A Slutlord Supplement.. Concert Review?

Still reeling from a night with Phipps Pt and Fred Frith

On Saturday night, on Granville Island, Tim Reinert of Infidels Jazz hosted a performance I’d been looking forward to since he’d teased the flyer in a text message back in December. Fred Frith was performing a solo guitar set - his first visit to Vancouver in over twenty years.
I’d first heard of Fred a couple years ago when I got deep into some compendiums covering British and continental European underground and electronic music: namely, David Elliott’s Neumusik and Archie Patterson’s Eurock - European Rock and the Second Culture. Both are incredibly interesting resources in the sense that they compile zines that were being released, of course, as these various scenes were unfolding: concert reviews, album reviews, and interviews written by enterprising fans as early as the late 70s, and with a healthy dose of humour and charm. Naturally, Rock In Opposition, and the movement’s progenitor, Fred’s group Henry Cow, were covered in detail.

If you’re unfamiliar with Rock in Opposition, it was initially conceived as a tour of the UK - an opportunity for the members of Henry Cow to introduce British audiences to some of the more innovative groups they’d encountered in their time touring Europe. These were artists who were getting dumped by their major label representation, if they’d ever been able to snag their attention in the first place. Unprofitable, but artistically visionary. If you’d like a little guided exploration, I put together an episode covering RIO for Slutlord Sunday School back in February of 2024 - you can listen to that here.

Fast forward nearly fifty years, and I am sitting in a little theatre chair in a room dominated by aged white men. I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

There is a reason I don’t write reviews of concerts or albums - I don’t have the language for it, really, I don’t have the technical understanding of how artists execute their work, or the recall to recount each track as it had been performed. I also generally don’t find that type of writing very interesting, so it isn’t something I aspire to do. But this was a very special evening that left a sort of profound impression on me, so I’d like to share just a bit about it.
As someone who attends a lot of shows that fall under the umbrella of experimental or improvised music, I often arrive with little to no concept of what I’m about to see. Generally, though, I enjoy this style of music more for the performance aspect, the ingenuity, than the ..aural experience. I guess I expected Fred to be launching some kind of atonal assault on his guitar, or otherwise falling more cleanly in line with what I’ve seen of other guitar improvisers in the past. But what he brought to the stage was something so much more than that.
Fred played his guitar primarily laying across his lap, with various percussive elements and everyday objects as modifiers: a shoe brush against the strings, a river stone as a slide, rice tossed back and forth in an old tin vessel against the strings. And yet, it never sounded like pure noise. There was purpose and intention - there was clarity of tone and storytelling. There was extensive use of looping to create a layered, rich world of sound. It gave the impression of some post-apocalyptic western, with a shamanic, incoherent vocal like the howl of an animal. He returned to the stage to encore with Amazing Grace. I nearly cried.

It was a beautiful performance, no doubt, but I have to admit that it was the duo who opened the gig - Phipps Pt - that have been dominating my thoughts in the days since. Phipps Pt is Lovage Sharrock and Jon Leidecker, and if you ever get the opportunity to see them perform, you should count yourself lucky. Having no prior awareness of their music, of how their set is built and performed, of how the electronic and organic elements trigger one another, it was like witnessing some kind of dark magic - tripping into another dimension, separate altogether from time as we understand it. Lovage would strum her guitar, and whatever sorcery Jon was controlling would have the action spur a sound response that was completely apart from what your existing experience of a guitar would have you expect. There was a very real sense of feminine power and sensuality in her vocal style and stage presence tempered with an eerie and unnerving quality that was just totally riveting. The command Lovage had over the overwhelmingly male audience (no doubt squirming in their seats) was awesome to behold. Wandering into the crowd, microphone inside of her mouth, sitting down on the stairs and removing her shoes and socks. But again, as with Fred’s set, there was still musical clarity - direction, melody. I’ve been listening to the beautifully titled Phipps Pt. record Kiss You So Many Times You Can’t Count My Love (released on cassette in 2014) on repeat in the days since, and I would recommend you do the same.

There is a lot more I could say about the impression that evening had on me. I am happy to have been able to connect with Lovage, a rare pleasure to meet women in experimental music, to hear their perspective and to be audience to their energy - it was so refreshing, so inspiring.

Lovage Sharrock by Gina Basso, 2025

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, I would highly recommend spending some time with Chris Zaldua’s interview with Phipps Pt on his blog, Thoughts of a Certain Sound. Take a listen through the record, today, or tune into the RIO episode I’ve linked above. Dig something new!

Until next time! 😎