Sunday, February 2, 2014

Surprises at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Previously I have put links to the MusikCircus Web site following each article but I will create a page with all of them so it's not necessary to write those links over and over.  On with the report ...



Phoenix J is a sweet lady from the UK with a gentle voice and a lovely manner.  You may think you know her set when she does some covers to open but the surprise comes most when she switches to doing originals.  Her versions of cover songs are good as she gives a jazz swing to them and that makes good stuff.  You could listen to her doing a full set of only covers and feel that you never missed a thing.

But then she does one of her originals and there's a sensitivity and depth to it that a cover song will never reach.  She wrote the words because something in her life moved her to do it and you can feel it in how she sings the song.  There is a beautiful delicacy to her songs and this is the surprise you don't want to miss.



Joaquin Gustav plays a very laid-back set.  It's all very romantic and gentle but that doesn't usually mean surprising.  However, he got a bluesy groove going at one point during his set and he was improvising with it.  Then he started playing what sound like a keyboard.  There's one small detail in that I don't think he has a keyboard.

I wrote an article a week or so ago about Joaquin's guitars and one of them has 'synth access' which means it can control a MIDI synthesizer.  This may be what Joaquin was doing to make the keyboard sounds but he didn't say anything so I don't know for sure.  I'm really curious as he had a cool jam / groove going so I wonder how he did it and MIDI guitar intrigues me anyway.

In short, maybe you think you have figured out Joaquin Gustav's set but, no, you haven't!




Voodoo Shilton's set is always a surprise.  I've heard "Village Jam" (i.e. one of Voodoo's original songs) multiple times but it's new every time.  He has an extraordinary knack for keeping things exciting.

I've written previously about wind instruments Voodoo has been using and I thought I heard another one in the mix in this show.  He has been using a flute and a saxophone quite a bit but it sounded like maybe he had some kind of horn in there too.  Unlike many, Voodoo doesn't use the other instruments simply for color as he is playing notes rather than chords.  It works something like those computer games in which things with irregular shapes fall from the top and have to be correctly stacked on the bottom.  Voodoo does something of this nature musically as there will be a bit of bass, a bit of percussion, a bit of this or a bit of that and through it all a tune emerges.  It's really quite brilliant.

And then we decided we needed some lights


Cat and I are dancing together on the far left.

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