Tag: Ann Liu Cannon

Gus White Burbage’s Smithy Art Forgery with Ann Liu Cannon and Esmé White

Words by Ollie MacKenzie.

Featured Image by Barbora Mrazkova. 

The creative process can be a winding, long, and often confusing journey. Seeing a project come to fruition from scrappy origin to a packaged, marketable, and well-rounded piece of work can feel daunting – or even impossible. It took Gus White six years of honing his production skills, amassing an arsenal of musical machinery, and developing a community of talented musicians to bring his album ‘For Now, Anyway’ into existence….

At its core, it’s a breakup album, which could feel strange to complete and release so far after the original ‘break’, but speaking to Gus it appears the space has allowed him to finish the album at a much more present and content time in his life. He’s settled into a different existence – he’s in a new relationship, he’s a dog owner, and has played a large role in building a thriving music scene across the venues, pubs, and houses of Wiltshire.

This brings us to the Smithy Art Forgery in Burbage, a kooky yet loveable cultural venue operating out of a 375-year-old house that currently operates as a jeweller. Located on the side of a quiet village road, it’s adorned with nondescript street parking, burgers served off a BBQ, and vegetable curry to order made in the owner’s kitchen. 

It’s these types of places that are few and far between according to Gus – a true grassroots venue for musicians, a haven from playing dusty forgotten corners of pubs where the landlord and patrons don’t even really want you there anyway. It was why it was there on the 14th of September that Gus hosted his album release party.

Taking place in the back garden of the venue, attendees were seated under a marquee packed with various sofas, stools, and garden furniture that faced onto an embankment where the stage was set. Copious instruments lay there waiting, tucked underneath an array of tarpaulin and teepees to shield them and the musicians from the bipolar weather conditions of the changing season.

The atmosphere was intimate – maybe fewer than 100 in attendance – but one that felt lively and far from empty. Friends of friends of friends made happy introductions and chats to one another, waiting for the music to start. Two support acts opened the day. First, a solo and entrancing guitar performance from Grace Elizabeth Harvey, followed by a sort of double act from Ann Liu Cannon and Esmé White, the two swapping between lead vocal spots all the while backed by a mandolin player – the first of many off-kilter instruments to litter the performances. 

Then it was Gus’s turn to play. The performance brought about the live, interactive feel of the album, with a high range of instruments on display — trombones, sublime guitar passages, the double bass, a kazoo solo, and even a set of pots and pans, just to name a few. The music felt sonically based in the past, a careful homage to folk and rock formats from americana, country and indie, exhibiting a range of influence from the 50s all the way to the 70s. Despite its seemingly traditional backdrop, the performance was unmistakably modern, with the lyrics carrying the music firmly into the present. Packed with new-age irony and technological references, Gus’s dry, irreverent humour was centre stage throughout the performance, both in the songs and in his preambles — though this didn’t disguise the sincerity of the music or the performer. Balanced amongst the tongue-in-cheek lyrics were very straight to the point personal accounts of his former relationship, that through their intense and biographical nature revealed a relatability that would be shrouded behind overt poeticism. Though typically robust and amusing, Gus’s songwriting shows a capability of reaching into the elegiac also. The solo encore of ‘Josephine’ makes the case for Gus’s well-roundedness as a song smith; a poetry laden tribute to his partner that drew much of its effect from its earnestness and folk-style imagery.

Gus closed the concert with a rendition of ‘Please Forgive Me’, a rousing finish that allowed each band member their moment to show off, before the crowd sung the concert to a finish. It felt an appropriate end, where Gus, the producer, allowed others to have their moment through his handiwork, sitting back and revelling in the fun of it all. For a set of songs about breaking up, Gus seemed married to the moment, an artist revealing himself at a perfect time to a welcoming group of friends and strangers alike.

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Ann Liu Cannon’s Clever Rabbits

Ann Liu Cannon is the Marlborough success story I hadn’t heard of until yesterday; thanks to local promoter and frontman of the Vooz, Lee Mathews for the tip off! Her debut album  Clever Rabbits was released today, and it’s a must…….

Brit Award winning Paul McCartney and Tom Jones producer Ethan Jones spotted Ann Liu performing at Camden’s Spiritual Bar, leading her to a publishing deal with BMG. Ann, who now lives in London, represented Whispering Bob Harris at The Great Escape and Black Deer Festivals, featured on Beans on Toast’s stage at Bearded Theory and on his UK tour. She opened for Lewis Ofman in Mexico, played prestigious venues like The Clapham Grand and The Hotel Cafe Hollywood in LA, but delighted to tell me she schooled in Marlborough and grew up in a nearby village; and I thought St John’s girls just sat around the Priory Gardens smoking menthols!

Okay, calm yourself. That was just an eighties joke, and you know this! But remain calm for Clever Rabbits because it’s a breathtaking ride, a tapestry of Anglo-Celtic folklore, sacred texts, sonic binaries of modern digital synthesis and Ann Liu’s classic singer-songwriter roots. “I am the rabbit that knows how to kill the hill, and I have only just begun,” she expressed. 

Experimentally playful, with two piano-based ballads opening Clever Rabbits, there’s an ambience of musical theatre about them, then with an irresistibly simple drum and bass the title track runs akin to a Mardi Gras iko-iko chant. Lost Ways has the shuffle of South America rhythms, and we’re halfway through these ten uplifting masterpieces with a bittersweet psychedelic swirl called Tangle.

No You Don’t is acoustic blues with a hint of lounge jazz, as gorgeous as the ultimate Norah Jones song. Another tune in, and rather I’m now pitching this alongside Joni Mitchell; it’s that strong, naturally raw, and yeah, folk, fundamentally.

The album continues in a similar fashion, uplifting jazzy folk under sublime soundscapes and broken wonderfully with snippets of humorous band banter, which usually are outtakes. It lifts in tempo with False Hope, and chills for the penultimate Movement of Standing Stones, which builds in layers of atmospheric spiritual ambience, and finally a minute and half of bizarre with Gobbleknoll, breaks the concept this isn’t really a book by Richard Adams and Ann Liu is not a rabbit after all!

Exploring limits of prescribed identity in a timeless, brave and sensitive challenge of the zeitgeist, the album is inspired by a Chinese idiom “clever rabbits need three burrows,” and the imagery of three rabbits found in Devon’s churches and China’s caves. Clearly, with profound narrative, you would need to dive deeper into this warren to explore. After one listen, though, you will feel it criminal not to. Everything in this melting pot of influences is subtle, the overall feel is a mellowed thoughtful prose sitting somewhere between the exploratory of Kate Bush and punch of Alanis Morissette, both jamming under the aura of Steeleye Span. 

This isn’t an album for streaming. This is a take my money album. The attention to detail is divine. The unedited recordings’ background goings-on authentically puts you in the room. In promoting it, Ann Lui revealed the backstory. “When I was ten,” she explained, “my father gave me records by Ethan. When I turned 21, I got a call from Ethan after Raf sent my music to him. We began capturing these songs, and my father began dying. Today I turn 26, my father is dead, and the record is born.”

“In the first 25 years I found powerlessness in slow, bad, unwanted death. In limbos and dependency. I found power in wilful endings. In choice. Love ran underneath in a welcome riptide, contextualising the hurt and loss. I nursed wounds, read my stories, read other people’s stories, broke away, reflected, mourned, rejoiced, set free. The first quarter century has been about endings, leavings, dying, and dying well. This album is a good death. The bin men are smiling. I am smiling, too.”

A launch for Clever Rabbits is at London’s Lexington tonight. Ann Lui returns to her roots, as she regularly does, with an Instore at Sound Knowledge, Marlborough on Thursday 17th July at St. Peter’s. Entry is FREE but please do let them know to expect you if you’d like to attend, or pre-order a copy of ‘Clever Rabbits’ from them to guarantee your place.

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