John Parish / Aidan Simpson / Liesa Van Der Aa

For the uninitiated, John Parish is one of the busiest and most consistently inventive musicians this country has produced over the past thirty years. You may think you have not heard any of his music but if you've listened to PJ Harvey, Eels, Goldfrapp, Sparklehorse and an eclectic host of other bands since the early 1990s then you've heard Parish's multi-instrumental contributions. Failing that, he's been at the helm, producing.

John is also an accomplished soundtrack artist and this midweek gig at the Phoenix in Exeter was a showcase for his recent 'Screenplay' album, a compilation of tracks from various films he has provided sonic texture for down the years. The intention with the album was to prove that stripped of visual context and jumbled up among tracks from different movies, these pieces retain meaning and impact. By and large this is indeed the case but, ironically, some of the pieces were played live with the appropriate scenes from relevant films showing on a big screen behind the band.



Close your eyes and the music remains, well, cinematic. Open them again, drink in the images from the screen and the sounds pull out threads from the action. But I was far more interested in the music and John's band, a four-strong posse of collaborators who were all capable of switching from instrument to instrument, very much in the vein of the man at the helm.

If words such as dissonance, cacophony and feedback are not your cup of tea then a) maybe you need to broaden your musical palette and, b) you're not part of the target audience for 'Screenplay'. There were moments of gentle, melodic sway and tenderness but they frequently built into insistent and absorbing walls of wondrous noise. There is an urgency to this music, a sense of anarchy in the genuine sense of the word – rules are torn up and rewritten not out of a desire to destroy but with the exact opposite purpose, to create anew. Perfectly in tune with the film images but strong enough to stand alone, these are majestically fragmented sounds of connection and disconnection, of life's most meaningful trivialities.

Support on the night was provided by two acts who were new to me. First up was Belgian solo musician Liesa Van Der Aa, a classically-trained violinist who uses live loops and a range of effects to add to edgy, ethereal, exquisite music. She plucks the strings of her violin, she bows it then casually tosses aside the bow and the instrument altogether once a loop has been set in motion. Over this she employs an impressive vocal range to cajole, implore and tenderise the meanings out of her lyrics. These lyrics are written in English which, she acknowledge on this, her first performance over here, might not have the desired impact on native-speakers. She can rest assured that they do. The almost cut-up quality of the narrative in each song perfectly fits the earnest, operatic quality of the music. Liesa's delivery evoked such singular artists as Patti Smith, Bjork, P.J. Harvey (unsurprisingly, given who she was supporting), and Marianne Faithful: women who all carve their own artistic niche, who all, like Liesa, perform from the heart.



Following Liesa was Aidan Simpson, a tall, nineteen year old singer-songwriter from Bridport who was performing songs from his current EP, 'Night Falls With Rosemary' (released by Blanket). His appearance harks back to a pre-swinging sixties when refuseniks and CND marchers stalked the land. Naturally enough there are traces of acoustic Dylan in the melodies of Aidan's songs but the lyrics and chord progressions take in a far wider range of influences to my ears, from Leonard Cohen through Paul Simon and up to more modern times with hints of Elliot Smith and even Villagers.

Lyrically, Simpson is beatnik enough to fuse those all-time standard themes of death, alienation and the relentless passing of time into his songs, as befits a young man whose stage presence is a somewhat shy one between the music. He's clearly more at home letting the songs speak for him than he is addressing the audience yet what he does say portrays a sense of yearning beyond his years. Though each act was distinct from the others the evening as a whole held together with satisfying coherence. What all three possessed was a refreshing honesty, a craft and an artistry which can seem sadly lacking in the soulless modern era of talentless buffoons turning up for Simon Cowell's latest round of public humiliations and expecting to be famous by Thursday.

This was a night that restored my faith in music as a medium for thrusting boundaries wide open and provoking deep murmurs of astonishment from within the listener's heart. Don't believe me? Then purchase John Parish's 'Screenplay' album, turn out all the lights, crank up the volume, and let yourself be transported!

FUTURE GIGS

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