David Thomas Broughton – Live at the Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Friday 23rd January 2009
David Thomas Broughton is a bit of a genius, really. I’ve only seen him once before, at the End of the Road Festival two years ago, and for some reason I had been nurturing the impression of a short, slightly awkward chap who bumbled around the stage as a way of masking a slight social unease. Talking to him before the performance in Glasgow I was somewhat surprised to meet a fairly tall, rather dapper and quite a handsome chap with no more social awkwardness than a slight suspicion of being unwelcomly accosted by a loud mouthed muppet burbling about some blog or other. Funny how these impressions can form, largely out of nowhere.
Once on stage, Broughton is a genuinely unique performer. His flair for musical subtleties is uncanny. He’ll record the faintest tap on a microphone stand and loop it into the textures of the sound he slowly builds, combining guitar phrases, guttural noises and ghostly moans until he feels he is arriving somewhere, and then loosing his beguiling voice into the middle of it all.
He has yet, to the extent of my knowledge, to manage to quite capture the magic of this in a recording, although I’ll admit that I am not anything like familiar enough with his back catalogue to say that with any authority. Also, quite how you capture his subtle and infectious physical humour, and the magic of seeing his music slowly, carefully and unpredictably assembled in something as one-dimensional as an audio recording is something I couldn’t really imagine trying. And I can’t imagine being made to think that mere music is desperately inadequate to really convey a musical performance, but watching David Thomas Broughton perform, it seems that’s exactly what it is.
David Thomas Broughton – Ambiguity
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Nice review Matthew. I really wish I’d made it to this. I love the Complete Guide to Insufficiency so if he’s dramatically better than that live I’ve obviously missed something pretty special.
Personally, I would say yes. I’ve heard he can be a bit erratic at times though, which I suppose makes sense if it’s as improvised as it seems to be. I guess sometimes it just takes hold and sometimes it doesn’t. But I’d really recommend you go and see him as soon as you get the chance.
Yes let’s hope he comes to Edinburgh.
*Ruuuuuuuth!*
Link seems dead.
Should be fixed now. My host had a bit of a fritz half an hour ago, which didn’t help.
I am a huge fan. The show he played for TT in the Bedlam Theatre a couple of years ago was incredible. There was all sorts of props on the stage from a theatre production, and he was dashing up and down staircases, then leaping into the crowd. Really really great.
Your voices are not exactly dissimilar either.
I saw him on the Manchester leg of the DTB/Samamidon/Doveman tour the other week in a church in Whalley Range put on by the lovely Hedge peeps with tea n cake and everything. Superb. The three of them ostensibly played separate sets but in reality kept wandering in and out of each others sets and playing together. Samamidon and DTB doing something odd with Sam’s stomach and a microphone and some press ups at one point. DTB utilised all the available church furniture and the generally quite ace acoustics to augment the show. The thing we really thought was impressive though was the effortlessness of the looping – so many people use loop stations in a very obvious way, y’know, like LOOK AT ME, I’m LOOPING NOW, aren’t I clever, but half the time you couldn’t even tell he touched the thing and the sounds were all magically appearing and disappearing out of nowhere. So so good.
I’m so terribly jealous of all those who’ve seen him. If you get to chat with him again, Matthew, please do tell him to visit the U.S.