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A cold day of sunlight. The people of Egypt are rising against their thinly veiled dick-tator president.
The kitchen in our flat is alive with sudden gold for a minute, and then another early dusk.
But in spite of how rare the sun has become these weeks, 2011 feels like it’s going to be good. Having gigged my tits off all autumn, I’m able now to cut down on performing (performing is a fundamentally weird thing to do, look at me hear my story) for a couple of months and focus on the thing that really matters to me: Dizraeli and the Small Gods. When I’m not working on the UnPlaned album -got to finish that by the end of March- I’m spending all days making Band things happen. We’re recording our single soon – a story of love in spite of the insanity of things – and making a film to go with it. Researching for the film, I dove deep into the world of music videos, and found mad amounts to inspire me. Music videos can be the worst kind of oily-arsed terrible, but at their goodest they’re brilliant: little condensed visual trips with all the imagination of a feature film squeezed into 3 minutes. Have you seen the work of Michel Gondry? He’s next level. Or the video for Protection by Massive Attack? I love it. Little glimpses of people in their most intimate spaces, alone within a few feet of each other.
Both the single and the video will be out by the end of March, in time for the start of our Mud Island Tour of the UK in April (FACEBOOK EVENT LINK), and we hope they’ll wave the Small Gods flag enough to get people sidling over to see us play in the various cities we’re visiting.
Did I mention the Small Gods? I can’t get enough of them at the moment. We’ve got a whole new sound emerging, still holding on to the frayed lengths of folk that inspired my Engurland (City Shanties)album, but now bringing all the influences of the other bandmembers in. I can’t describe it properly- you just have to trust me that the single will be something Else, when it comes. Here’s something though- we’ve been working on collaborations, as well as our own rounded sound. This year we’ve already had sessions with Chris Wood, Philippe Barnes and Jam Baxter, spanning the folk and hiphop worlds and coming out of the woods with some beautiful mixtures.
Working with Chris is an interesting thing- it made me realise how little time I spend with people from a generation up, for a start (everyone I friend with is 35 or younger, which is missing a whole palette of shades), and it also made me slow down. Chris’s approach to music is gentle, subtle and strong, and I suddenly saw that I tend to come at it like a firework heading for a child. Which is fine -we’ve all got our different energies- but I’m learning about the gaps too; the fact that art can be taken sitting down.
Philippe Barnes is a mindblowing flute-player who’s worked a lot with Lee Westwood (our guitarist) on Lee’s compositions, and the three of us (me Lee Philippe) have been putting together some lovely hiphop/spoken word adaptations of Hungarian folk songs. And when Philippe comes along with the whole band… well, what happened the other day was a flute vs turntables jig vs banger retelling of a very old folk song called Two Magicians. Bloody hell.
Jam Baxter is without any doubt one of the best lyricists in hiphop at the moment, and I’m honoured to be collaborating with him on some new ideas.
All three of these artists will be on stage with us at A Fistful of Twisted Folk, which will take place on the 3rd of April at XOYO in Shoreditch. It’s going to be off the chain.
Jam Baxter and Me will be collaborating also on some folkhop crossover shiz at this event on the 25th of February, which also features spoken word legend Polar Bear, the Roundhouse Experimental Choir and a whole load of gifted hiphop and folk artists. It seems like the idea of mashing the new urban up with the old rural is taking off…
Big up to everyone in their separate corners. I’m putting a concise list of those upcoming gigs at the bottom of this blog. I hope to see you at one of them.
Take care
Peace
Dizraeli
7th Feb
British Library
The Language Wars (Dizraeli in debate with some proper academics about why proper English doesn’t matter)
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25th Feb
Debut, London SE1
Old Routes/New Routes
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19th March
Dizraeli, DJ Downlow and Wireless
The Wheelbarrow, Camden
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2nd – 20th April
Dizraeli and the Small Gods – The Mud Island Tour