Emil Brynge is a mere 21 years old, yet he already has a confidence about him that belies his years. After some years of listening to his MySpace offering, Gilly's radar picked up on his gig at Greenroom last night and off we went. Greenroom is an Arts place built into railway arches in Manchester and the gig was part of S'Not P'Inc.'s World Music night.
Emil, tall, blond and slightly restless as he got set up to start playing, quickly became Emil, musician with something to give. Opening with a brand new song, composed only the day before with his equally new musical partner - sorry no name (yet) - Emil gave us a demonstration in the use of multi-layered repeating phrases via a box of tricks at his side - nothing new in itself, but well done with his acoustic guitar and the partner's violin building well, with additions of glockenspiel, shakers and bells adding to the effect, and both player playing over the effects it was quite a sound. Afterwards Emil confessed that suddenly having access to all these effects and instruments made him feel like a kid in a toy shop and he felt obliged to try and use all of them at least once!
More often a guitarist and singer, Emil Brynge is a serious Nick Drake fan and there are some obvious influences in some of his phrases and melodies, but this is no clone, his own songs are , to coin a phrase, original and genuine. Drawing on his earlier studies in art history, "Maiastra" combines mythology and an art work to produce an intimate and haunting song - the only song to survive from this early period, he professes to write mostly happy songs these days and his last song "My Farewell" is a very affirmative demand to "Give me life in time!"
Many of his songs have interesting structures, pauses long enough to draw early applause at least once, less of the verse/chorus than usual, and his guitar playing is clean and technical, with more than a nod into his other chosen instrument. This beast stood hidden in it's case until the last song, when out came the sitar - and again with a layered backing from the effects, we got a hint of what I assume to be Emil's target sound - the sitar adding another dimension over the guitar - of course he can only play one or the other (without the effects) live, but recorded, there is a lovely interplay between the 2 instruments, the sitar introducing an element of sadness into these happy "songs". Tonight the violin was used where a flute appears on his 5 track CD and the live performance was very much more confident and strident than the CD, not better or worse, just different.
We should touch on his voice too - it is deeper than his age would suggest, with an accent that has enough Swedish in it to make his very clean English attractively different, his singing clear enough to make the lyrics heard.
Emil Brynge is a man on his way - next week he plays sitar in Cardiff with Mark Fry, and he is moving over to London from his home in Sweden so there should be plenty of opportunities to catch him again before too long. We'll be paying big money for his tickets soon enough!Stay tuned to FolkingAbout and find out what arrived in the post this morning....
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