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[misterdale]

Triptych 06: King Creosote/Akron/Family/Adem/Kitchen Cynics
Friday 28th April
The Lemon Tree
£10 + £1.50 b/fee
Doors Open: 8pm

King Creosote
In 1994, the singer / songwriter with Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and Khartoum Heroes realised that an increasing number of his songs were either not folky / bluegrassy enough for the Dubhs, or had too few chords for the Heroes. King Creosote crowned himself to bring to the world - "songs with relatively few chords in a non-bluegrass style", except in those cases where "this song is an over-elaborate bluegrass ditty". In 2005, KC live might, fully clothed, only sport the accordion, with some rare guitar / banjo / box-playing from Pip Dylan of Spain, naturist and ogre of beauty.
King Creosote maintains that the song is more important than the style, and that the performance outweighs recording quality. If a part can't be recorded in one take, scrap it for something simpler. No sample should be longer than four seconds, and although samples should be in tune or in time, not necessarily both. King Creosote detests noodling virtuoso, and thus has a go on whatever instrument is at hand. Anyway, duff tunes strengthen the songs on either side. A KC album starts at the beginning, and don't finish 'til the end - by design. Except where they start in the middle and grow out of control. KC is still unknown outside of his small coastal village.
Akron/Family
A prodigious, swooning Brooklyn brood of measured, revered, multi-instrumentalists, Akron/Familys muse is infused in elegant, orphic, oddball folk and thrilling, meticulous, psyche-warped rock.

Their radiating 2005 eponymous debut was heralded one of the years finest  and most enduring  releases: the Brooklyn four-piece carve a gnarled, enchanting art that traverses out-folk, guitar meditations, drone passages and sing-a-long swamp rawk.

Signed to the distinguished Young God imprint, (Devendra Banhart, Mi and Lau)  their label boss is fêted Swans commander Michael Gira  a guru with whom Akron/Family also shared an ace release last year, playing alongside his Angels of Light.

Amidst Charalimbides, Radiohead and Six Organs of Admittance, Akron/Family glide and tussle: they entwine eastern canticles and dense finger picking and electronic trickery like no other.
Adem
Cometh sublime folk, cometh Adem: a pastoral, prodigal delectation whose acoustic trickery and laptop psalms are dramatic and fragile in equal measure.

A sometime member of post-rockers Fridge and a one-time musician with Badly Drawn Boy, Adem recently contributed to Vashti Bunyans lovely Lookaftering album. Master of serenades and exquisite song-craft, he has recently played with Bert Jansch, Smog and SFAs Gruff Rhys: among whom Adem and his arias sparkle.

His woozy strings and soaring oratorios and whispering, harmonium charms prove a highlight wherever Adem plays live: from Londons Royal Festival Hall and the Green Man Festival, to myriad Fence Collective shindigs and glam-bashes at the Tate Modern.

His 2003 inaugural offering, Homesongs, (Domino), proved one of the decades finest debuts  and asserted Adem as one of the UKs most precious (and precocious) stars.

Kitchen Cynics
A one-man psych-folk vanquisher from Aberdeen, Alan Davidson  aka Kitchen Cynics  has cultivated wry acoustic apologues and warm machine parables since the 1980s. He has propagated a slew of cassettes and albums and CDRs, while live alliances include Damon Krukowski (of Damon & Naomi) and Masaki Batoh (of Ghost).

Kitchen Cynics mythological, prosaic and deadpan narratives map the universal and the personal: the sea and lasagne and fossils and love. Recalling Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Roy Harper, Davidsons elemental inflection and elegiac emblems  as evinced on current album, Tunnels (Barl Fire)  are a timely reminder of his fate as a treasured, exceptional outsider idol.
Lemon Tree website