Folkhouse music this weekend

Nina Nastasia
Friday, 28 May 2010
http://www.myspace.com/ninanastasia
Doors:8pm

The Independent
Over four albums, she's pared down her song-poem style to a point where skeletal surfaces only need to hint at her characters' back-stories for impact. She doesn't overburden their tales with analysis or self-pity: instead, she anatomises the emotions at stake with needlepoint precision.
Mojo
These intimate hushes and lilts would be remarkable even as instrumentals.... Yet it's Nastasia's voice--and the words that it sings--that really sucks the air out of the room.
Uncut
Spare, beautiful, outstanding.
Q Magazine
Curiously compelling for something so minimal, it's like nothing else around.
The Guardian
Delicate songs with unexpected, unnerving strength.

Nina Nastasia's rare gift of a voice is an intimate, winged presence that is able to either freeze or melt your heart; that can powerfully soar and twist, or brush ultra-gently against you, suddenly summoning goose bumps. Mojo commented on its ability to "suck the air out of the room". Picking over themes of love, longing and loss, childhood, dreams and human dramas, her beautifully concise, hook-laden songwriting and the spare arrangements of her band have a certain gritty, rustic charm and intensity. Simultaneously tough and fragile, her songs crackle and smolder with an intimate emotional honesty and a dark undertow.

MIXOLYDIUM acoustic extravagance
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Ticket price:£5
Doors:8pm

A night of acoustic extravagance brought to you by a dazzling blend of local songwriters and composers.  Find yourself enchanted by tales of quirky characters conjured up from sub- and superhuman spheres.  Experience the sound of remembering one's birth.  Witness butterflies conducting ghostly orchestras.  Immerse yourself in soundscapes stunningly vast and microcosmic considering the sparse instrumentation these artists draw on.

Joe Blench (vocals/piano); Jacques, A Robin(vocals/guitar/violin/percussion) www.myspace.com/jacquesarobin;

Colin Smith (piano)

Vanessa (vocals/guitar) www.myspace.com/evertonuk;

Carolin Seitz (vocals/piano/percussion) www.myspace.com/zweiseitz