 17/6/14

My second trip to this year's Meltdown Festival saw a trip to The Purcell Room for Holden's live interpretation of last year's album 'The Inheritors'. Support came from Not Waving a.k.a. Alessio Natalizia (who's also half of Walls). He had some good tunes and a rather dubious taste in accompanying video clips.

Holden's live show sees him take to the stage accompanied by a live drummer (Tom Page). The addition of this one extra element elevates the show by such a surprising amount that it's about 5 times better that it was on record. The interplay between the two of them is great (they're positioned so that they face each other on stage) and, is weird as it may sound, the whole thing becomes almost jazz-like. Despite being another seated venue there's a great atmosphere (although I did see someone who got up to dance get forcibly told to sit down again) and people get completely absorbed by whatever it is that Holden's doing with his bank of coloured dials and spaghetti-wires.

James Holden & Tom Page, Purcell Room, London 17/6/14

The show closes with one of my favourite tracks, 'The Caterpillar's Intervention', at the unfeasibly early time of 9.45 and we stumble out, blinking, into the still-light London evening. In a way this was even better than the UNKLE show I saw a few days before - concise, compact but still creative, it showed that Holden is a force to be reckoned with and will be for a long time to come.

View of London from the Southbank after the show

Live review - UNKLE: REDUX, Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall London 13/6/14

The 21st Meltdown Festival kicked off in style last night with a show by this year's curator James Lavelle. Having admitted to feeling the pressure of the curators that had come before him (Bowie, Yoko Ono, Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave to name just a few) Lavelle and his collaborator Mara Carlyle pulled together a host of guest performers to effectively put on a greatest hits show with a difference. Songs were rearranged, different vocalists were used, old and new friends made appearances, and the whole thing served to showcase what a great body of work Lavelle has produced over the years.

Before we get into the specifics, a quick word about the support act Philip Sheppard. He first worked with UNKLE on 'Glow' for Never, Never, Land and it's clear he and James have a great respect for each other. A solo cellist might not be your idea of a great act but he did amazing things, creating loop upon loop of cello tracks on music ranging from the mid 18th century, through 'Amazing Grace' to a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' (with a great accompanying story about Jeff Buckley).

UNKLE - James Lavelle & Leila Moss onstage 13/6/14

After the interval (and some shocking bar service, the only thing the otherwise excellent Southbank Centre need to address), UNKLE hit the stage with James Lavelle & Leila Moss (The Duke Spirit / Roman Remains) jointly taking on the vocals on 'Ablivion'. From then on it was a constantly moving feast of vocalists and band members, orchestra and choir, each adding their own individual flavour to the proceedings. Leila Moss has become something of a mainstay at UNKLE shows but she seems to have really developed of late and was definitely one of the stars of the show. A pair of tracks from 'Psyence Fiction' featured the legendary DJ Shadow, while Mark Lanegan was in fine voice - his version of 'Burn My Shadow' was immense. There were a couple of surprising cover versions, some great visuals, and they even used the Festival Hall's gigantic organ on a couple of the tracks. Lavelle was off stage for most of the night (from our excellent second row seats we could see him at the side of the stage, encouraging and coordinating), but returned just before the end of a round of thank yous. The evening closed with Moss and Lavelle again joining forces on last song 'The Answer', the live version of which is now a combination of the Trentemøller mix and the original. There's a partial setlist below - I was too engrossed to be taking notes so it's not got everything and it's not in the right order - corrections welcome!

UNKLE: REDUX setlist 13/6/14

• Worship ( spoken word by Michele Lamy)
• Hold My Hand (vocals by James Lavelle & Leila Moss)
• Mayday (vocals by Leila Moss)
• Bloodstain (feat. DJ Shadow)
• Lonely Soul (feat. DJ Shadow)
• Another Night Out (vocals by Mark Lanegan)
• Ex-Factor (vocals by Mara Carlyle)
• With You In My Head (vocals by Leila Moss)
• Burn My Shadow (vocals by Mark Lanegan)
• The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (vocals by Keaton Henson)
• Rabbit In Your Headlights (vocals by Keaton Henson)
• In A State (vocals by Leila Moss)
• Heaven (vocals by Mark Lanegan)
• The Answer (vocals by James Lavelle & Leila Moss)

Before the show we had time to visit Urban Archeology, the Mo' Wax exhibition celebrating Lavelle's record label - it was nice to see my name on the wall having supported the campaign to put the exhibition together!

Once the UNKLE show had finished we headed downstairs to the Clore Ballroom for the free aftershow - it was great to be able to have a dance, it's the one thing you miss by having a show at somewhere like the Festival Hall or the Barbican. We couldn't stay for the whole thing but Don Letts' reggae-tinged set was great.

Don Letts on the wheels of steel

PS Philip Sheppard posted his live version on line a couple of day ago - here it is:

Remix of the Day: 'Feeling Good Tonight (UNKLE Reconstruction)' by Therr Maitz

James Lavelle's return to prominence continues with this remix of an act I'd never heard of before. Therr Maitz comes from Moscow in Russia and names UNKLE as one of his key influences, so he must be chuffed to have got Lavelle involved with this track. It's very much at the electronic end of UNKLE's output, and reminds me a but of the Surrender Sounds version of 'Heavy Drug'.



Building up to his curation of the Meltdown Festival Lavelle has put out more remixes in the past couple of months than he did in the previous couple of years. Here's one that appeared a couple of weeks ago that I didn't get round to blogging at the time; the UNKLE Reconstruction of 'Pressure' by UTRB. This one's a lot more like the early trip-hop he used to put out on the Mo' Wax label. It sounds a lot like Massive Attack (specifically 'Protection') and makes a good counterpoint to the Maitz remix above.