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Aidan Bartley is an experienced and exquisite musician who strolls his compositions along the shores of pop, jazz, and cabaret, in the classic style of the cursed crooners. Throughout his career he has shared the stage with great myths of independent music such as Tindersticks, Vic Chesnutt, Billy Bragg, or Robyn Hitchcock.
Now, following the release of his latest album, 'Vaudeville', Bartley will be in Lanzarote performing live on Friday, February 17, at 10:00 p.m., at the Cine Buñuel. Tickets are priced at 5 euros and go on sale this Monday, February 13. They can be purchased at the CIC El Almacén.
Variety show
The term 'Vaudeville' refers to a type of variety show that appears in the early 20th century in the big cities of the United States and England. Singers, dancers, storytellers or acrobats had a few minutes to convince the public.
Aidan Bartley evokes this movement in his fourth and latest album, taking advantage of the few minutes that each of the fourteen tracks that compose it lasts to tell us peculiar city stories.
Thus, when listening to this fabulous album, we find a man confused and abandoned by his wife while he solves a crossword puzzle; a woman who changes and chooses her personality according to the clothes and dresses she takes out of her closet; and even a man who suffers from insomnia and wants to capture the nocturnal sounds of the city while waiting for dawn to bring him a fraction of silence.
City stories narrated by Aidan Bartley who has recently been defined by the prestigious Irish music magazine Hot Press as "an original and wonderful storyteller possessing the most intimate secrets of the country".
A "half home" everywhere
Bartley was born in the city of Belfast and spent his childhood in the north of England. He currently resides in Berlin, so he feels, in his own words, "to have a half home everywhere but no real home anywhere".
After graduating in theology in 1988, he spent several years wandering between "good and bad; the divine and the human" performing on the streets and trains throughout Europe. During the last decade he has changed the streets for clubs, festivals and theaters, touring England, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia and the United States will embark in December 2005 with his new album.
In 'Vaudeville', Bartley cleverly combines his lyrical endowments (delivered by his distinctive baritone voice) with hypnotic musical arrangements, slipping between minimalism and majesty.
The acoustic bases of guitar or piano are augmented by the sounds of Carriones, Harmonium, percussion string quartets or barrel organs, when needed. The result is a magnetic mixture of personal depth as a singer-songwriter who skillfully interchanges between classic poise, quiet romance as a grandiose filmmaker. The 'Heat and richness of the music' is best described if we imagine 'Leonard Cohen accompanied by Michel Nyman on Piano and Joey Burns on drums'.
It is not surprising then that the atmosphere and evocative quality of Bartley's music have been used for numerous international films and radio productions and is even being claimed to compose for theater, dance and acrobatic shows. In short, a true Vaudeville artist for the 21st century.