Platform is delighted to announce its second annual Christmas Carousal – a gilded festive musical hoopla from piano-hymn high priestess Kathryn Joseph, tech-pop nightingales Babe and electro-folk diviner Jonnie Common.
While last year’s beautifully strange yuletide brouhaha welcomed Trembling Bells, Alasdair Roberts and Olivia Chaney to the set of Platform’s pantomime (Puss In Boots), this December will see Kathryn Joseph, Babe and Jonnie Common perform on the set of Rapunzel – as re-imagined in an Easterhouse hairdressers.
It’s assured to be a warm, surreal and seasonal celebration of some of Scotland’s most versatile and inventive musical voices. Once they’ve emerged from the pantomime’s festive props, they’ll play their own music, each other’s songs, and myriad tinsel-clad Christmas favourites. Babe’s set will be a special piano-led solo performance from the band’s frontman, Gerard Black. Special guests Tommy Reilly and mercury prize nominated C. Duncan will join in with Kathryn Joseph’s performance.
Kathryn Joseph won 2015’s Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award for her exceptional debut album, Bones You Have Thrown Me And Blood I’ve Spilled. Her visceral piano psalms are variously hair-raising and haunting, and her excitement toward A Christmas Carousal is palpable.
“If you like your Christmas creepy it has come,” says Joseph. “Also, there will be actual angel boys making beauty noise and I will be throwing my hair out of a turret to all and sundry.” You can’t say fairer than that.
Skewed-pop alchemist Jonnie Common released his latest album, Kitchen Sync – inspired by culinary and domestic implements – via Song, By Toad earlier this year. His oddball-folk and electro-pop chorales invoke a self-proclaimed “sonic boom of majestic devilry, forged in the pottery kiln fires of Highland Perthshire”. In other words, while his name may be Common, his art is anything but that.
BABE are a gorgeous electronic pop four-piece, based between Glasgow, London, Brussels and Bordeaux. Fronted by Gerard Black (François & the Atlas Mountains. Findo Gask), the group released their debut album, Volery Flighty (featuring Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry) in 2014, and their new LP, Kiss and Tell, is due for release next year.
Rumours that Babe will appear in a manger are, as yet, still unconfirmed.
