Music > Live Reviews

Secluded Bronte

Asylum Studios

09/09/24

For those with an interest in such things, Rendlesham is a word that fires the imagination. Known to some as Britain's answer to Roswell, the surrounding forest was the site of a supposed UFO sighting in the early eighties, an event that has since become the stuff of myth and legend. Perhaps, therefore, I shouldn't have been surprised that the gated Bentwaters Park Trading estate looked like a poor man's Area 51. Had a friendly security guard not waved me on I might well have concluded that the labyrinthine route which brought me there had led me astray.

"Are you here for the Asylum Studios?" He asked, as if it was the most obvious reason for me being there, after which the gate was raised and I was in. "Just keep an eye out for the double decker bus."

Sure enough, in an otherwise soulless business park, was a decommissioned bus, incongruously parked outside a modest building, around which huddled the only signs of life. It might just as well have dropped out the sky.

I was there to see Secluded Bronte, just one of the iterations inhabited by the notorious Bohman Brothers. The thing is, spaceships weren't the only thing landing in East Anglia in the early eighties. A thriving music scene briefly flourished, with the likes of The Higson's, Farmers Boys and Serious Drinking performing in The Ferry Boat Inn, The Gala Ballroom and The Jaquard. Resident at the time, but paying no attention at all, was Jonathan, one half of the aforementioned siblings, quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) ploughing his own furrow of experimental musique concrete using homemade instruments and found objects. It is surprising,  to say the least, that forty years later, when other artists and venues are long gone, it's Mr Bohman who is still going strong. A rare return to East Anglia was not to be missed.

Before Secluded Bronte made an appearance, however, a roster of alternative talent warmed up a carefully curated evening of the weird and the wonderful. Richard Crow performs with the Bohmans as the trio BBC, but he was flying solo on this occasion, assailing his audience with an intense sonic experience that teetered on the edge of uncomfortable, while being strangely involving. As knobs were twiddled, buttons pushed and controls tweaked, a cacophonous assault on the senses had those of us in attendance pinned back into our seats.

"It was all improvised," he helpfully shared with me afterwards.

Next up was comfortably one of the nuttiest things I've ever witnessed - and I’ve seen quite a few - as Hugh Metcalfe appeared wearing a multicoloured clown wig and skin tight leggings to introduce a Super 8 film on Vienna (or perhaps Barcelona, he wasn’t sure) that was projected onto a side wall. His partner Veryan Weston sat behind a keyboard and with, it seemed to me, considerable dexterity, earnestly did his best to accompany the film. Meanwhile, Metcalfe wailed, howled and hooted, while battering the hell out of a knackered drum kit. Cuddy toys, pyjama bottoms and a nice line in self-deprecating humour were thrown into the bewildering mix, followed by more of the same while his second film played. A collage of the abstract, but also with the occasional cat, his second offering was, he announced, entitled Bat Man Fuck On, and included guest orgasmic sounds from Jackie Montague. 

In the final support role, Montague read a section of her poetry, a welcome sorbet after all the sound and fury that had gone on before. Heavily, and a tad bizarrely, influenced by 70s situation comedies, her session started with a spirited rendition of the theme tune of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, a sitcom banished from our screens due to, amongst other things, Micheal Yates blacking up for the lead role. Now that's something you don't hear every day, I thought. A parody, or perhaps just a version, of King Lear came next, featuring a queasy impression of Jimmy Saville. More 70s references followed, and there was fun to be had ticking off every show mentioned, but lurking just beneath the surface were hints of something altogether darker and more disturbing. Pitched somewhere between monologue and poem, her work is bawdy, humorous - ding dong - and uncompromising. The elbow room afforded by a support slot limited the trajectory of her narrative - we only got half of Lear – but I suspect a longer journey would be seductively intriguing. 

Secluded Bronte are a trio, with Richard Thomas completing a line-up that, despite being around for over twenty years, was new to me. I've learned to brace myself for all sorts of things from the Bohmans - spoken word, improvisation, discordant racket, absurdist humour - but something that I wasn't at all prepared for were tunes. Admittedly Thomas, sitting centre stage, was armed with a guitar, but experience has taught me that doesn't mean chords, or strumming, or melody was on the cards. After all, the first time I saw Adam and Jonathan they did have a trumpet, but only so it could be hit with drumsticks. This time Richard Thomas actually tuned his guitar, for goodness sake, and did most of the heavy lifting when it came to vocals, with a style that suggested The Fall fronted by Wreckless Eric. There was comfort to be had in Adam's tabletop of ephemera being pinged and bashed and stroked, and the occasional rant made me feel more at home, but Jonathan mostly played the keyboards, albeit backed by an emphatic laptop beat, with tunes covering such disparate topics as vampires, the Knights Templar, Greenwich, and football, finishing on Wing Commander, a song dangerously close to a singalong.

It all added up to a genuinely arresting set that both demanded and rewarded your attention, rounding off an eccentric evening which broke down the boundaries of what we think of as entertainment in way that was challenging, provocative and yet curiously unpretentious and all embracing.