Ruby & The Vines

This is the second time I have seen Ruby & The Vines, the first time was support for Adrian Roye at the Luminaire, and my suspicions were confirmed – this is a band with a huge potential and not far away from realising that potential either.

Binisa Bonner is a stunning bass player with a fine, soft and subtly sweet, voice and she makes an arresting frontperson with her sinuous moves and wide smile but she is ably supported by guitarist Greg Sanders with his afrobeat and reggae licks and drummer Ben Assiter who plays some of the most sparse and simple drums I’ve heard in ages – I have always believed that it takes talent to play it simple and Ben is the proof.

Together they play music that is essentially an amalgam of reggae, afrobeat, Congolese rhythms and jazz – or to put it another way, they don’t sound like anyone else around at the moment.

They only played four numbers – ‘Circles’ was a delight and ‘Red Storm’ really sounded terrific.
They deserve to be playing to bigger audiences than were at the Cobden on Wednesday and I am sure that that will come – very definitely one to watch for all the right reasons

http://www.myspace.com/rubyandthevines


The other artist on the bill was completely new to me. They are a duet with a lady called Minarcshe on vocals and her sidekick Jarz on acoustic guitar and harmony vocals.
Together they were surprisingly good and they played four numbers as a warmup for Ruby & The Vines and did themselves no harm at all.
‘Pocket God’ had some good guitar and ‘Butterfly Days’ was delightful with their combined vocals really working well together. They play in a classic Folk style and it was nice to hear two properly matched voices singing ‘proper’ songs.
Another one to watch out for and I hope to catch them early in December.

http://www.myspace.com/minarcshe