Live Review

Green Door Fundraiser for Youth Groups in Belize and Ghana – Glasgow School Of Art

• 26th Sep 2014

Glasgow’s Green Door Studios has earned a reputation as one of the creative hotspots of the Glasgow music scene. This unique analogue recording studio has nurtured and produced some of the finest bands to recently emerge from Glasgow’s ever fertile music scene, from Casual Sex to Golden Teacher to The Amazing Snakeheads.

The studio also does a lot of work with youth groups in Glasgow, but is now extending its sights to work with kids in Africa. This is entirely fitting, since some of the best new bands to work with the studio, such as Whilst and Golden Teacher, are highly influenced by African music. Green Door held a fundraiser at the Art School with these two bands to pay for equipment for the project, which turned out to be as much more fun than good causes can be.

The evening began in style with Golden Teacher’s Pitt brothers spinning some of the finest African music in their Ghana Soundz guise. Next up, Whilst took to the stage, a band with a fluid membership of musicians centered around the studio, taking their cues from jazz and analogue electro. This gig saw their sound going in a dubbier direction than before, with a new frontman in Aldo, a crazy French dude who commanded the stage, in finest Glaswegian taps aff style.

Golden Teacher remain one of the best live bands in Glasgow, if not Europe. Loose-limbed singer Charles Lavenac sparks off his female counterpart Cassie Oji, who’s making shapes like a young Grace Jones, while the band create throbbing, mounting crescendos of sound from analogue keyboards and cowbell. It’s utterly hypnotic, and impossible not to dance to.

JD Twitch of Optimo fame finished off the night, with a DJ set that extended to classic reggae and ska. I should put a word in for Twitch here, in that he’s going to release the recordings made in Belize and Ghana as part of his Autonomous Africa series. And yes, more than enough money was raised to buy the equipment needed. Everyone loves a story with a happy ending, don’t they?

Review by Brian Beadle

Venue: Glasgow School Of Art
Support Band: self