Bruce Soord + Smalltape
Organised by: Madness Live
Venue: Wolf
Photography: Jordi Amela (@amela_photo_concert)
Writer: David Sàez
Yesterday we got to enjoy Bruce Soord’s music at Sala Wolf in Barcelona. It has to be said this small venue always delivers excellent sound quality, and yesterday was no exception. A shame its layout rules out shows with bigger crowds.
The evening opened with Smalltape. Or rather a small Smalltape, since it was a solo performance from Berlin’s Philipp Nespital, the project’s owner, who saved the day by surrounding himself with sequencers and recorders (loops and workstations, for those who speak the lingo). And that already goes a step further than just triggering the odd backing track on stage to fill things out or add detail, which is what Bruce Soord did — something that’s been normalised for years now, even if it never quite sits right with me.
If we’re not careful, one of these days we’ll show up to a concert and find two dancers thrown in and that’s that, game over. It’s obviously still a concert because there’s a musician there, and it’s not a puppet show. But walking in and finding this kind of setup is like being handed a joint and not being allowed to inhale.
On top of that, as Philipp Nespital himself told us, something in the tech always fails. This time it was a pedal battery. What can I say, I like it when musicians themselves fail. But if it happens to you, just keep quiet about it, because now the crowd doesn’t know if they’re listening to small Smalltape or a cut-short version of small Smalltape because the pedal isn’t working.
And it’s a shame, because what we saw was an excellent musician, with high-quality, high-potential compositions, a rich, interesting musical language, and a more than praiseworthy performance. But the atmosphere was, as we musicians say, more of a tapas-bar vibe. In other words, if we’d been sitting around with some diced ham and a beer, the setting would have suited it a lot better.
Smalltape
We know the music world is a tough one. But is it really so hard for promoters to find a local band? One that would play happily for next to nothing, bring in more of a crowd, and give us a CONCERT where, ten minutes in, you’re not checking your watch, because they’d actually offer something interesting. It’s a matter of promoters and venues showing some real interest in their audience — otherwise, since everyone will just be doing loops, neither venues nor promoters will even be needed anymore.
Bruce Soord also came out alone on stage to play a first track on guitar. And as soon as it ends, the problems begin, because he retunes the guitar since, as he explains, it occurred to him to write songs in different tunings. Fair enough, but don’t retune on the second song, Bruce — that’s stagecraft 101. First off because it kills the momentum, and second because we had to sit through two songs with an out-of-tune guitar.
Tash Buxton-Lewis played drums and John Sykes (not to be confused with the guitarist) took care of bass and backing vocals. The former solid, the latter sensational for the precision and good taste this guy has on bass (fun fact: he combines music with mechanical engineering work on the James Webb Space Telescope)
Luckily, by the fourth song Mr Soord (it takes some nerve being a musician named Soord — sord being Catalan for “deaf”) switches to an already-tuned guitar, and that’s where the concert really kicks off. With that rough patch behind us, we’re treated to a run of songs from the artist’s solo work, performed in a more than notable, above all energetic way, despite these being delicate, gentle, even intimate compositions. Much livelier live than on record.
So in the end we forgave the shaky start and enjoyed a really good concert, one that worked through all kinds of moods: electric and rhythmic ones, subtle ones, all performed with great care. Worth highlighting is the great chemistry between Soord and Sykes — you can tell they’re carrying decades of friendship on their backs, which made us enjoy the performance even more.
It’s worth highlighting the financial and mental effort it takes for British musicians to come to Barcelona, and then find themselves, on top of the usual struggles of being an artist without media backing, playing to a half-empty room. But it’s also worth noting the terrific respect the audience showed, both to the musicians and to everyone else present, keeping up an actively engaged listening attitude that plenty of bands would love to have. And that’s probably because Bruce Soord’s quality artistry is for audiences with real sensitivity.
The customary encore ending felt a bit anticlimactic. They gave us tracks from The Pineapple Thief, sending poor Tash off for a beer (literally). Look, we all know comparisons are odious, and that The Pineapple Thief’s drummer is the great master Gavin Harrison (all rise), but come on. Tash Buxton-Lewis is more than capable of playing the studio versions of the selected tracks, on which, as it happens, Gavin Harrison (all rise) wasn’t even playing. And back to where we started: we want concerts, not loops.
Still, the very last farewell song did bring Buxton-Lewis back to close out a concert that was entertaining, enjoyable and, despite its shaky start, genuinely good, sending the crowd home satisfied. Especially given how cheap the ticket was.