fact fans proudly presents
Men Diamler & Rose Kemp
March 20th: Bar Unlimited, Bristol*
March 21st: The Cavern, Exeter*
March 22nd: The College, Dartington*
March 23rd: The Packhorse, Leeds
March 24th: The Farmer's Arms, Lancaster
March 25th: The Tin Angel, Coventry
March 26th: The Good Ship, London
March 27th: Meze, Newport
March 28th: Porter Cellar Bar, Bath
March 31st: The Folkhouse, Bristol**
* Rose with Lisa Li-Lund and Oil Rig Catering
**Men Diamler with the Wraiths, Honeytrap and Clayton Blizzard
Rose Kemp: Just turned 21 and blessed with an impossibly rich and reaching voice, sometimes accompanied by shimmering electric guitars, sometimes looping itself into complex, sumptuous, harmonised hooks, or sometimes simply rising unadorned and a’cappella to silence a room. One of the most mutable modern artists, her songs and sets have earned her appearances at umpteen festivals, National Radio airplay, and support slots with such diverse acts as The Subways, Gravenhurst, James Yorkston, Selfish Cunt, King Creosote, Decoration, Malcolm Middleton and Holly Golightly. Once you’ve heard her you’ll never forget it, her songs stick in your soul and pulse in your brain like nothing else on earth. Rose Kemp will rock your World.
2006 will see Rose release two singles and an album on One Little Indian Records: her debut album Glance came out in 2003 on Park Records.
www.rosekemp.co.uk www.myspace.com/rosekemp
"It's not very often that we see a Cumbrian lass lying on the floor singing through a throat microphone. Enter, then, the beautifully odd world of Rose Kemp. An impressive array of guitar pedals provides an impressive arsenal of effects through which to showcase her unique, folk-inflected voice. The highlight emerges when Rose utilises tape delay to loop and intertwine her various vocal hooks into one glorious whole. Stunning stuff." - James Hannam, The Fly
“Dark and sinister yet alluring and beautiful at the same time, how this music manages to combine such pretty and hideous sides is a mystery to me.” - Dan Newman,
www.joyzine.co.uk
“Fed through a kaleidoscope of infinite delay, her eerie lines of lament are looped and juxtaposed on the spot from one striking vocal range, and woven into a choral constellation.” Ali S, Sounds XP
“Rose Kemp begins proceedings, with what can only be described as a beautiful performance... those who’ve made the effort can feel very smug that they’ve got to see someone very special. If you haven’t heard of her, take PJ Harvey and give her even more gutsy depth, with a little more soul and you're kind of getting there.” - Polly Weeks,
www.gigwise.com
"Powerful vocals piloted some of the most memorable acts, namely... the impassioned Rose Kemp [whose] belting vocals were unmissable on the fringe stage as she harmonised acappella with herself through a loop to form a ghostly choir of voices from the recent seconds of the past." - Kristen Grayewski, Venue
Men Diamler: A welsh-born singing accompanied guitarist, currently based in Cheltenham. After working under a myriad of names that would confuse even the smartest music detectives (Mario Vendredi, Lomp, Bram Stoker, Melville Cloghill), the name has settled but the soul has not. Unclassifiable and unpredictable and emotionally exhausting as ever, Diamler may launch tearfully into a delicate requiem for a departed pet, or fiercely stamp his feet and hands belting out an acapella blues spiritual. With a lung capacity that could fill a small celestial airship and off kilter melodies that trace the old beaten tracks into the dark, Men Diamler has wowed audiences (sometimes from within it), whilst sharing the stage with the likes of John Parrish, Josephine Foster, Kelley Stoltz, A Hawk & A Hacksaw and Marissa Nadler. After an album of wholly inappropriate homemade krautrock noise ("The Heathen Sounds Of Men Diamler," 2004), Diamler is working on new material which should be in part closer in ear to his live performances. Diamler says "expect songs about unrequited love, starving horses and walking trees.Some will probably sound like unearthing a time capsule of Harry Smith 78's from the plains of Chernobyl. More Singing. And more of that 'John Fahey with broken fingers' guitar style".
www.myspace.com/mendiamler
"Leaving, we head down to the Croft to catch a man on stage screaming a lament over an anorexic guitar shape, like a stand-up comedian’s parody of an Emo troubadour. Is it a joke? Or if it’s serious, shouldn’t someone intervene and help the poor guy? He’s in PAIN up there? Well, it’s a joke. And then it’s not. And then it is again. Men Diamler’s songs are like a Tourettes-syndrome skat, with diahorric flood of emotion. Single chords give the structure for the outburst. By the end, we’re all charmed. Charmed, tired and emotional." Kieron Gillen, Plan B
"Now here's a novelty: after some clumsy whimsy about dogs and horses, he lets rip a full-throated (and impressive) 'Gallows Pole' and 'John Revelator', referencing Charley Patton and John Fahey while acting as autistic as possible." - Tony Benjamin, Venue
"Men Diamler is a star, no two ways about it. Admittedly, he’s a star in some macabre parallel universe where negro field spirituals, Victorian freakshows, Glaswegian drinking songs, German expressionist art and Italian opera have fused and become the dominant culture, but this is indicative of the poverty of our own global monoculture.
This is truly music from beyond the comfort zone, and it begins where all good music begins – on the floor. As if recreating his own twisted tableau of the ascent of man, Men starts out face down on the stage letting out a series of low moans before gradually rising to a fully erect posture. It’s a grotesque parody of evolution though: instead of a proud hominid, noble in bearing, infinite in wisdom, we are witness to a gibbering, incoherent, emotionally ravaged wreck – a walking nervous breakdown. It groans and yelps and yawps and, hell, even sings occasionally but mostly seems intent on giving vent to something powerful and inchoate.
It would be a shame to make this out to be some deliberate recreation of Bedlam for the audience to get its vicarious rocks off to – Big Brother with added psychological trauma. What marks this off as a riveting musical experience is three crucial factors:
1. Men is gifted with a truly astonishing voice with a range that compares with a Jeff Buckley or even a Beefheart, and on occasion a booming, reverberating presence that perhaps not even those august gentlemen could match. He could sing the phonebook and I would listen in rapt attention. For all I know, he probably is.
2. Not content to be the recipient of such an awesome natural ability, he uses his instrument in a way that Jimi Hendrix uses the guitar, pushing its possibilities to some pretty far out places.
3. While much of the ‘songs’ are a mélange of guttural whoops and mangled syllables of unknown provenance that occasionally crystallize into schizophrenic dialogues and tales involving a certain Mr Phantom and a tube of animal paste, this isn’t simply stream of consciousness garbage. Particularly on those pieces where he picks up the guitar and accompanies his vocals with a series of blues figures (if that’s not too complex a term to describe the rudimentary forms he plucks from the guitar) there’s a discernible structure that shows quite a bit of thought has gone into creating pieces that have the hallmarks of a brawl at a chimps’ tea party. The use of distortion and detuned guitar is like the most delicate of brushstrokes, and when the voice is at its most wordlessly controlled it approaches an ineffable beauty that is all the more striking for being surrounded by all that terror and wild-eyed incomprehension.
It has always been a source of disappointment and sadness to me that the experimental vistas opened up by Sentimental Journey on Pere Ubu’s debut has never been properly followed up. At last, with Men Diamler, we have someone brave or mad enough to blaze that trail all over again. Saddle me up, someone." - Carl Dolan, Decode
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