It’s a moody sort of evening in the forest. One minute there are splodges of ice splattering on the windscreen, and the next brilliant sunshine, but with rainclouds always looming in the distance, like a graphite smudge. It's like it can’t quite decide what kind of evening it wants to be, caught between multiple possible evenings.
In the car park there is a man standing by the meter. He says he needs four pounds eighty for a bus home. He asks me if I can give him some money. I ask him to wait a minute. I might need the change for the car park, I explain. He says it’s a card machine and starts showing me how to use it. “You tap your card there,” he says, showing me where to tap my card. I tell him that I know how to use the machine. “Sorry,” he says. When I’m done I give him all the change I have. It amounts to one pound ninety-five. I count it out for him. “I need four pounds eighty,” he says.
Portsmouth sells itself as “the great waterfront city” and the GUILDHALL is situated in a Barbican-like network of civic architecture, and I think that, really, there ought to be more going on here. Having said that there are two gigs going on tonight at the Guildhall alone. As well as ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE, nineties rocker surf dude types Reef are playing in the main hall, and it kind of amazes me that they can still draw a crowd after all these years. Ishmael Ensemble are playing in a smaller side “studio”. Two Reef fans wander in. “That’s not it,” one of them says. “There’s no way they’d fit everyone in there.” It’s weirdly quiet inside. I stand in the shadows but it’s too dark to see my notepad, so I go and sit in a little pool of blue light by the stage.
Little pool of blue light
Six-piece JOIN THE DIN are “from London” and seem, to my withered mind, to represent a sort of nexus between the contemporary London jazz scene and the seventies Canterbury scene. Like the best of today’s London jazz they seem to connect different traditions while looking forward with some hope to a brighter future. The bass player looks like a wizard, or one of those people who might refer to themselves as a warlock, and have a drawer full of cloaks and robes and stuff like that. They’ve got two drummers, which is always a good look, and a healthy smattering of tie-dye. So I feel right at home in my double-sided, glow-in-the-dark, tie-dye, giant cat t-shirt. These are my people, I think, and they all seem quite nice, apart from the bass player, who maintains a sinister demeanour throughout. By the end of the set, at one of the drummer’s insistence, people start dancing, which is OK, but someone treads on my toes, and I do generally prefer it when people don’t dance.
My people
There’s a man behind me who keeps commenting after every song that Ishmael Ensemble play. “Unbelievable,” he says after the first song. “Legends,” after the second. “Amazing,” after the third. I like him; I like his commentary. The music is a kind of unlikely amalgamation of disparate strands: jazz, triphop, post-rock, etc. Maybe not so disparate or unlikely, actually, after all, come to think of it. Holysseus Fly’s vocals sit like croutons on top of a muscular soup of beats and synths, like icing on a cake, like a butterfly in a car park, like a deer by the side of the motorway, etc. She makes it for me. The guitarist has the largest rack of pedals I’ve ever seen. It all gets a bit blokey when Fly leaves the stage midway through for a couple of songs. Nothing wrong with that, but is there? Maybe not. I don’t know. But doesn’t it then just become about who’s the hardest, or the heaviest, or the loudest, or the lowest, or the fanciest? Oh well, I just like it when there’s a bit of femininity in the mix these days. It makes a difference, it does. “Absolutely unbelievable,” is the commentary from behind. “Fucking hell,” he adds. “I need a lie down here. Rave central!” Things get floatier and dreamier and stretch out a bit when Fly returns, which is my kind of vibe. I’m just a soft sort of guy, I suppose. But this isn’t about me, is it, except that it is. It is all about me, don’t you see? All this time, it’s just been all about me.
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