29 f Running On Energy
At the forefront of a new wave of English folk inspired instrumental music, Spiro play everywhere from seated concerts to the dance tent. Elizabeth Kinder has the words and Judith Burrows the photos.
S
piro. What’s in a name? “I think…” says Ben Mandelson, sitting opposite and shaded from the hot Croatian sun by a leafy vine, a good lunch on the table between us, “… I think that it might come from a German town famous for its Jewish rabbis in the 14th Century.”
“That,” says Alex Vann, smiling, a little later, “is very Ben. And totally correct.”
“But he also thought it might come from the Latin: ‘I live, I breath, I hope.’”
“Yes, that’s it!” says Jane Harbour. “Does it mean hope as well? That’s great!”
“Then he thought it might come from the woman who wrote Heidi, Johanna Spiro, or from the (children’s drawing toy) Spirograph – though possibly not the Argentine Navy boat.”
“Well,” says Jon Hunt, “I think Spiro- graph is relevant in some ways.”
And it is, on the level of the creation of complex design. Spiro’s schtick is inter- locking swirling, intricate musical patterns, with just four instruments but many more parts which, like whirlpools, pull you in and envelop you and carry you away in their river of sound.
For an instrumental band that eschews lyrics because language is reduc- tive in a way that music isn’t, words are important. They like them to be open to interpretation; to serve only as a guide; to offer themselves up to being woven into intensely personal listening experiences. Tracks are given names only to suggest a way in, as an aide to an emotional realisa- tion of their sound-world: names like Arch- es or Yellow Noise or The City And The Stars or We Will Be Absorbed (from their latest Real World album Kaleidophonica).
Yet while listening to Spiro can inspire inward looking contemplation and imagi- nation running riot, people the world over are similarly outwardly moved by their music. “We just did a gig in Russia,” says Vann. “It was near Moscow, at a festival. A load of guys came up afterwards and one said: ‘My friend – you made him cry!’ He pointed to a very big man – you wouldn’t have thought it. We get that a lot. People saying ‘I dance madly to your music and then I have to lie down and have a little cry.’ It doesn’t seem to matter where we play, people tend to react in the same way.”
And as an acoustic line-up they can – and do – play anywhere, from sit-down gigs in museums to a packed dance tent at Womad. In October they’re travelling to India for a gig at the Riff Festival in Jod-
phur, and then straight to Dubai to work and perform with a resident oud player.
We’re meeting the day after their gig at the EthnoAmbient festival near Split in Croatia. They started playing in the warm dusk and the audience sat enraptured as the evening darkened. And as the moon rose Harbour (violin), Vann (mandolin), Hunt (guitar) – with Luke Carver Goss on accordeon, standing in for band member Jason Sparkes – themselves seemed to become entranced: their playing more and more energetic, more frenetic, more focused and somehow more free, the reso- nances in the harmonies and spiky dis - sonances ringing around the ancient walls of the site and enveloping us all.
It’s exhilarating to watch and listen. The whole thing is so totally dependent on complex parts interlocking at the right moment that you feel one slip and it would all come crashing down. Like a small, mistimed movement in Formula 1 might prove suddenly fatal, or like a clock suddenly missing a spring would stop working.
Exhausting to play, I imagine…
“Not really,” says Harbour. “You’re carried through by the energy, it’s like run- ning. After you’ve done the first 20 min- utes you get the energy to go on further… not that I’ve done any running, ever,” she adds quickly, as if I should mistake her for someone athletic. Which she might be. She’s slim and healthy looking, with an attractive face that’s compelling because it’s so expressive. In fact they’re all slim and healthy looking with good lived-in faces. They’ve been in this group together for 20 years and you’d think they could have formed Spiro as teenagers. “Can’t you say we began the band at nursery school?”
OK. Anyway. It’s complicated yet mini- mal sounding music. It can’t be easy to per- form.
“It’s in your fingers,” she says. “You go on automatic pilot.”
“If you think about it,” says Hunt, “you start to forget what you’re doing. If you stop thinking it just happens. I find it helps to pace about.”
I don’t want to make a big thing about this, because I wouldn’t know a ‘Wilko Johnson infinity stare’ if it was, well, star- ing me in the face, but whilst we’re on the subject of performance it’s been noted that Vann and Hunt employ this particular look on stage. I’ve been told it’s both mes- merising and possibly alarming. Perhaps Colin Irwin wasn’t just referring to the
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