Gazel's Book of Souls

An artist and her work

When an artist tells you that their album represents:

"The first chapter in the musical story of a teenage girl who travels through the subconscious, meeting the covert spirits that govern the different areas of the human psyche."

You could be forgiven for being wary. 

As it turns out, Gazel's debut album Gazel's Book of Souls, does live up to its composer's astonishing description.  

A mixture of electronic soundscape and traditional Turkish instrumentation, the result is a beguiling, haunting feast of imagery and sound. It's rare to say that an artist is a true original, but she really is doing something different here. There are rock guitars, ritualistic dance soundscapes, and atmosphere aplenty and Gazel really has succeeded in creating an entire sonic world that the listener can fall into and inhabit. 

I missed the opportunity to see her live on her recent tour and I can see that it might take a while for such an unusual, unique artist to get the recognition she deserves, but I'm hopeful that more and more people will discover Gazel, and her unique and beautiful debut album, and give it a listen.

In addition to creating a series of beautiful, layered, carefully crafted sonic soundscapes, the videos released to promote recent singles 'You're Not Funny', 'Rain Is Coming' and 'Walk On Land' have been similarly otherworldly and gorgeous. 

The video for 'Rain is coming' (above) is perhaps the most obviously tied to the expressed journey through the psyche, and it sees Gazel observing a younger version of herself as she undertakes a quest for meaning.

'Walk On Land' meanwhile, with its summary feel and steel drums, is a glorious melange of dancing and swirling flowers and fabric that I'm hoping will lure in some of my fellow Flow's who read this blog. 

This is an album that deserves to be discovered and treasured. It has the potential to grow into a classic and should be appreciated as such. 

Rock Against Sexism event in Manchester this Saturday

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

This Saturday Mancunians, and other interested parties, will have the exceedingly rare opportunity to hear writer and cultural commentator Lucy Whitman talk about her involvement in Rock Against Sexism. The event, which is taking place at the Friends Meeting House on Mount Street, is free to attend, but you do need to register. 

I first became aware of Lucy Whitman (neé Lucy Toothpaste) through reading Jon Savage's England's Dreaming when I was 15. She was later quoted as a secondary source in my series of punk women essays for The F-Word, which ran between 2010 and 2011.

I hadn't been able to locate Lucy in 2009 when I was researching the series, though I did try.

In the end, she tracked me down and we met for the first time in 2010. An interview piece, based on that first meeting, was eventually published on The F-Word in 2011.

At the time of our interview, Lucy had been interviewed by a number of writers, most recently Helen Reddington and Daniel Rachel, about punk, women and punk, fanzines, Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism, but she had yet to write her own account of the period. Something that, in 2019, she does intend to do.

The event in Manchester should be highly interesting, and will shine a light on an area of cultural history that is rarely discussed. Rock Against Sexism was a much smaller organisation than Rock Against Racism and, as such, it's often hidden from history.