[Almost] Zero Degrees of Separation.

Off to Camden’s famous Roundhouse last night, with Dave, to see the eagerly anticipated folkie collective Zero Degrees of Separation. There’s always been a lot of collaborative work in folk music, and in this case it’s the combined talents of American nu-folk band Vetiver; Adem Ilhan of Fridge; and two well-known soloists, Argentina’s Juana Molina and the spellbinding Vashti Bunyan.

It’s hard to tie down quite what it is that makes Vashti Bunyan so mesmerising. She never raises her voice above a whisper; when she does sing she doesn’t have a great range, although she has a dreamy, breathy vocal quality not unlike Nick Drake’s. And to be honest neither her guitar playing nor her songwriting have any notable virtuosity; three or four picked chords, with rhyming quatrains or couplets about housework and children. But when she sang, usually accompanied by either Adem or one of the Vetiver team, she drew her audience within fingertip reach of her heart – an organ she invokes quite a bit – and gave us an all too brief glimpse of the pure and simple emotions within.

Vetiver didn’t grab me; “Long Beach!” shouted someone in the cheap seats, which summed them up really. Adem Ilhan took the vocal duties on what seemed to be the Zero’s jointly originated pieces and I was pleasantly surprised by his upbeat and ‘rockist’ style. He very nearly put his foot on the monitor, and I liked him a lot. They had enjoyed the pressures of arranging one another’s work for a group of twelve, he said, “even if that means eleven of us ringing bells”. Which in turn led to quite a bit of objet-trouve percussion as accompaniment.

Juana Molina seemed to have fallen out with her colleagues at some point; certainly she kept her back to most of them for their time on stage together, and while front apron stints taken by Adem and Vashti tended to use other band members to fill, she performed hers solo. She plays Spanish guitar through a digital sequencer, looping the samples, and singing over the top; it’s impressive, sure, but is it the electronic skill, the folk music, or the novelty that impresses? I couldn’t work it out, and went to the bar.

The Roundhouse is an impressive venue [despite being in Camden, yuk!] and at one point Vashti wondered what had been going on there during the sixties; psychedelia, mostly, it turns out, lots of innovative theatre, then of course it was the birthplace of the NWOBHM. “Bet they didn’t have seats then”, opined Dave; “Too right”, I answered, “you just parked up your Norton Commando and stood on the dirt floor drinking snakebite ‘til your ears started bleeding”.

“You might think this is about mobile phones” said the beautiful Vashti as an introduction to her tiny, frail, short Diamond Day, “but it’s not, we didn’t have them then”. Nor intrusive ad campaigns neither, I thought…

Andrew Mishmash