Phew / freddy Murphy (live at the Jam Jar)

Bristol
5 November 2025

First up, Mr Murphy, one of the founders of occultists Father Murphy, gives us an intimate quiet set, suitability dressed in monk-like robes. Didn’t know what to expect, but that heavy churn of amputated breath sounds he introduces us to is a great start, further enhanced by a slow moanful chant that smoulders, osculates a girl’s repeated words.

A miraging soup of half-heard reverbs that swim in contradiction, melding well with his vocal drones, the words bubbling up, chasing their repeated tails. A proper William S Burroughs-like cutup that magically fish-hooks your brain in illusive vapour and traumatised enquiry. His hunched frame getting closer and closer to the table, the tiny pencil mic pushed to his mouth as that moanful chant pressure cookers away.

Those pan-fried electrics that filter in later and that minimal clanging percussive that kicks things torpidly around adds a subtle horror dynamic that glows with an off-kiltering intensity. At one point I thought a blood-curdling scream was due to vent the tension, but it fails to materialise as the set ends in complete silence to the question that hangs heavy over the room — should we clap or just give him a hug?

Between acts Adam Reid (Schwet) supplies lots of great tunes, all with an unsurprising Japanese flavour, C Memi’s “Heavenly Peace” gets a look in, and that weird take on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” from Chisako and Junta is superb fun. I was hoping for a bit from the Boredoms, but wasn’t complaining as he always champions the lesser known, that never fails to send me Discogs lurking.

When Phew starts it’s a slow hypnosis of slippery sounds, her voice recoiling a merry-go-round full of twisty vapours. This bamboo beat is introduced, whipped in rhythmic rat-tails and trapped moth zither. The sounds are rich, roll into each other with stretchy squishability I totally warm to.

This lovely foetal pump hits to a reversed oblique, and I’m caught as that ghostly voice of hers sucks inwards, sphere-bleeding into a tasty violin scrape that drifts Islamic. A tranquillised heat that pulsates woollen and wistful, tapering into a heavy humming strut. Wished it had battered noisily around for a little longer than it did, but no, with twisting arms she bends the sound in a new flavoursome direction.

A sense of familiarity beckons; can’t be sure, but I’m catching snippets of that gorgeous Covid album New Decade Phew released back in 2021. That dark introspective sway and deformed brittleness is creeping over the contours of tonight’s show for sure. A dance of Pram-esque robotics, sequinned and weaving in the ecstasy of swishing vocals.

I can only marvel at all those spinning plates she was sending out there, that head of hers locked in syncopated shake / nod throughout as the sounds bleed their fractured brilliance. Brief encounters that soon raise a glass to the noise gods, have me trapped in what feels like a kettle chased down by a marauding train. A variety-packed showcase, all ending on an actual song (sung in Japanese) irradiated by a swaying mulch of simple synthetica.

There might have only been twenty-five people to witness this, but yeah, I’m glad I was one of them — magical.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-