Acoustic Ladyland

The Luminaire is a splendid little venue in Kilburn, which has a nice club vibe. It even has a sign up requesting that people don't talk when the band are on, something I discover when.... well I'm talking to one of my friends. The staff inform you of the rule as they would in a trendy cinema but without the ice creams and drinks (do they still do that at cinemas?). I suppose it works in a jazz setting though not sure that the sign would be so easy to enforce at a death metal gig where half the audience may have drunk most of their body weight via a mixture of blood and alcohol.

Acoustic Ladyland have been around for a while now. Their second album 'Last Chance Disco' was the Jazzwise album of the year (2005) and such credentials are firmly deserved when you get to see the quartet in action. Their latest single 'Cuts and Lies' featuring Anne Booty on vocals suggests a movement towards a Moloko type sound but this is not replicated during the gig about to unfold before us.

Much will always be made of drummer Seb Rochford's fantastic afro hair-do and to be fair it is a stunning sight and is twin-towned with Diana Ross's similar look from the early to mid eighties. It really does look supreme.

Anyway don't let this distract you as the rest of the band are all worth further investigation. They start off with 'Iggy' which has a ramshackle craziness akin to Mr Pop himself being put in a padded cell with a group of drunken hyenas, if you could imagine that. The energy level is amazingly high and despite a feeling that the band are trying to keep up with one another it does somehow work.

I must admit that from this point onwards that song titles are rarely offered and most tunes tend to merge into the other but this is no bad thing. The titles themselves aren't really that important as the band roll up their sleeves and start to get into it in an energetic way. The interplay between drummer Seb and bassist Ruth Goller is the driving heart of the matter with the latter displaying a tremendous dexterity with regard to her instrument. She also looks a bit like Princess Anne in the right light, thankfully without any horses. Having said that a bassist on a horse would be a fabulous gimmick despite the potential mess.

The pace slows for a few songs and recalls the brooding menace of Morphine (band) and the introduction of a new untitled instrumental with a beautifully melodic start that builds to a crescendo of power and passion is the undoubted highlight for me. It's like a volcano slowly erupting and I think that if you looked hard enough you would probably find a few speckles of lava on the floor. Or maybe they're beer stains but you get the point. Pete Wareham's saxophone wails like a melodic elephant, which may sound like it doesn't truly work but never underestimate them elephants.

Overall Acoustic Ladyland play with a joyful mania, maybe like they all forgot to take their anti-psychotic medication for the night. It's a strange sort of dysfunctional harmony but it certainly works very effectively and the band plays off one another to excellent effect. I suppose it's like a kind of punk-jazz hybrid that works well in the live setting. It is difficult to see where the main audience for this will be as it does feel like a niche market and the fact that the Luminaire is not sold out tonight indicates that it's likely to stay that way. But don't let that deter you from the thunderous fun to be had with the Ladyland crew. They seem intent on testing a kind of chaos theory to its utmost limits and, in my opinion, pass this examination quite comfortably. Go and see them and find out for yourself. Just be careful not to talk too loudly in between the chaos.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.