The London-based Gentle Stranger are a group you need to see live. Featuring members of caroline and Shovel Dance Collective this arcane gathering are said to utilise a ‘post-clown’ ethos that flits between pastiche, parody, burlesque and other experimental forms for a truly off-kilter live experience. The good news is that you can witness them in all their strangeness next weekend as they host their own mini-festival at the Horse Hospital in London on the 19th & 20th of November (more details below).
Their renowned live performances see the trio cycle through an arsenal of musical instruments, apparatus, tackle, and stuff. The set (part of the reason for their now cult-like following) hangs together intricately, a fractal clockwork machine that relies on movement and spatial awareness as much as it does timing and musicality.
Upon witnessing the Gentle Stranger show (“show” here is most certainly in the theatrical, carnivalesque, extravaganza sense of the word), it’s tempting to question whether they could reiterate, reshape, and condense this uniquely visual and visceral spectacle into recorded music – and the answer is yes. The latest iOS update of the Gentle Stranger sound lands in the form of Upon Return, their barnstorming third album.
Gentle Stranger are hosting their own mini-festival – ‘Two Nights Of Unlearning’ – at the Horse Hospital on 19th & 20th November with With Adam Christensen, Secluded Brontë, Sholto Dobie, Gentle Stranger, Daniel Burley, Plastique Fantastique, Warm London, The Dog End, Frankie Roberts + more acts TBA. Perfect time to catch them in all their strangeness…
Alongside this, they share the final preview of the new album, ‘Since The Plough’:
“Since The Plough is a posthumous response to Til the Plough (sung by our friend Bob on Phantom Thoroughfare). Til the Plough was a song he’d written for fun, squeezing as many folk tropes in as he could to relay the age old message – my love goes with you until the constellations (plough and huntsman) fall and the land turns to sea etc. On Since the Plough, Tom sings whilst dancing on a table, from a place after all this and more has happened (‘since the plough has come undone from the sun and the huntsman is but cloth…’), yet resolves that ‘still my heart remains on the path you made before you parted from here’. We wanted to keep it in dialogue with folk so put together a medley including Kinclaven Brig and Morpeth Rant, which are both traditional Northumbrian tunes – the former is learnt from Martin Dunn and the latter is one of the first tunes Alex learnt on the whistle.”
Taken from the album ‘Upon Return’
Released 9th December on PRAH Recordings