Saturday night easy at Arlington
Katey Brooks Duo, with support Giles Stelfox at Arlington Arts on Saturday, September 17
GILES Stelfox, originally from Thatcham, uses live looping to build each of his songs piece by piece on stage. He is, in effect, accompanying himself, accompanying himself.
To anyone familiar with the technical aspects of making and recording music his skills are fascinating to watch but I suspect to many others the process might be somewhat repetitive and viewed as interrupting the ‘flow’ of the show. Giles himself has a very simple explanation for building his looping skill-set. He says he wanted to make music, but couldn’t afford a backing band. I’m sure many musicians would sympathise with that. The short set tonight, which opened with You Talk Dirty With Wine, was made up of original compositions plus a cover of the Arctic Monkeys song I
Wanna Know.
It was a pity that more people didn’t turn out to see Katey Brooks tonight, but she cleverly turned lemons into lemonade by turning her show into an intimate ‘audience with’ style event with her easy and open engagement with those in attendance. Accompanied by Louise Victoria on keyboards, she put on a superb set.
From the opening track Trouble So Hard, from her 2019 album Revolute, her wonderful soaring vocals were quite stunning.
Katey’s style is difficult to pin down, there are elements of blues and Americana folk, with echoes of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, but her travels across the world have brought many other influences to her music. Katey described herself as “a sponge”.
Songs like the angry Golden Gun and the quirky Jeremiah were exceptional and Katey’s descriptions
of her inspirations interesting and insightful. There were two brand new songs in tonight’s set You And Me Against The World, which is still being edited and Find My Way Back Home, which had been finished in the dressing room tonight.
For the unplugged The Sweetest Things Katey and Louise left the stage and sang in the middle of the audience.
A beautiful evening of song.