Rising up from the bed of the River Tyne, a voice that crumbles and soars, that is steeped in ageold balladry and finely-chiselled observations of the mundane, Richard Dawson is a skewed troubadour at once charming and abrasive.
His shambolically virtuosic guitar playing stumbles from music-hall tune-smithery to spidery swatches of noise-colour, swathed in amp static and teetering on the edge of feedback. His songs are both chucklesome and tragic, rooted in a febrile imagination that references worlds held dear and worlds unknown.
httpv://https://youtu.be/aZCWo8c1BSU
“Nothing Important”, Dawson’s latest release and his first for Weird World, is a four song suite comprised of two long lyrical songs and two passages of abrasive, beautifully off-kilter improvised guitar playing.
Acting as a perfect window into the singular world he has created for himself, it explores broad ideas of memory, family, mortality and love through a prism of keenly focused personal recollection.
httpv://https://youtu.be/kMd2MUGVFu0
Able to wring moments of profound observation from the most prosaic subject matter and also tackle topics of great heaviness with a beautifully knowing simplicity, Dawson’s thrilling flare for detail and plain-spoken poeticism never feels over-burdened or mawkish – as comfortable citing Peter Beardsley, spaghetti hoops and Woolworths as it is proclaiming “I am nothing / You are nothing / Nothing Important.”
Hobocombo is a band dedicated to and inspired by the music of Moondog. Hobocombo’s Moondog Mask is an exotic trip through medieval canons, african rhythms, call & response blues.
httpv://https://youtu.be/wwCe6VfxMIQ
It brings together new arrangements of Moondog’s music, traditional Italian folk songs with the field recordings by ethnomusicologis Roberto Leydi, the songwriting of Robert Wyatt and original compositions made during a cold winter stay on the Baltic sea. All condensed in a experimental, weird and elegant pop music world.
This event is presented by Digital in Berlin. Check out our Facebook page to win tickets.
Richard Dawson + Hobocombo
Sunday, 19th April 2015 | 20:00 CET
Monarch | Skalitzer Str. 134 | 10999 Berlin/Kreuzberg
richarddawson.net | weirdworld.com | kottimonarch.de
