Mongolfier brothers review

Mongolfier Brothers,
The Otto Show,
The Fountain,
Ryna

Cornerhouse 14/10/2005

Who’d believed it? The Cornerhouse, Manchester’s resident arthouse and experimental cinema / art gallery turns 20!

Although I was a little bit too young to be going when it opened in 1985 (I was 13!), I have been in there enough times over the past ten years or so to be generally shocked when I heard this.

And ontop of that, a free gig in one of their galleries by The Mongolfier Brothers.

To cut a long story short, I first Met Mark Tranmer, the guitarist of the Monogolfier Brothers many, many years back in 1999 upon the release of their debut album “17 Stars”, where I was hooked by their mournful songs which combined be it for a better description The Durruti Column with a Salford like Lou Reed.

Impressed over the following few years, I picked up some of their sub projects, several of Mark’s instrumental Gnac albums and also some other stuff under his own name and some stuff with Ian Masters (Ex Pale Saints) under the name of Wing Disc, all carrying the delicate nature that haunts The Durruti Column at their very best.

After the release of the second Mongolfier Brothers’s CD” The World is Flat” back in 2002, all seemed to go quiet with the Mongolfier Brothers despite the fact that both Mark and the vocalist Roger both seemed busy with other projects until I bumped into Mark oddly enough just outside the Cornerhouse a few days before this, where he told me about this free gig at the Cornerhouse.

Keen – I popped into the Cornerhouse and grabbed a couple of free tickets and had a argument with one of their attendants who insisted the gig was not on (Despite the fact I told her I had just seen the guitarist outside a few minutes before).

Ryna were first on – a three piece band that had a lead singer that looked like Blondie, but had a voice that soared like Dolores O’Riordan out of the Cranberries back when they were any good.

Sadly, they only played 3 songs which shocked me and my friends as we felt they finished just when they were just getting going, and left us all wishing we could hear more.

Next up, were The Fountain who I was informed by Richard, the monogolfier’s manager that this band contained members of the staff off the Cornerhouse.

The Fountain although listed on their website as a four piece on their website only played as a three piece band that night with a girl vocalist who also played bass, a guitarist and a drummer who had a pretty early P.J.Harvey sort of sound, but which certainly had both of my friends thinking it was superb.

This was highlighted by what I felt was probably their best song “You’re Next”, which started off with just the singer playing her bass before eventually the band kicked in and rocked bloody hard.

Pretty good stuff none the less and certainly worth checking out, though certainly a completely different support act for the Mongolfier Brothers than I would have imagined.

Next up was “The Otto Show” aka. Otto Smart, who is the regular second guitarist for the Mongolfier Brothers’s live show solo.

I’d seen Otto support both Gnac and The Mongolfier Brothers a few things over the years
I know from conversations with both Mark and Richard that they had tried for a number of years to try and get some of Otto’s stuff released unsuceesfully before the release of this year’s album, which is a major crime considering the amount of shite singer songwriters that exist nowadays (I don’t need to list names there, but believe me there is tons).

On a personal level, I’d had always found Otto’s songs charming and touching, perhaps in a way
A Badly Drawn Boy you could like expect sung by Robert Wyatt but what was particularly pleasing here was the fact that in contrast to some performances I had seen Otto play in the past where if anything he looked a little nervous, he was really confident and drew a good reaction from the audience for a set that was full of high and lows and drama within his songs, which in some cases could have made good short novels.

Excellent .

Hightlighting the night was the Mongolfier Brothers who chose to mostly play tracks off their new album “All my Bad Thoughts”, which was a very different beast in contrast to both of their previous albums.

While both of their previous albums had a element of thoughtful, delicate poetry played against almost Spring like like walking across grassfields, the new material on offer here were certainly much more darker and reflective with Mark in contrast to earlier Mongolfier Brothers live shows appearing playing live Piano on a number of tracks like the current single “Journeys’s End”, which over it’s almost nine minute length had a really melodical feel to it, where Roger’s vocals didn’t seem to dominate the track as much as you may think, which allowed the music much more scope to breathe and allow the Piano to really get under your skin.

This trick was also reflected in other new tracks like “Koffee Pot” (which is a café that we were informed exists just off Oldham Road) and “All my bad thoughts”) which was mini soap operas in themselves which worked so well certainly in the case of “Koffee Pot”, by the end of the song it actually felt like I had known the song for years even though that was the first time I had heard it, and it only dawned on by the end of the gig that they had only played two or three songs from their entine back catalogue.

Confidence or what?

Yes and fair play to the lads completely.
Without even hearing the album (which I have since and I can confirm this now), I knew I had just witnessed something special, which was something far removed from their first two albums.

Gig of the year for me?

Probably not, but bloody close.

F***ing amazing.

(Now buy the album honestly)