NALA SINEPHRO

NALA SINEPHRO AT ST MATTHIAS CHURCH, DALSTON – 10/9/21

I arrive before the doors have opened and line up on the street. There are three people ahead of me. All have come alone. One is writing in a notebook, another is reading a paperback. No one talks to each other. These are my people, I think, loner types.

The doors are late opening and really nice people keep coming out and apologising for the delay, but it doesn’t really matter. “That’s OK,” I say. “No problem.” Who cares if the doors are late opening? They open eventually and the wait is soon forgotten.

Once inside I buy an LP and take a seat on the front pew. 

The view from the front pew

I like churches. It looks beautiful with all the candles and everything. The roof’s great too. It’s a shame religion is such an old crock. Maybe all churches should be reclaimed for the people. No, they definitely should. For the people, and for music especially, which is the true inheritor of religion’s claim to spirituality.

There’s a crew of people here tonight who all seem to know each other and they all greet each other with slow, deliberate, comfortable hugs. Despite a sign on the door recommending that they do so, no one is wearing a mask. It’s like the Before Times, but better somehow, like they’ve realised what’s not important, and what is. They seem, somehow, like a higher, more evolved order of beings, higher certainly than those people you see at Sainsbury’s who look like they’ve been grown in a pot that’s too small, and not given enough water, and left in a corner of the room that doesn’t get much sunlight. They are incredibly stylish and fashionable, and some of them are unbelievably beautiful. 

  There’s also a fair smattering of proud-looking grandparent types.

As NALA SINEPHRO starts strumming and plucking her harp I realise that I have never seen a harp played live before, or if I have I definitely can’t pinpoint a memory of it. That seems a shame too, like the religion thing. It just seems to me, tonight, that the world has the potential to be a much better place than it actually is. Sinephro switches between the harp and a synth, leading her ensemble through some seriously cosmic jazz. This is floating jazz, untethered jazz, jazz that has slipped its moorings. Many of the super people listen with their eyes closed throughout. One woman, eyes closed, moves her hands slowly in front of her like she’s conducting some sort of floating untethered cosmic orchestra, and others, sitting on cushions at the front, are lying down by the end of the show. And like the people sitting on cushions at the front, the music stretches out and makes itself comfortable. Super comfortable in the Better-Than-Before-Time.

Super comfortable in the Better-Than-Before-Time