Django Bates returns to his “spiritual home” for Vortex winter warmer solo shows

Outside, a bleak East End mid-winter. Rain and tempest of Biblical proportions. Inside, a slight man in his signature skully cap eased through a packed audience, steam still rising from their soaked overcoats.

A Django Bates gig is always anticipated. But this was special not only because this was the first time in a decade that he’d played at his “spiritual home”, as he referred to it, the “haven” of the Vortex. But also, he was presenting new music, and it was fitting that Bates had chosen to do this in London. For an hour, hunched and swaying at the Steinway, the copper burnish of his waistcoat glowing like a warming hearth, Bates brought a generosity, a sense of soul and community to what could have been a benighted start to a new year.

Performing under the rubric of Django Distilled, Bates unveiled a still point in his own playing, a confidence to trust the melody, to trust that one note can tell the story. So, in the opening ‘A Flurry in the Desert’, a slow, mid-register left hand vamp was enough to anchor the right hand’s dancing, while a sudden single blues shout brought contrast a-plenty within the overall shape. ‘Sophie In Detail’ was even slower, more spacey, yet with Swiss clock detailing within its wide vista. The yearn and romance all led to that long decay of the closing bass chord. But the impish Bates remains: ‘Dancey, Dancey’ was breathless fun, a locked in left-hand figure forcing plenty of cross-handed dancing about from the right.

Having lived so long abroad, sojourned in Switzerland and Scandinavia, Bates couldn’t help but use this rare return to mark his affection for his dad, brothers, and children. ‘Iris’, dedicated to his gardener dad, with lyrics by Django’s son (Bates admitted the impossibility of writing as a son about his own father), was full of affection and paradox. His own vox, child-like, summoned a cross generation world of lost content. ‘Ballo’, dedicated to long-time colleague Ian Ballamy, was bigger, bolder, reflecting Bates appreciation of his pal’s writing. It was a song of luminous volume, volume-inous, if you like.

And so the music flowed: older songs like an austere ‘For the Nurses’ (now re-contextualised by Covid) contrasted with a straight ahead ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, which only Bates could turn into a protest against the Rwandan re-location policy. The exile was back in his kingdom.

To cite another new song, this was very much ‘My Idea of a Good Time’ for Bates. The evening was all about making music, but it was also in Bates’ words a “gathering in peace”.

Bates noted that in the metaphorical as well as literal storm of the outside world, “everything is disagreeable, there are a million discrepancies”. But briefly, amid the vortex, in a community of listening-hood, Bates revealed a world of harmony. It had even stopped raining.