In some ways the recycled number was appropriate for today’s event. Curated by Hackoustic, a collective who make music with instruments made out of junk. Today’s theme was ‘Conversations’. Artists who had not played together, coming together to create music with their weird and wonderful instruments.

Home made instruments are not a sound engineer’s friend. Setting up all the microphones and getting the levels right across instruments and junk was a major job for Daylight’s sound engineers. As always, they were up for the job. Their role in making the Daylight sound so great is easily overlooked. Sound checks at Daylight are not simply a case of a band turning up plugging in and doing a 15 minute sound check. At 8am, St John’s had no sound system. By midday, the church sounded beautiful. After we leave, they then had the joy of ripping apart all their hard work and packing up until the next one.

Opening the afternoon was Blanc Sceol and regular Daylight contributor, Terry Edwards. Black Sceol were premiering the latest version of their amazing instrument ‘Orbit’. The orbit is a two person instrument. A large vertical drum with strings attached around the circumference and turned by a big crank handle. The second person moves a flexible rubber belt up and down the strings to shift the pitch of the whirling drone sound. It is fascinating to watch. As they played, stabs of Terry Edwards’ saxophone emanated from the gallery in St Johns. Terry then moved around the building before finally joining Blanc Sceol on stage. It worked remarkably well.

Another regular at Daylight, Kėsia Decoté played piano, toy piano and children’s toys, with Amy Cutler using a range of instruments, samples and tape cassettes. Again, two musicians came together and from almost nothing. We were treated to beautiful music that only happened because of the Daylight collaboration.

Closing the afternoon were Hackoustic. All had brought in a selection of home made instruments. Some, like the harp, were very professionally made. Others, looked like mad inventions made from random pieces of junk, which is just what they were. I have said this many times at Daylight Music. Talented musicians can make anything sound musical and today Hackoustic showed this.

The great thing about Daylight Music is how it pushes our musical boundaries. I am not sure I would have ever been introduced to something as insane as this weird world of hacked together instruments if it wasn’t for Daylight Music. Witnessing the faces on many of the audience. They found it as wonderful as I did.

Daylight has featured the recorder numerous times. Helping showcase how versatile the instrument is when played by talented musicians. Today Fatima Lahham was the talented musician. One of her pieces used the pitched sound of a queen bee as she calls to her hive. A sound with its own strange musicality. Fatima then interleaved her own dance around the queen bee’s repeating ‘music’, almost as if she was one of the worker bees answering the queen’s call.

The challenging part of this week’s programme was the second act, Rattle. Two drummers, Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley who complement each other to make music that goes beyond the simple percussive nature of the drums. I am not a fan drumming as the primary driver in music. I prefer there to be a melody the drums act subserviently to. At times in St John’s on Bethnal Green, the sound was thunderous, with vibrations coming up through the floor. Katharine added a layer of ambient vocals for extra dynamics. At times it worked. Other times it was two drummers. Though interesting, by the end of their set, I wasn’t converted.

Closing the afternoon was Minihi. Minihi are percussionists and composers Zands Duggan and Louise Anna Duggan. They write minimalistic classical using a range of percussive instruments, such as drums, piano and even a dulcimer. Review websites who know a lot more than me, say they play neoclassical. No idea what that is. But at times it was delicately powerful. They were accompanied by a cellist and at times there was a delicacy of the cello, piano and vocals, then stronger percussion would take the music in a different direction than die back down again to let the music take a different direction. It was all rather wonderful and yet another new discovery brought to me by Daylight Music that I otherwise would never have found.

There were the usual three acts. Ted Barnes, a Daylight stalwart had brought other Daylight stalwarts, the brilliant Samantha Waites and Gill Sandell (though sadly underused today). Julia Biel and Me For Queen. All complementing each other and all great.

I was photographing this one for Daylight. The other photographers were unavailable this week. I have to admit. I was hoping not to as I was trying to keep track of the final day of the Championship (Boro lost and didn’t get into the playoffs). I was expecting to take breaks from photographing to catch up on the football scores, but I wasn’t expecting to be knocked off my feet by one of the performers. It was Me For Queen’s song about her feelings after a miscarriage that was beautifully devastating. As a man, I can never understand the pain. But the song opened the door slightly on the pain and loss experienced after a miscarriage. It was truly special. It is these little moments that make Daylight so special.

A full set of photographs is available on Daylight Music’s Facebook page

Daylight Music will unfortunately be taking a short break as it raises enough money for a new season. I can’t wait for it to come back. If you’d like to help see their JustGiving page

Johny Pictish

Molly Linen

Molly Moore’s Mystic Business

Welcoming the audience as they arrived to St John’s in Bethnal Green, Paul Cuddeford’s blues on a steel guitar gave the audience a hint of what to expect. Today’s curation is very much a near jazz experience. Music that skirts around the edges of jazz but shares much of its ethos. Something the discerning Jazz audience seemed to engage with. Well most did, apparently two ladies left after the first act proclaiming to the volunteers on the door ‘that wasn’t jazz’. Nice to see they have such an open mind to new music

The offending artists were BAG. They mix spoken word with various electronic sounds and music. To be fair to the two ladies. No it wasn’t ‘jazz’. But there was a theme today. Terry’s choices put vocals at the fore. In this case, the vocals used to deconstruct our expectations of musical structures – a bit like the improvisation bits in jazz. Vocals speeding up and slowing down, accenting different bits of variable length sentences. All the time, forcing the music to shift form. I can see the connection. But to be honest, who cares. It was a fascinating performance.

Deconstructing music continued with a pair thrown together by Terry, soprano Jan Goodkin and pianist Rod Melvin. Who explored Terry’s idea that the songs of the Smiths have some similarity to plainsong chants. Again, plainsong is not Jazz. But the idea of two musicians who hadn’t met, coming together and using the rules of plainsong to work with each other’s performance has some of the spirit of jazz.

I’ve never liked the Smiths. Or rather, I’ve never liked Smiths when sung by Morrissey. I enjoy their songs far more when covered by other bands without Morrissey’s annoying voice. But I will begrudgingly admit the music and lyrics are often brilliant. Today, stripped back to a minimalistic interpretation on the piano and Jan’s terrific singing of plainsong, the songs also gained an absurdist humour that I would never have connected to the Smiths.

The two ladies would have hated it. I loved it

Continuing with the theme. Jem Moore gave us his fascinating interpretation of Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy. His bass playing perfectly complementing the darkness in the poem.

The two ladies would have hated it.

Closing Terry’s curation was his own band, The Near Jazz Experience and for once there was some improvised jazz. Always musical and never inappropriately noodley, I’m sure this was more of what those two ladies were looking for. Although, I’m not sure they would have appreciated the NJE’s excellent take on Hendrix. Maybe they were right to leave after all? Me, I loved every second

Daylight’s strength has always been its ability to challenge. Occasionally these invited curations play it safe. But more often than not, the curator rises to the challenge of selecting a range of music that embraces Daylight’s ethos. Terry’s session more than did that. Hopefully some of today’s audience will have understood what Daylight Music is about and enjoyed their experience and return in future.

For the last seven years, Daylight Music has formed pretty much the foundations of my Saturday’s. First, it was used as the starting points of a weekend walk as I tried to get fit. Then I started to photograph the event and got involved with the Daylight team. I go most weeks, but things like football occasionally gets in the way. I’ve always stayed on the ‘paying punter’ side of the fence so that I don’t feel obliged to attend every week. (but I’m happy to help move things around when I’m there during soundcheck)

This weekend I wasn’t meant to be at the return of Daylight Music. Instead, I was meant to be doing one of the other things I was looking forward to getting back to. To see my favourite band (British) Sea Power who were playing near my parents home, giving me an excuse to kill two birds with one stone. However, a self inflicted injury to my arm, meant I was unable to drive home. So I thought I’d drop in to offer some moral support (Due to my arm, I couldn’t photograph the event)

I wrote last week about the return of the event and mentioned some of the challenges the team faced to allow the event to continue. This has meant new homes and pretty much everything being managed by the team.

Today’s event was at the first of their new homes. St John on Bethnal Green. A lovely church just outside Bethnal Green tube. The decision to continue to use a church is the right one. The acoustics in churches can be special. With Daylight Music the spaces need to be flexible enough to deal with everything from an artist playing a viol de gamba, choirs, jazz, pianists, theremins, to a loud full band performance. Pretty much anything really. The space also needs to be relaxed where people can have some tea and cake while watching the performances. Normal gigs spaces aren’t really going to provide this, while churches oddly do. Today, St John’s was more than up for the job.

The difficulty of continuing to use churches is the lack of sound systems and in the case of St John’s, there’s no cafe. When I finally arrived, there was a hive of activity with the sound engineers soundchecking the artists and volunteers setting up the cafe, ticket desk and merch desk.

It’s difficult for events at the moment. Many of us are wary of going into venue spaces. I want to see promoters require the COVID passport and/or a lateral flow test, but most aren’t. I know several venues saw low numbers for the first few events, as it took a while for people to feel comfortable with the new normality. I know I’ve still not been to my local venue because I’m not confident it will be safe and there’s one venue I have already scrubbed off my gig list. Daylight are not requiring passes, but they have asked Daylight volunteers to wear masks and also asked the audience to wear masks, at the very least when they move around the building. Plus many active churches still have social distancing in place and St John’s had signs asking people to keep rows free. Personally, I did my usual lateral flow test before heading into London and wore a fresh FFP2 mask for the whole duration. I felt relatively safe. There’s no right time to effectively launch a new music series. But it’s especially difficult under current conditions. Hopefully, Daylight will attract back it’s regulars and stay safe.

Outside the big imposing, but perfectly proportioned doors of St John’s, several familiar faces were waiting to experience the new series. It was reassuring to see people returning. I’m not sure what the numbers where like. I think it would have been a quiet MK1 Daylight. But for the first event in what is effectively a new series, it looked a reasonable number and felt a comfortable number for the space, given the current circumstances. I’m not sure I would have been as comfortable if the numbers were significantly higher. It will be interesting in coming weeks to see how the other venues fair and if they’re busy, if I will be comfortable.

Several people I’ve spoken to have said the Leytonstone venue is the easiest for them to get to, which I guess makes sense as people have moved out there as central London house prices have soared. The venue locations will clearly be a new dynamic to work with. It will be interesting to see which venue becomes my favourite. If they’re as good as St John’s, then, it’s going to be a really interesting series. It will also be interesting to see how the new £10 suggested ‘pay what you can’ affects numbers. While it seems very reasonable for what Daylight offers, others might see things differently. It’s odd how the brain works when you’re lying in bed on a Saturday deciding if you should bother getting up (just me?). An interesting experiment and one I hope works.

Just after noon, Ben Eshmade introduced the new series. Thanking everyone who supported the event through the crowdfunder. Briefly discussing the difficulties and reasons for the changes (including a new weekly programme and cashless payments!). I think many in the audience knew how hard he has worked to put on this series and his small celebration was welcomed by the crowd.

First up, Matthew Bourne and Charlotte Keeffe. Now, given the conditions. Other music series might have played it safe with their first act. Not Daylight. Matthew Bourne has played Daylight before. His last session was with the sadly departed Michael Tippett. Matthew is a pianist who likes to create experimental jazz and classical compositions. Joining Matthew, Charlotte is a trumpeter and flugelhorn improvisational player. They apparently had never met before and I assume the piece was partially improvised. I find these types of pieces in all genres, a difficult ask, because I usually lose concentration. At some points in the piece I was really enjoying it, other points I did lose concentration and struggled a bit. But for me, that’s the great thing about Daylight. It challenges me. Only Daylight would have the confidence to start with such a challenging piece. Exactly the reason why it is so special.

Next up was Andrew Plummer’s WSR REDUX. Andrew played Bourne’s Daylight curation in November 2019. Andrew tells dark tales. His deep voice backed with grubby, grungy guitar and drums. It felt like the pastor had dragged an old man who was sitting nursing a whisky in an east end boozer into church to tell the believers about life on the other side of the tracks, to ensure they didn’t stray from the righteous path. It didn’t work. The old church sounded gloriously dark and I think we all felt like straying with Andrew into his world.

The break gave me an opportunity to visit the cafe and see what was on offer. Yay. The return of sausage rolls! (The Chapel had basically gone vegetarian). The food was freshly baked by the nearby Beehive Cafe. There was a decent range of quiches, cakes, sausages rolls, and flapjacks. Prices were very reasonable. Only £2.50 for a slice of cake and £1 for a breakfast tea. Getting the quantities right will be challenging as the series moves around and I think there was food left over at the end. Hopefully, the cafe covered itself financially, because they did a great job.

With the cafe under Daylight’s control, they have introduced long overdue cashless payment – something we are all now used to and a very good move (I’ve only used cash once in 18 months). In fact only the merch desk remains cash only – but then that’s sensible as Daylight are basically taking the money on behalf of the artists

Closing the afternoon was another jazz duo, Run Logan Run. A fierce saxophone with thunderous drumming really pushed the church’s dynamics to their extreme. It sounded glorious at times as the saxophone’s wail hit the crescendo of drums, returning just the right amount of echo to make it sound really big. The church was really given a baptism of fire into Daylight Music and passed with flying colours.

So how well did the Daylight team do? They opened the doors on time. The sound was great. The cafe had good options and people were dealt with quickly. The music challenged me. The team, their usual friendly self. So brilliant really. I look forward to seeing future sessions at their new venues.

I have a bit of my normality back. Thank you Ben and the team.

*snaps taken with a pocket camera used upside down in my left hand (why are all cameras right handed?)

A few months ago I did a ‘random’ at Rough Trade. The artist was called Myrkur (aka Amalie Bruun) and although I knew nothing about her, by the end of the gig I was hooked. Myrkur, is on the surface a Scandinavian black metal artist. But she also has had a pop career and most pertinent to this review, a background in Scandinavian folk music. It was this aspect that interested me most so the idea of a whole gig of her folk music in a church, had to be done.

First up was Jo Quail playing an cello using various loop pedals. She was an excellent introduction to the evening.

St John’s of Bethnal Green is a great little venue. It has decent acoustics and tonight, the lighting gave it a spooky atmosphere, the perfect setting of Myrkur.

Myrkur practices kulning, an ancient method of calling herds in the wilds of Scandinavia. Mrykur, started the evening with her own kulning, calling her audience to attention. From this moment onwards, I was bewitched.

There’s something special about Myrkur. She has a beautiful versatile voice. With the power to sing metal, but the delicacy to sing folk music. Tonight she played a combination of acoustic versions of her metal and folk music mainly from Denmark and Sweden. Regularly switching between piano, drum, guitar and some traditional instrument. She was accompanied by two singers who complemented Myrkur’s voice perfectly and a guitarist playing various traditional instruments. Even though much of the evening I couldn’t understand the words, everything was simply beautiful. I was simply bewitched and from the complete silence, so was everyone else in the audience. (And I was glad that my camera has a silent mode)

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