This isn’t any ordinary gig, tonight Justin K Broadrick is not performing as JK Flesh, or as part of Godflesh, Jesu, Zonal or any of his other numerous projects. Tonight he is performing as a bloke from Shard End in Birmingham. ‘An ode to Yorks Wood’ is the name of the piece for tonight’s event. It is a special piece commissioned by for-Wards with support from Access to Music.
So, Shard End is a ‘ward’ in Birmingham. There are four wards in a district, in this instance the district is Hodge Hill. for-Wards is a celebration through music of the diverse city of Birmingham They have commissioned 10 pieces of new music about the 10 constituencies and tonight is about one of those. If you visit their website you will see that they have developed a cultural sound map of Birmingham. This reveals that this district also lays claim to Roy Wood, Jeff Lyne and other members of ELO and Roger Taylor of Duran Duran. This work sits rather nicely alongside the work of Home of Metal when considering the musical legacy of Birmingham. But I digress.
‘An Ode to Yorks Wood’ is intrinsically a collaboration. Firstly it involved fellow Shard Ender Rowen Coleing. Rowen set out to gather community contributions from the 4 wards. The results include Bhangra bass lines, the sounds of a ‘winter wonderland’ drum sounds made from spuds in buckets, rakes and fences and other community noises. These sound sources are the threads that tonight, Justin K Broadrick weaves into an audio tapestry.
The setting is a basement below the Royal George Hotel awash with projections and soundscapes. I always did like a basement gig despite the inherent challenges to a deaf blind muso like me. Justin settles behind his laptop, controllers and other gizmos, guitar close at hand too, and the performance commences.
Percussive sounds emanate firstly, clicky beats and hits form a beat around which brassy and nostalgic sounding synth textures circle. These are soon ‘flesh’ed out with thicker pads and a warm subby bassline before Justin picks up his seven stringer to add guitar tones to the melting pot. These are tones more akin to his work as Jesu than Godflesh or JK Flesh. The result is something new and something that almost resembles ‘dreampop’. Moving on from this initial segment, darker pads soaked in reverb and more come to the fore, jostling for acoustic space with treated conversational vocal samples and further guitar treatment. All of this is set against a visual backdrop of convolving black, whites and greys. Pixels and degrading content dissolve and coalesce in a soaring manner across the back wall of this cosy basement. The sonics gather a sightlier noisier and abrasive direction for a time before returning to more subdued and melancholic pastures. From here, elements are gradually and measuredly stripped away until finally it is just spoken passages and the echoes thereof. The, applause and plenty of it as a humble Broadrick gestures his appreciation for the audience and the team that have enabled this event. This has been a unique and intimate opportunity to witness something that reflects not only the man of the hour but the communities around the area where he started his musical journey. A part of a city that eaten, slept and probably defected impressive and significant music for decades home hopefully also for decades to come.
https://www.facebook.com/forwardsbrum/
https://www.facebook.com/jkflesh/
