In association with Pull up the Roots we are offering our readers a chance to win a pair of tickets to see Dead Flamingoes and Count Drachma at The Slaughtered Lamb, London on May 16, 2012.
Late 2011, and in a north London recording studio two people – James Walbourne and Kami Thompson: a girl and a boy in their twenties – sing songs with and at each other. Songs of love, rage, loss and, well, there’s no getting away from it, redemption. There’s a little country, some rock and roll and a lot of folk. But, mostly, there’s the most precious, the heaviest of the musical elements, soul.
Dead Flamingoes
On Hold Your Fire Thompson looks at romance from the unlikeliest of vantage points, the POV of a lover left stranded and bereft by suicide, in the process conjuring herself a dark, spiked lyric worthy of Cave or Cohen: ‘Before you fed your neck through the noose – did you fashion one for me?’
And then, just when it’s dark as can be, the pair’s voices come coiling up together like spiralling, joyous DNA on Got Me in the Habit. When Walbourne’s guitar break staggers off at 1.47 – a drunken sailor who knows exactly what he’s doing – it’s simply impossible not to lurch with it.
‘The price of love is dangerous.’ God yes. There will be heartbreak. And we need it. To keep us alive, to keep us human. Anyway, whether you need it or not, you’re certainly going to get it. Here’s the antidote – fresh as milk and old as bones. Yeah, like all the really good stuff.
Count Drachma
Count Drachma’s two singers grew up in Johannesburg speaking city Zulu and listening to Maskandi music. The band is lyrically influenced by South African bands Juluka & Savuka, musically by Senegalese Orchestra Baobab and Connecticut’s tUnEyArDs… look out for looped saxophone grooves, Reggaeton percussion and Celtic overtones.
They comprise two members of Oxford folk-poppers Stornoway plus Zander Bad-Zad on fingerless gloves, with instrumental ululations from latest addition Kirk “Epic” Ikon on maskandi violin.
Giveaway Details
For a chance to win email us here: alex [at] www.folkradio.co.uk, please include ‘Dead Flamingoes’ in the subject heading and your name in the message body so the event organiser can add the winner to the guest list for the night. Closing Date/Time: Tuesday 15th May 10:00am
Venue Details
May 16, 2012 19:30
Slaughtered Lamb
34-35 Great Sutton Street, Clerkenwell, London, EC1V 0DX
Tickets available here