While live music is all about entertainment, sometimes it can teach us a thing or two into the bargain.
And what better way to learn about the world around us than via a bone-fide Pop Prof? His full title being Professor of Popular Music at the University of Glasgow, Matt Brennan’s mission is to make rock’n’roll more sustainable, and his sciency-monickered band Beautiful Cosmos are launching an album with a difference.
Rather than the eco-vinyl that is all the rage, dip into the sleeve of ‘Dance Of The Atoms’ and you’ll find… nothing. Well, aside from a download code and some beautiful, album-sized artwork courtesy of partner and band vocalist Anna Myles – formerly of Maple Leaves.
This eco-friendly project – Doughnut Music – is also releasing the debut album, ‘Double Lives’, from tonight’s opening act, Diljeet Kaur Bhachu, so tonight’s show acts as a double album launch. As we’ll discover, the two acts contrast greatly – apart from anything else Diljeet freely admits that her work is usually improv-based, making a live show an interesting challenge – and one she rises to with aplomb. A series of looped drones and live flute embellishments make for a haunting sound, which she occasionally uses as a basis for spoken word pieces, such as ‘Another Life’, a tale of a Dundonian arranged marriage, while ‘Immigrate. Educate. Assimilate.’ – or at least its title – sums up the album’s theme, its mesmerising, trance-like sounds introducing east to west.
Although not part of the live setup, the groundwork for much of the tunes is the sound of the harmonium, which for this writer at least conjures up visions of Ivor Cutler, a theme continued by Beautiful Cosmos who take their name from Cutler’s 1976 song, and which the Brennan and Miles covered as part of the Cutler tribute album ‘Return To Y’Hup‘.
As it transpires the band will perform the new album in order, and enlist a crew to give it the necessary full sound which includes Eagleowl’s Bart on bass, and Peter Brewiss, the album’s co-producer (with brother David). The Field Music guitarist lends a certain angular feel to proceedings and, like his band, the Beautiful Cosmos songs are an intoxicating mix of poppy hooks which take a sudden off-kilter diversion just when they might become too mainstream.
Unusually performing the tracks in album order, this doesn’t detract from the fact that there are eleven instant classics here, with the stone cold (ahem) bangers a great way to get the party started. Brennan – originally of Zoey Van Goey, lest we forget – in fact disappears behind the drum kit after the opening ‘Seneca Falls’, but doesn’t let this stop him going into lecture mode as the band ‘break’ for the end of “side one” – in the best possible way, I should hasten to add, passionately describing the whole Doughnut Music project’s slightly hippy idealism.
Miles then announces the next track, which is by way of contrast “about Newcastle” and Mackem Brewiss makes to leave the stage in disgust, before the band kiss and make up for “side two”s opener ‘The Life Before’ and run apace through to the closing ‘Red Flag Factory’ – the most downbeat tune of the night, but given an extra, epic dimension by the six-strong live band.
Having run out of self-penned material, they encore with a Beatles cover, which reminds us that somewhere, beyond our own beautiful cosmos, the science tells us there are an infinite number of universes with a wealth of possibilities. And in one, there will be a place where Brennan and Miles rightfully rule the charts with legendary status and the “Fab 4” will take their rightful place as “unappreciated” musical also-rans.
For now, and for tonight’s sell-out crowd, Beautiful Cosmos are at the centre of Glasgow’s musical realm.
Also chief newshound at Jockrock
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