Man Walks Into A Bar

Zeni Geva/Ruins Alone - Corsica Studios 26/10/10

2010-10-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

Again, I don't remember, this was October and I'm posting it in April. I just had the draft title there. Sorry, there's been a lot of shit happening in my life. I think this gig was pretty decent.

That's possibly my worst review so far. A whole new low...

The Lowest Form of Music - Beaconsfield 22-24/10/10

2010-10-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

Arriving hot off the set of the new Spielberg film in which I play a silhouette in the background, I'm too late to catch Morphogenesis (shame) and just in time to see ten minutes of Tom Recchion, which is really quite pleasant, particularly the last section of his set which went all ambient chimes and relaxing atmospherics. Didn't dig the video too much just 'cause it didn't really need one.

Le Forte Four are up next after a cigarette and another £3 little bottle of beer, and they're entertainers, they're strange but true, they're a spastic ad break, a detuned TV station, their aerial needs adjusting. At one point Rick Potts plays a piece of polystyrene like a violin and it's horrible, but it's also brilliant, especially when he heckles the audience for not applauding his awesome solo.

Smegma build up, the guitar is pretty wack. And the femme vox. I made a note in my phone about this but I lost my phone so I don't remember. Use paper notebooks people.

Saturday no go for me, I didn't want to see that bitch girlfriend of mine. Sunday, Raionbashi &Kutzelina yodel performance strangely predictable. Dinosaurs with Horns strangely unlistenable, garbled, directionless. The Tenses was Ju Suk and Oblivia and they were pretty good. Hijokaidan were ridiculous and had skinny guys acting like they were big men.

This is a draft of the review that I never got around to finishing and now it's six months later and I can't remember what I was gonna say about any of it so you just get this series of notes and ideas which haven't been strung together coherently which is actually quite in keeping with the whole LAFMS style or at least that's my excuse.

Wet Paint/Big Deal/The Racket - Old Blue Last 11/10/10

2010-10-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

I've been to a heap of gigs between this and Mark Kozelek but they've mostly been one's I've played at or one's with my girlfriend playing or Aphex gigs that I've worked at and I don't want to review myself and I don't want to review Mari's band again and again (it's always great really) and I don't want to review a job. Having said that, Wet Paint is my mate Babak's band and I'm gonna review him now, but I feel the need for it so that's how it is. Also, Big Deal were cool.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, first off, this is a night to launch Babak's comic, Hilarious Consequences. I just finished it and I liked it a lot. It's like Jeffrey Brown, except I don't like Jeffrey Brown. It's funny and you should buy it is what I'm saying.

The first band tonight were The Racket and they were bloody awful. I mean I felt embarrassed for them, and it wasn't just that their music was crappy it was that they couldn't even play their crappy music well. I went and stood outside and to make sure I missed the end of their set I stayed there for ages and ended up missing the second band completely. Such is gigs.

Big Deal played next and even though they're absolutely not my usual bag, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It probably helped that I was on my own and trying really hard not to be cynical. Plus they're really very easy on the eye. They're just a boy and girl, two guitars and two mics. Dead simple stuff and all the lyrics are about oh why won't you let me in I love you etc but they get away with it because their voices both sound like they should be singing that kind of trite teen stuff. So they were nice anyway, then Wet Paint played and they were really loud and loads better than last time I saw them and I prefer their newer stuff as it's a bit less by the numbers 90's America and on the whole a bit more inventive and veering closer to the kind of stuff I'm interested in. They played well and even when Siamak stood on his tuner pedal by accident at the end of the last song he rescued the situation by taking his bass off and doing a robot dance in place of a bassline. It was good, modest, fun and I had a relaxing night which is an achievement in itself these days.

Mark Kozelek - Union Chapel 29/07/10

2010-07-29T16:38:00.000-07:00

i'm sitting in a church about to see a guy called mark koyzelev or something. That's what the guy in front of me is writing on some live feed thing on his iPad while I'm sitting in a church waiting to see Mark Kozelek. Who the fuck brings an iPad to a gig? In a church? After checking some useless shit out on his toy he finally puts it away only to immediately pull out an iPhone and start texting. I look around to see if anyone else has noticed this guy, this slick old cunt with multiple touchscreens on his person. This slimy fuck who conducts his affairs by sliding his fingers all over everything. I look around and instead of seeing other furrowed brows I see more iPhones. I'm not joking, the woman he's with has an iPhone, the woman to the left of me has an iPhone, the woman just past the man on my right has an iPhone, and they're all sliding shit about, prodding at the luminous little tablets like apes at a monolith, receiving and disseminating useless information, looking at fuck all for no reason, contacting someone else for no reason. I don't know exactly what each of them was doing, but it doesn't matter, they're doing something when they should be doing nothing. Do you really have to go on the internet right now, can you not just sit for ten minutes and wait for a man to come and play the guitar? The man immediately to my right thankfully doesn't have an iPhone, instead he has a disgusting cough and snort routine worked out, whereby every minute or so he coughs really loudly and follows it up with a big hock of phlegm up the back of the nose there. And the guys behind me are having an incredibly boring conversation about photoshop, incredibly boring even by usual photoshop conversation standards. It is possibly the most jaw clenchingly irritating bit of a crowd I've ever been in.

That said, Mark Kozelek is excellent and the venue is exceptionally complementary to his show. Sat alone on stage with just his guitar, partially candlelit against a backdrop of stained glass, he runs through a choice selection from Admiral Fell Promises, a few April songs and a couple of older ones including a nice variation of Carry Me Ohio. His fingerpicking is deft and delicately done, with the occasional rough strum for emphasis. It's not perfect, he fucks up a pluck here and there, but it's unimportant. No-one in the world could play these songs better. Watching him play The Leaning Tree sends shivers in waves from my fingers up my face and makes me want to cry, the transitions in the end section of Blue Orchids achieve a dreamlike fluidity I didn't think possible in waking life and hearing You Are My Sun live has to be one of the prettiest things I've ever encountered in my life ever ever ever.

Even the banter is brilliant, with some lad shouting out that he wants to get hold of tab or whatever so he can play Kozelek's songs to which he replies "you... concentrate on playin' your own stuff" and after a pause continues "you need to spend less time on the internet, shut down that twitter account, get rid of that facebook page, you'll get good at something" which earned a huge round of applause and left me feeling less guilty about all the mental vitriol I was heaping on the people around me before the gig.

So, despite the fact that the iPad guy in front of me is looking at his iPhone every two minutes and has a head like a semi erect cock, lolling from side to side blocking my view over and over to the point where I want to smash his face into the fucking bench in front of him, it still manages to be gig of the year.

Thanks again Mark Kozelek, and please don't slash your wrists like you said you would at the end of the set. Great, thanks, bye!

NOTE: I have draft reviews of all the gigs between this one and the last one I posted about (metalking?), and I've been slowly trying to catch up to the present, but I'm gonna go ahead and leave a big gap there because I want to post this review now. Maybe I'll come back to the others, maybe I'll leave a gap there forever. Who knows? I don't.

Metalking: RICHARLES BRONSON / RIOJIM + PAUL ABBOTT / SEYMOUR WRIGHT / ROSS LAMBERT - Cafe Oto 03/04/10

2010-04-07T05:29:00.002-07:00

Fuck knows.

Someone did some stuff on film, letting the projector burn through the film, that sort of thing. It was alright I guess. I don't remember the rest. I might not even have seen anyone else actually.

What a review. Possibly a new low that one.

Stinking Lizaveta/some other bands - Bardens Boudoir 01/04/10

2010-04-07T05:29:00.001-07:00

Going back over my notes I see I wrote two things about this gig so I'll just reproduce them here and let that be the review:

1. Drummer looks like a dead crackwhore dragged out of a swamp that someone has resurrected and put an evening dress on. And she's angry about it. And she's still on crack.

2. The guitarist seems to be playing the national anthem. Really emphatically, over and over. I actually find it puts me off his guitar playing because he looks so fucking happy all the time.

I couldn't remember this gig at all before I checked my notes and now it's all so vivid thanks to those two observations there. They really sum up everything. What did they sound like, you say? Well they sounded like they looked (see above).

These Plumes have Feathers/Guy from Bo Ningen - Catch 22 26/03/10

2010-03-29T05:07:00.000-07:00

I went to see these acts after having a bit of a weird experience with an osteopath and I could hardly walk, stand still or sit down which made it a little tricky to relax as you can imagine. These Feathers Have Plumes, quietly battling a dastardly wobbling table, created a dreamy collage of bowed bass and humming wine glasses which soothed my ailing spine a little, before the guy from Bo Ningen whose name I can't remember played some laptop noise and shouted a bit and I think he might have even (sort of) played guitar. It was alright. I don't remember really, I'm writing this months after the event and I was doped up on ibuleve at the time.

Fun.

Florian Hecker Sound Installation - Chisenhale Gallery

2010-03-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

Well this was totally pleasant. I enjoyed walking around it for sure, just a big white room with some speakers set up playing some noises which I'm sure Hecker put a lot of effort into creating and which probably represent some precise concept involving the science of sound and space and all sorts of fascinating mathematical ideas I don't know about because I couldn't be bothered picking through all the sesquipedalian guff on the accompanying info sheet.

One of the pieces bounced off some tiles stuck on the wall, another came from overhead, another came from a row of speakers at undulating heights... I mean, I have no idea what he's saying, unless all he's saying is check out these interesting sounds, but I had a thoroughly pleasant time until a couple of 2.4 nuclear families who apparently hadn't seen each other for a while happened to meet by chance in there and decided it would be an appropriate place to catch up on their life stories. It wasn't.

Here's a video where you can experience what Hecker's carefully sculpted pieces sound like when recorded on the shitty little mic on a flip HD mini camcorder. It's perhaps more effective as a document of how people move about in a big room when guided by their ears. It stars Horacio Pollard, both members of Kayaking and Joel from Wet Sounds/Trash Club. Enjoy!

Oneohtrixpointnever/No Fun Acid - The Grosvenor 18/3/10

2010-03-23T02:15:00.002-07:00

Well everyone has been all ONeohtrixpointnever is the best thing to happen for ages, he's so awesome and he's the best so I thought hey I'll go along then and besides I got old Konxy to wing me in so I di9nt aff ta pay nowt. It was at The Grosvenor which has been a bit too regular as of late, seeing as it's a bit of a 'mish' to get too but hey ho ey. Carlos Giffoni also known as No Fun Acid played a decent enough acid set on hardware made for exactly that and people seemed to like it well enough and I seemed to like it well enough so that was that, nothing spectacular but certainly solid and it was nice to see it being kept 'real', a popular yardstick by which to judge any genre of music over five years old (probably less nowadays, with kids failing to keep new genres of music real for even a couple of weeks before being accused of ruining the scene/selling out/fakin it or whatever kids do these days. I don't know, I'm not one, I didn't understand them when I was one and I doubt that'll change anytime soon. Maybe when I reach old age and start to shrink and rely more on others and just regress generally, maybe then with that combination of
pseudo child like state and the benefit of hindsight will I be able to understand kids. Of course I will be very old and the knowledge useless. Anyway, who cares, Carlos Giffoni is about forty and none of this stuff applies to him.

Oneatickspooneva was up next and he played a nice enough set of ambient keyboards and seagull sounds. It was alright, I thought that kind of thing had been done in spades over thirty years ago but
apparently it's new and exciting. Or maybe he's just keeping it real too. Who knows eh. All I know is that it was fairly pleasant music in fairly unsuitable surroundings done ok.

Jazz Poetry Night - Pangaea Project 10/2/10

2010-03-23T02:15:00.001-07:00

Ok everybody thanks for coming I'm gonna do the ice cream song.
La la la la ice cream song
La la la la ice cream song
La la la la ice cream song
La la la la ice cream song

What a shitty night.

Brotzman/Edwards/Noble - Cafe Oto 29/1/10

2010-03-23T02:13:00.000-07:00

Brotzman fucking ripped it, Edwards was his usual awesome-on-the-bass self and Steve Noble looks like he carries a knife. They also had a dude on piano who I didn't know but who was excellent and the best bit of the whole night was when Brotzman wasn't even playing and the other three were all freaking out, just fully freaking out and all stopped suddenly all three of them without looking at each other or anything, just stopped perfectly together. It was fucking magic. Jazz magic. Jazz fucking magic. No lie.

Hulk Dash 10 - Korsan Bar 13/12/09

2009-12-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

I don't remember, was this the one Richie was supposed to play at but didn't? I think so. What the fuck was up with all the spanish squatters in attendance? Yeah I remember now, oh god I didn't like anyone who played or attended this evening, oh yeah and the worst offenders were the Korsan bar owners who managed to be even more abhorrent than the crusty spanish squatters, which I honestly thought was impossible.

Anyway, I feel sorry for Guiseppe who organised it and had a terrible night with every cunt there being pissed off with him. Live and learn though eh.

Ramleh/Voltigeurs/Sudden Infant - The Grosvenor 11/12/09

2009-12-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

This was disappointing. Just all very underwhelming. Oh well.

ATP Curated by My Bloody Valentine - Butlins, Minehead 5-6/12/09

2009-12-08T10:48:00.000-08:00

ATP gets shitter by the minute. This time I got mugged by a seagull, saw a wasted girl embarrass herself on stage distractingly enough to put me off Lightning Bolt completely, saw My Bloody Valentine again again again and then stayed up in the chalet all night and watched about five films in a row which went something like Grey Gardens, L'Argent, Excalibur, Gummo, The Shining, The Shadows, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

At some point my band played one song and got shut down for being a fire hazard. I don't even fucking care anymore, when are ATP gonna put some new bands on it's an incestuous little fuckfest of alt shit and it's fucking boring. Oh guess who's curating the next ATP guys, it's some band you liked in the nineties, oh shit no way! I wonder who they're gonna put on? Oh look all the same bands as all the previous curators. Oh no way! What a massive fucking surprise!

And Minehead is fucking horrible and depressing. Fuck you ATP, you've lost it. Do something special again, I dare you.

Six Organs of Admittance - Bush Hall 04/12/09

2009-12-04T18:05:00.000-08:00

So damn good. This was one of my favourite gigs of the year. Thanks to Miles of Smiles for putting it on, really a lovely venue and a lovely evening, Ben Chasny and his crew really played and it was friendly and intimate and free (spirited I mean, not free to get in, I think it was like a tenner or something) and that one from the Magic Markers was playing with him, whatsername Lisa or Sarah or something and both of them were really fucking wailing on their guitars, really freaking out and doing some of the crunchiest most fucked up guitar soloing I've seen in ages and it was all beautiful and dusty and I felt like I'd started dreaming but I hadn't even got on the tube back home yet but it didn't matter I just floated on it all it was beautiful.

Black Heart Procession/Shit and Shine/Scout Niblett/Todd/Dosh - The Scala 26/11/09

2009-11-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

I really don't like the Scala right and I'll tell you why right it's a combination of two factors: firstly it's four quid for a drink right and a shit drink at that, you've got a choice of draught carling or grolsch or strongbow which all taste like the lines haven't been changed ever or you can plump for a can of red stripe. A fucking CAN, for four quid. All the drinks options give you the shits pretty much. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the security they have there. They only employ people who are at least five times as big as the Scala's biggest customer (usually some fey indie kid). All of the bouncers are absolute titans, it's insane, even the woman bouncer is built like a tank. And they always do a proper search so basically there's no sneaking any booze in because they'd find it and they'd kick you in.

So yeah, the Scala is always shit because you go there, you spend £15 to get in and you spend £12 on three drinks which make you ill instead of drunk.

All the bands were shit anyway and Big Alan was being a dick. Ok well Todd were alright I guess.

Night of the Long Worms - Cafe Oto 19/11/09

2009-11-23T03:43:00.000-08:00

I don't even remember who played at this night now. I can always look it up on google. Yep, here you go:

Baraclough, Philip Jeck, Bruce Gilbert, Simon Fisher Turner, Leif Elggren, Souls On Board, Meltaot and Joachim Nordwall

I remember Simon Fisher Turner was entertaining on two pianos, Baraclough were notable for having a member who used to work as a runner at the place I used to work at (big fucking deal eh) and Philip Jeck played a set nobody realised was being played until half way through because he was at the back of the room tucked away and it sounded like nothing was going on. I think that was Philip Jeck. Anyway, I missed Leif Elggren and was annoyed. Oh and one of the acts was really bad and I think it was Meltaot.

Opinions.

Hair Police - The Old Blue Last 16/11/09

2009-11-17T04:23:00.000-08:00

Turned up late after rushing from the ICA Dilloway gig and managed to catch the end of a set you probably had to see the beginning of to appreciate.

Oh well.

Aaron Dilloway/Chocolate Monk Variations - The ICA 16/11/09

2009-11-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

Fucking Aaron Dilloway man. He's fucking excellent. There were various combos of various Chocolate Monk artists to start off the evening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (a clean, serious venue...) including Dylan Nyoukis, Karen Constance, Neil Campbell and yes, Dilloway, and they were all lovely and entertaining and everything and it was a great showcase for inventiveness and playful improvisations but it was Dilloway's solo set in the main hall that was the highlight of the night. A rusty-tooth grinding opening section gave way to heavy drones, driving downhill, a rolling horror, a real cave digger. And then the contact mics go in the mouth and he starts to growl his way out of the pit, up n up, against the tide of his tape machine, and then he's standing, flailing, agonising like a transmogrophying wolfman, and he wins, and it's over, and everyone cheers.

Dorian Gay/Atomck & Others - Cable St Studios 13/11/09

2009-11-17T04:21:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this in April 2010. All I remember is Tim Cementimental's cohort throwing a pig's head on a table and getting punched in the face.

Oh and I seem to remember Dorian Gay were passable hardcore.

This blog has gone to shit. I have my reasons, but anyway, I'm trying to catch up to April so it should start resuming normal (average) service around then.

Toshiji Mikawa/Nihilist Assault Group/John Wiese/Putrefier & Romance/Bbblood - The Grosvenor 06/11/09

2009-11-17T04:19:00.000-08:00

Everyone was ace tonight, just a slight downer that we lost all of our filming equipment and a powerbook. It was kind of an all stars night and I really enjoyed everyone's sets, I just don't want to think about it...

Maybe I'll come back to this at some point.

Vomir/Mutant Ape - The Others 05/11/09

2009-11-17T04:16:00.000-08:00

Vomir was a nice guy and he got everyone to put bin liners over their heads while he blasted out some harsh noise from an ipod. Then Mutant Ape played some stuff using scissors. He's also a nice guy.

That's about all I wanna say about this night.

Colour Out Of Space Festival - Brighton 30/10/09-01/11/09

2009-11-02T16:47:00.000-08:00

I won't write too much about this as I'm working on a documentary which includes a lot of it. That said:

-Trevor Wishart was entertaining and odd, wresting vocals from his jawbone.
-Eli Keszler was brilliant, making a drum kit sound nothing like one whilst gurning dementedly.
-Justice Yeldham was a twat and failed hilariously to get anything to work whilst he slagged all the other artists off. Fucking Australian.
-Damion Romero played until his bottle of water vibrated off the table.
-Mechanical Children played until the huge floor speaker vibrated most of the way across the room.
-Edwards/Noble/Wilkinson Trio were Noble/Wilkinson duo and lapsed into samba for a moment there.
-Joseph Hammer rubbed some tape between his mime hands.
-Sten Hanson was enigmatic and sat on a stool.
-Morphogenesis made magic out of trinkets.
-Ju Suk Reet Meate & Oblivia closed the festival with some bizzaro sounds and a horrible video accompaniment.

Overall, a lovely festival full of nice people (apart from that cunt I hate).

Thanks, bye.

Broadcast/The Caretaker/Thomas Ankersmit - The Vortex 11/10/09

2009-10-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

The second of the Wire magazine's Into the Vortex nights started with Thomas Ankersmit who I've never heard of before. His set went like this: manic screeching and steam sounds like trains braking hard on their rails, then calm and high, then drone with sax and drool. Having a mental breakdown. It was great. There was a seriously long line of drool from his sax mouthpiece almost down to the floor from all the circular breathing he was doing. Drone sax. Very nice.

The Caretaker hid himself away in the corner - rather effectively considering the size of his hairstyle, a large frizzy bulb - and hit play on his laptop. I don't know if he did anything else but then I don't know what else he could be expected to do with his music. Last time I saw him play was as V/VM where he had a discman which he just played along to with an inflatable guitar and a rubber chicken mask over his head. I guess that kind of performance would jar a little with the nature of The Caretaker material, but he still managed to fit in a cheeky pisstake, allowing his languorous set to stretch out to what seemed like an ending already overdue and leaving just enough pause before starting a whole other section. Much of the room sighed, some laughed, including myself, but really it's music that requires a lengthy listen, so in that respect this was one thing he could affect live. I like The Caretaker's stuff and I understand the concept behind it but it's better suited to solo listening, at night, at home, the exact opposite of this packed out daytime jazzbar. Still, it was as enjoyable as could be expected I suppose.

Broadcast were supposed to be on some hot shit new direction and playing along to a film so I thought hey I'll give them a chance seeing as I haven't listened to them for a decade so I did, I gave them a chance and I watched the whole set, the video was uninspired, dull and hackneyed and the music really suited it. At its best it was inoffensive, at its worst, twee.

Richard Youngs w/ Heather Leigh Murray/Astral Social Club/The Skaters - The Vortex 09/10/09

2009-10-10T03:55:00.000-07:00

I'm so behind on these reviews I'm gonna try and speed through them, drawing on my fast fading memories to paint what will probably amount to a not very accurate portrayal of events. This is my gig blog though and the only people who read it are me (when I'm trying to remember whether I liked a band) and people who search for themselves on the internet, so if you're offended it's probably because you're insecure about your abilities as an artist. Feel free to leave a comment backing that theory up. That said let's get on with some quickfire reviewing.

Richard Youngs w/ Heather Leigh Murray was great, frankly. A swirling dual guitar noise gradually giving way to duel repeated vocals, chanting no lights on over and over, or something like that. I'll check it in a minute, it's details like that that really set one apart from the lazy bloggers. I liked it, whatever it was they said. I'm writing this in March so I don't have too much to add really. I remember them doing the vocal bit for ages and going past that point where it stops seeming like too long and starts getting better because it's so long. That's what I reckon anyway.

Astral Social Club played. Good old Nelly Campbell. He was great, he said something about pork pies and then he played a load of pedals and amps and little bits of kit and a microphone, I dunno, I wasn't really looking. He did some nice stuff with mic feedback, I recall. 'Little bits of kit', Jesus how vague can you get. So anyway I was really looking forward to seeing The Skaters but they didn't turn up I don't remember why, something to do with aeroplanes maybe, but so they put on Alex Tucker instead so I didn't bother staying.

Oh and I just tried to check the audio recording of Youngs and Leigh Murray but I think it's on an external hard drive and I dunno if it's plugged into the USB so sod it.

Magma/JP Massiera/Chrome Hoof - The Barbican 06/10/09

2009-10-07T01:05:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna make this quick 'cause I'm playing catch up after neglecting this blog, the cogs of my everyday having had some horrible spanners thrown into them in the past couple o' months.

That's the way the cookie shits all over you.

The night before the gig I interviewed Stella Vander and the other, less hardcore, female singer whose name escapes me, and some guy whose role in the band was unclear (sound guy maybe, I dunno, maybe he was a fucking roadie, regardless he didn't say anything during the interview anyway, opting instead for watching sport on the tele of the bar of the hotel they were all staying in and which I went along to meet up with them, in) but vitally didn't interview Christian Vander which was disappointing but then I've a feeling he doesn't speak much English anyway. Whatever, a hugely cut down version of the interview can be found here.

So, the show, well Chrome Hoof were fine, their usual self, silver cloaked psychedelic disco funk, although notably leaving out the proper heavy metal section they usually play at the end of their set, perhaps due to worries about the timidity of the Barbican crowd, mostly comprised as it was of forty to fifty year old men with Dorito remnants in their faded Hawkwind t-shirts. At one point they dragged on a vaguely aware JP Massiera to a rendition of one of his old hooks and set him up with a microphone which he sort of moaned into (very) occasionally and a little sampler which he managed to turn off almost every time he touched it. After a while they dragged him off again, pretending he was unable to go on, in an all too believable display of theatrics. It didn't sound particularly good but it was easily the highlight of the set, shambolic old men being kind of innately entertaining in their own right.

Then woohoo Magma take to the stage. I've wanted to see Magma for fucking donkey's ears and tonight was finally the night and my god it was disappointing. There were moments where I thought things were going to kick off and Vander was gonna unleash his eight armed alien attack on the kit but no. It never happened. Far too much weak operatics, not enough cosmic war anthems. The new male vocalist had a curiously weak voice, offputting, sort of laughable but quite frankly upsetting, and he looked, as more than one of my friends put it: like an opera singer they'd tried to dress up as a rocker. Ripped off sleeves, bandana, the lot. And the way he and Stella sort of slinked off the podium down to centre stage was unnerving and also quickly became a cue that we were in for another tiresome bit of limp back and forth warbling. It wasn't all flaccid though, there was one particular track which was so hugely overblown and euphoric I'm pretty sure it's the music they play at extreme volume as you approach the giant pearly gates of heaven, only instead of feeling incredible you just burst out laughing because it's so fucking ridiculous.

Some positives. The vibes player seemed pretty cool, as did the new keyboard man who played a lovely solo keyboard bit at one point. Vander's vocals were amazing, but sparse, which made the new guy's shit voice all the more irritating in its ubiquity. Oh there I go lapsing back into negativity again, which is probably unfair. There were a few bits I really did enjoy, but maybe due to unrealistic expectations, or sitting in The Gods, the show overall just felt like a huge let down. Maybe it was the new material. Maybe they're just getting old. Maybe it's because it suddenly struck me halfway through that Stella Vander reminded me of my mother.

Well whatever it was, it wasn't much good.

Electric Wizard - The Scala 07/09/09

2009-09-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

The Scala was absolutely crammed for this show, a solid mass of black t-shirts, beards and hair. Leccy Wizard have clearly picked up a lot of new fans since they resuscitated themdelfs in recent times, and deservedly so for theirs is a distinct sound, truly heavy, truly metal, smattered with basic fuck the world/worship the occult vocals and seventies guitar solos. But this distinction can act against them. They seem to have a template for writing tracks which they rarely deviate from and when they do stray too far from it the songs are noticeably weaker and fail to retain the essence of the band's sound, becoming less like a generic Electric Wizard track and more like a generic heavy metal track. It's a catch they've apparently failed to find a workaround for. They seem to be a band who've already written their perfect track in tonight's closer, Funeralopolis, and everything else is either a slightly weaker version of that or an unsuccessful attempt at something else.

Still, there's no denying that the band is heavy, and yeah maybe they are limited in range but fuck me they're good at what they do within that and they do it with conviction. There's no irony in Jus Oborn's sleeveless denim jacket's patches, and when he sticks his middle finger up at God before shredding he really means it, and I can feel it, and I can nod my head to it for an hour quite happily.

Sunny Murray/John Edwards/Tony Bevan - The Vortex 01/09/09

2009-09-01T16:22:00.001-07:00

I went along to The Vortex to see Sunny Murray because Sunny Murray is a stone cold jazz legend and that's a fact, Jack. Tonight he teamed up with double bass freak John Edwards and multi sax abuser Tony Bevan for a session of free and freaky improvisations. And it was fucking great.

Sunny plays drums with his face, it seems. Every convulsion of lip and twitch of eyebrow channels down through his limbs and hits a drum. And he doesn't stop moving his face. At quieter points you can hear him singing, and by instantaneous extension making the drums sing along. It's really something. Bevan and Edwards are both accomplished musicians in their own right and play their asses off in the company of this crazy old man. Three sets of beautiful madness that hit intense, screeching highs and descend into low swirling masses with slow bowed double bass and languorous deep sax tones that made me feel physically sick. In a good way.

Between the sets, Sunny upsets the white and uptight full house at The Vortex by asking for a joint and talking about the ghetto and AIDS and using the word nigger and all sorts of other shit most of it seemingly off the cuff out of context rambling interspersed with occasional thank yous. It was hilarious really, or I thought it was anyway, not least because of the nervous shuffling it elicited from the upper middle class fifty plus set that made up the vast majority of onlookers. Then he's off again on another excursion into unexplored territory, using his drums as a spaceship.

At one point he says 'I'd like to thank y'all for being here, because we're always together... exploring new things'. Well I'd like to thank Sunny for being there last night because it was fucking out there, a true blue trip and so damn refreshing. So thank you Sunny Murray, thank you for being a true creative. You're a bad motherfucker and I hope you live forever.

David Byrne: Playing the Building - The Roundhouse 08-31/08/09

2009-09-01T04:04:00.000-07:00

Having missed out on this whilst in New York last year, I was really quite chuffed to find out that Byrne was bringing his installation to the only nice building in Camden, The Roundhouse. Despite my enthusiasm and the fact that it was on for a month, I nearly missed it anyway, only managing to drag myself there on the last day, twenty minutes before last entry. It wasn't really a gig, but there were people playing an instrument and that's good enough for me so here's a review of sorts.

Walking in to the room the first thing that struck me was how long the queue was to play the organ. See this blurry photo for evidence:

If you factor in that everyone who plays it goes on for about five minutes, that's a long wait. Maybe that's what I get for leaving it until the last day, or maybe the queue was like that everyday, I dunno, but I wasn't gonna wait. Besides, it soon becomes apparent that the building sounds pretty much the same regardless of who's playing it, which is to say, it sounds like a bunch of metallic clanging and whistling, sometimes quite pleasant, sometimes a bit jarring, but nothing particularly outstanding one way or the other.

Something that did catch my attention though - along with most of the people there - were the interpretive dancers who'd decided that this installation provided a perfect backdrop for acting like a loon. Swimming on the floor, climbing about on each other and looking basically like they're unhinged or tripping, but with that irritating flourish of foot, or wrist, or eyes that people seem to catch at drama school and add to every movement they make like some kind of ostentatious sickness. Look, here's a shitty video to illustrate that:

What a bunch of dickheads. Anyway enough from the distracting, prancing fuckwits, let's get back to the installation. The concept is interesting enough - wire up a building and play it like an instrument - I like that, it sounds like a fun thing to do, but in practice the whole thing just seemed a little underwhelming and I have to wonder quite how many people would give a shit about it and sing its praises if it didn't have David Byrne's name attached to it.

Maybe I'd like it a lot better if I got to play. Maybe I could give a fairer review. Maybe somehow I would magically have fallen in love with it. But I didn't get to play, and I didn't fall in love with it, so this is what you get. Another disaffected moan. Woohoo!

Bangface - The Arches 28/08/09

2009-08-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

Through some convoluted turn of events I ended up going to Bangface on Friday. I was supposed to deliver a reverb pedal to Scotch Egg as he was playing with Go from Dokkebi Q in their new project 'Devilman'. I thought sure why not I haven't been for ages and I'm up for watching their new venture and maybe I'll even enjoy some Vibert or Ceephax or Mike Dred and hey Electrowercz is only down the road so sure I'll do it just stick me on the guest list.

Except it wasn't at Electrowercz it was at The Arches which is in London Bridge and well out of the way for me and actually upon arriving at London Bridge I don't know where this place is and after a lot of traipsing around I end up getting there ten minutes after Devilman are due to start and immediately I realise that what the fuck am I doing coming to Bangface with no drugs it's fucking horrible. But in a way it's queerly amusing, like being on safari in fuckhead land. There's the big lug gurning and pretending to bum his buddy for amusement, there's the girl dressed like a clown being helped outside by her mates because she's stopped being able to vocalise or move her limbs, she'll be alright in a bit, then leaping past her there's the guy in shorts with a water bottle feeling on top of the world and becoming even better mates with his best mate.

I force my way through the BO and backpacks to the smaller room to find Shige and Go running on time and playing sans delay pedal on the bass guitar, not that it seems to matter I guess, they're going down a treat, a dub bass excursion infused with Shige's Scotch Egg style melodies. I hadn't really thought about what they might sound like but upon hearing it I suppose it's exactly what I should have expected. It's alright, and I could probably dig it if I was in a different mood, but I was in a tired old bastard mood and without anything to alter my mood or the will to find anything to alter my mood I decided to go for a fag and check out all the stupid outfits in the smoking area.

I saw a bit of that incredibly irritating swinging stuff around on strings thing (what's that shit called again?) and some guy looking for his drugs that he just dropped because he's completely off his tits and that was it, I left because it was all doing my head in. I had to negotiate this little shirtless midget with dreadlocks simulating dog sex with a shapeless, fucked up cow of a girl on my way out which was disgusting, but just outside the club I saw this K'd up guy having extreme difficulty standing up on perfectly level ground but clearly loving the fact and that was pretty hilarious really.

So I didn't see Vibert or Mike Dred or Ceephax, and Shige didn't get his delay pedal, but you know what I don't feel like it was a waste of time. I actually enjoyed it in a strange, detached way. I used to go to Bangface quite a lot because it was always a good old rave-up, and it was good to be reminded why I stopped going. 'Cause I stopped taking loads of drugs. And 'cause I'm becoming a moaning old cunt.

noise=noise - The Foundry 26/08/09

2009-08-27T02:07:00.001-07:00

So I missed the second and third wednesdays of the month of noise=noise due to an impromptu camping trip and a bout of something I don't remember, but I made it to this one, the final one. And I missed the first four acts or so, but nevermind, it's not like the rest of the night was much cop.

I think the first act I saw was called Baraclough, it's always hard to tell at these sorts of things because there's never any setlist on display and if anyone is introduced it's through a distorted mic that makes everything sound like you're drowning in mud. Anyway let's say it was Baraclough that I saw, well they were passable, a mixture of placid throbbing drone and some naff delay. I could liken it to a sawmill cutting through iron logs, but it was probably far less harsh than that would actually sound. The finale was the best bit, a bright wall of sound that almost touched on euphoria there for a minute.

Next up, this older guy played a laptop drone set which was both the least dynamic and most satisfying set of the night (that I saw). A heavy wodge of harsh drone, a tonne of black rubble rolling deep under high frequency squeals just shy of piercing.

That's him, I don't know his name but he was pretty good actually. Dunno if that comes across in this shitty photo.

I then managed to miss Cementimental which was annoying because all I did was smoke a fag and he'd finished. Apparently he smashed up a bunch of equipment. I got downstairs in time to hear some applause so I'll go ahead and say he did a good set anyway. Or at least good enough that some people clapped.

I don't know what the next guy was called but he had really long dreads and he was shit. He mixed a bunch of wavs together with a lot of jumping about and waving his skanky hair about but not much thought or talent. In fact no talent. Maybe I'm biased because I fucking hate dreadlocks, which is another thing actually, how come like ninety percent of the people in The Foundry have that shaved head apart from three dreads sticking out at a jaunty angle haircut? I don't get the idea. They look like hairy shits. One nearly touched me last night, nearly touched my face when this guy turned around near me. Pretty much ruined my night. Asshole.

The last guy, EQ-AV had less dreads than whateverhisnamewas and proportionately more talent, like some kind of reverse Samson effect was in play. However, he still wasn't particularly good. Mixing video files in Traktor, projecting the results on the wall and manipulating the audio in the standard EQ knob twiddling way, he started out promisingly with some cacophonous footage of London traffic creating the impression of being repeatedly run over by a bus, but went steadily downhill until he was basically making shit industrial techno using boring footage of some iron bars and a plant.

I was glad to get home and shower to be honest.

Stereo Juggernaut/Uncle Pedro/Voltage Players - Catch 25/08/09

2009-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Taking their cue from every successful North American alt rock band since the nineties, Voltage Players sound like an amalgamation of every successful North American alt rock band since the nineties. With a leaning towards Shellac.

Taking their cue from every successful North American alt rock band since the nineties, Uncle Pedro sound like an amalgamation of every successful North American alt rock band since the nineties. With a leaning towards Fugazi.

Taking their cue from Placebo and Evanescence and shit like that, and the fact that they have a midget in a leather jacket with a teenager's haircut as their frontman and a clueless German miniscule square of chin hair wearing beefcake on emotive keyboard, Stereo Juggernaut sound like shit.

Faux-harmonica keyboard solos can never be excused.

Colour Ride All Dayer - The Windmill 15/08/09

2009-08-24T03:38:00.000-07:00

I was pretty distracted during this whole thing due to attempting to film it all, but after getting a taxi to the wrong venue in the wrong part of London and lugging a load of equipment to this
back road pub, here's the stuff that stood out:

- A big old Irish cunt serving up barbecued food with a scowl and the temperament of an irritated bear. Procuring a burger has never seemed so frightening, or amusing.

- KK/KK opening the day with a decent bout of slightly too quiet drone.

- Mutant Ape delivering a solid wodge of noise in a biscuit tin.

- An awful gaggle of fools channelling their inner retard in the smoking area via the medium of shit instruments played with feckless abandon.

- Drums and sax free jazz outfit Rose-Nichols Duo (I presume) who would probably have been more impressive had I not had Alex Ward, Alan Wilkinson and Yoshida Tatsuya make my ears cum the weekend previous.

- French improv pedal pushers Motherfucking inadvertently looking like they were furiously wanking and enthusiastically sucking dick whilst playing, which was hilarious and yes, puerile, but way more entertaining than their music, unfortunately.

- A horse-riding looking woman swaying over some space journey synth. Stellar Om Source, I believe. She was average and Dutch.

- Blood Stereo cancelling.

Overall the lineup was as varied in its sound as it was in its quality, but the infectiously laid back atmosphere remained constant throughout the whole affair. Whilst nothing wowed this cynic, it was at least a relaxing day, even with the effort of recording bundled on top of it. I appreciate the work put in to organising something like this so respect to Colour Ride for keeping its knuckle down and promoting the experimental, even if half the experiments produce stinky results.

Drum Eyes w/ Damo Suzuki - Hoxton Bar & Grill 11/08/09

2009-08-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

Drum Eyes change line-up every time I see them, and tonight, despite the absence of Trencher Liam on drums, was their best yet. Two drummers, two synthers, one guitar and Scotch Egg Shige alternating between bass, laptop and synth, they brewed up a psychedelic storm heavy enough to drench the busy bar and grill. There were times where it turned almost to grey soup but at their best they sounded like a heavier version of Goblin, which is a mean synth horror and no mean feat.

So then what happened in the break? When (most of) Drum Eyes returned to the stage to improv with Damo Suzuki it all started out very timidly as a slow, background ambience and went nowhere. Where did all the energy and verve go? And volume? It was weak. The last set had sounded frightening but this one just sounded frightened, like no one wanted to take the responsibility of picking the track up and running with it, no one wanted to grab Damo by the balls and say freak out to this Suzuki you old fuck. So there it was, old Damo waxing lame over some pretty uninspired drone muzak. I gave it about fifteen minutes and left feeling like I'd given it hours. Maybe they should lay off the spliff in the interval. Fuck knows.

Ruins Alone/Alex Ward and Alan Wilkinson - Cafe Oto 09/08/09

2009-08-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well this was so damn good now where do I start? Well where did they start? Alex Ward and Alan Wilkinson pick up their clarinet and sax respectively and immediately fill Cafe Oto with an intense scream that has no business being made by just two men and a couple of tubes with holes. And it doesn't let off for the length of their first piece, even when both guys decapitate their instruments and get to playing little chirps with the severed mouthpieces, it's all done with such relentless energy that it manages to sound fierce and like a delicate dawn chorus all at once. Impossible! But No! Wilkinson was playing the sax with his leg at one point. Leg saxaphone, no shit. They enter into their second piece a little more subdued, little lower, little slower, lulling us a little before they simultaneously have heart attacks into their instruments and Alan abandons his altogether and goes pure vocal, freaking out like some kind of cock-eyed, farcical gorilla and then it's just some moans, moans and groans, moaning down through a dismembered clarinet, groaning into a baritone sax, whatever, it's brilliant.

Yoshida Tatsuya plays next as Ruins Alone, playing drums and keyboard and vocals and flicking around with backing tracks. The whole set is a torrential outpouring of ideas, overloading, utterly insane, rabid music. There's a lot of Zheul type material in there and some metal and there's fucking ridiculous synth noise bits and there's a section comprised of tiny segments of various national anthems, pop classical favourites and the phantom of the opera. What the hell is that? It felt like he could have played forever, never running out of energy or material, as if this is just what's happening in his head all the time and if you give him a drumkit to sit behind he'll let you in on it for a bit. When he stops it's abrupt and comes from nowhere and you realise you're still trying to process the stuff he was playing five minutes ago and by the time you've caught up with him he's had a ten minute break and it's time for all three guys to play together, time for the trio.

Ward swaps clarinet for electric guitar, then swaps back and swaps back again until by the end of the set he's playing both at the same time. Yoshida channels the gods and rains down an almighty storm on drums and keys, while Alan cheekily farts his saxaphones around it all. It is on the fucking limits man, it's crazy, it's heavy, it's mesmerising, it dips into Slayer then chews up the tape and throws it in a pond. It is freaky fucking music and it's infectious and the whole evening was so right on and so fucking righteous that when it's all over the crowd start barking like dogs because they've just had their minds flipped fully upside down and that's what crazy people do, they bark like dogs and they wiggle their tails.

noise=noise - The Foundry 05/08/09

2009-08-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

The first of a month of wednesdays for noise=noise at the finest of the fixed gear cider hippie hangouts The Foundry, and what a month it looks set to be. I started off in fine form, arriving just in to time to miss most of the acts, including but not limited to Ryan Jordan and Joel Cahen, but their sets were probably great so that's what I'll say. I saw Cementimental play even though he wasn't on the bill. He played five minutes or so of harsh nonsense using his homemade Noisebox, essentially a black box with knob and switch protrusions on several sides, none of which have any kind of chilled out setting. Good fun that.

John Wall played next, a whole different proposition altogether, playing far from harsh noises on an easily recognisable piece of silver kit with a glowing fruit in the centre of it's lid. It's been quite some time since I've enjoyed a pure laptop set but Wall's highly considered improvisation was teasingly seductive and expertly reined in. With one hand constantly up, fingers tweezering as if plucking the sounds out of the ether, he made his apple weep in restraint, his soundcard capitulating to constipation, often emitting barely more than a hiss while the remnants of the last yelp were given room to die completely, alone.

After hanging around outside for a bit, drinking a can from the shop and soaking up the multifarious fumes of the relentlessly busy intersection outside the Foundry, I made my way back to the basement in time to hear the last three notes of Cheap Machines' set, which sounded nice, I guess. It's not much to go on really. Regardless, the evening was a relaxed and pleasurable one and I'm very much looking forward to the next three Wednesdays. Fo sho.

Supersonic Festival - Custard Factory, Birmingham 26/07/09

2009-07-26T07:07:00.000-07:00

In a rare feat of economic acumen, I decided to just go to Supersonic's Saturday this year, which meant no Goblin (they're on the Sunday) unfortunately, but there's a recession on and all that, and Saturday had the bulk of the big draws for me so there you go. And here I go, off to bloody Brum again, home of metal.

After ordering a pint and being told by the barman that it was four quid, and him even adding in a thick Brummie accent that 'it's dayloight robberoi', I was thankful I'd smuggled a hip flask full of Sainsbury's own Bourbon past the docile security guards. Four quid. Jesus. No worries though, the sounds of the Flower/Corsano Duo offer a relaxing start to proceedings, their freeform space jazz ambling along very pleasantly indeed. They're an entertaining sight to behold too, Corsano clearly having a ton of fun playing around with his kit, laying rags around and putting pans on the skins, while Mick Flower kicks out his leg like mule and freaks out on the synth.

Diagonal seemed worth a watch going by the blurb in the booklet but turns out they weren't. A lot of people on stage doing not much to get excited about. They sounded a bit like a crappy Goblin, at least for the bit I watched, which only served to remind me that I wasn't going to see Goblin this weekend, so I left and checked out Tartufi, who weren't much more entertaining - just middle of the road drone guitar with some dawdling drums. It wasn't that it was bad, it was more that it was so slow and quiet they might as well have not been there. Partly the fault of the PA and sound engineer I reckon.

Nevermind eh, a quick trip to Birmingham's optical nightmare The Bullring to use the facilities, and it's back in time for The Master Musicians of Bukkake, whose name I won't explain because if you don't already know what bukkake is then consider yourself lucky. Congregating on stage in red silky robes with white quaker hats and black netting over their faces, they look like Satan's beekeepers, and they call upon their gilly suited frontman with an alpine horn. Sounding laid back and woodlandish, like Earth reached the end of the dusty plains and headed into the lush forest, which makes sense considering the band is largely made up of Earth and Burning Witch members. The theatrics are pretty stupid but the band sound great, so it's with some regret that I drag myself away to see Nisennenmondai. Not too much regret though, seeing as last time I saw Nisennenmondai I considered it to be one of the greatest things that had ever happened. This time wasn't as awe-inspiring as the first, that's probably too much to ask anyway, but still these girls are great to watch, each one perfect and individual in their style and supremely tight knit as a group. It's euphoric trance music, but not like the shit that's usually associated with those words. This stuff is genuine, and genuinely uplifting.

And so on to something totally different, Iron Lung are the sound of violence. Incredibly brutal drumming and harsh guitar noise, it's hard to believe there's only two of them, so powerful is their assault. The fact the drummer is the size of a gorilla probably goes some way to explaining it. Fucking hardcore. After a brief sojourn to the car to refill the bourbon, and a brief visit to the burger stand to eat a shitty patty, the first of the big names is due on.

There's a lot expected of Thorr's Hammer for a band that was only around for six weeks fifteen years ago, perhaps understandably so, given the credentials of the members and what they've done in the interim. But any worries they might not satisfy were crushed as soon as the first string was struck. An unfathomably heavy set ensued, Runhild Gammelsæter producing deep, blood curdling vocals from some hidden pit within her slight frame. It was clear everyone on stage was enjoying the reunion as much as everyone off stage, O'malley and Anderson particularly relishing the opportunity to play something a little faster paced and less straight faced than their Sunn O))) excursions. Heads banged steadily throughout.

Back on the outdoor stage with the crappy sound, Zu were heavy rocking their stuff, stomping on everyone's ears with a tight laced boot of bass, the sax squealing over the top like a spectrum loading cassette gone off its spool. I'd have stayed but something special was about to begin over on stage 2. The elusive, anti-everything, Japanese doomsayers Corrupted play their first ever UK show. Playing slower even than any of the recorded material I've heard of theirs, they create a wall of sound so heavy it subsides and shifts under its own weight, a crushingly beautiful end of days soundtrack, that should have marked the end of this day. Unfortunately Monotonix got that honour, and how disappointing they were. I loved Monotonix when I first saw them, and I enjoyed the second time well enough (although the novelty had started to wear thin), but this time it seems the inevitable has happened. They've gotten too cocky, too predictable and too big for their boots. They're barely a band anymore, certainly the singer might as well not have a microphone seeing as all he uses it for now is to bark orders and insults at people. Gone is the feeling of spontaneity, the bin on the head of the drummer is now so rote they bring their own with them. The pint stealing, the mooning, the standing on the kick drum, it's all an attempt to distract you from the fact that they sound like shit, the arrogant guitarist's riffs are uninspired and the drummer, who seems like he is a pretty good drummer in all fairness, never has his kit in one place long enough to play it. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against bands being mental and causing mayhem, I'm a fan of that in fact, but this is all so contrived and predictable now it doesn't seem like fun, it seems like a sweaty guy rubbing his back on your face, because that's exactly what it is. It's not enjoyable, it's not funny, it's not my idea of a party. All it is is just plain boring. And without decent music to back it all up I can't see them lasting much longer.

So that was it, we walked out and I fell asleep in the car while being driven back home to London. A one day festival for me this year, and a pretty fucking great day it was too, all things considered. If Supersonic keeps it up, it's on its way to being pretty much the best festival going. Finally someone giving ATP a run for their money. Next year I wanna see Zeni Geva and Sleep. Go on you can do it. And a Swans reunion. Ha.

Hulk Dash 9 - Korsan Bar 19/07/09

2009-07-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

So Hulk Dash celebrates its first birthday. Here's some stuff that happened, I think I missed a couple of acts but shit happens you know, sometimes I need to smoke a cigarette, or cook some sausages on the barbecue. Yeah, there was a barbecue, promoters take note. Anyway...

Opening proceedings, Jack Shirt played some kind of Clangers on ketamine synth stuff and segued nicely into an unsettling fairground guitar section before ending it all with some drone. Lovely stuff from the little man in the shoes. Shortly after that, Lion Lies Down ran around a circular drum set up incorporating the world's tiniest cymbal, played some really cheesy little guitar melodies and sang vocals through a kind of gurgling effect pedal, sometimes all at once, sometimes not at all, sometimes really good, sometimes not at all.

Then I missed some guys playing at the bar. Then Kayaking went fucking nuts. There's no other way to explain it. And Cau_cational Betreet somehow followed that up and fucking destroyed with possibly their heaviest set ever, sounding like a metal band getting its head kicked in and run over by a tank.

Hooray for Hulk Dash, may it live for many years to come.

Morrissey/Doll and the Kicks - The Troxy 18/07/09

2009-07-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

I didn't plan on this. I'm cycling past the Troxy and there's a long queue so I stop and ask someone who's playing, they say Morrissey and offer me a ticket. I used to like The Smiths, I wonder what The Troxy looks like inside, I have nothing to do, I lock up my bike and say ok.

After getting in I realise I should've waited outside for a while 'cause now I'm stuck in here for ages. I get a three pound fifty bottle of bud in a little plastic cup and realise I won't be able to get pissed while I wait. The support act finally comes on and I realise I may have made a huge mistake. An irritating showtune voice gogo girl and a band made up of fucking Gaultier models. Does that sound any good to you? Because that sounds fucking shit to me. The preening and prancing about is as utterly fucking terrible as the utterly fucking terrible music. You can occasionally see up the girl's skirt a bit, but it's simply not enough to make up for the soulless bullshit they call a show. Doll and the Kicks they're called. This years 'ones to avoid'.

Finally, after I go off to hide in the smoking area for a year, Morrissey strolls on and opens with a big Smiths tune. The familiar sound of This Charming Man brings a big grin to my face and manages to convince me that ok maybe I didn't make a mistake. It's maybe a testament to Morrissey's lyricism that I enjoy a lot of the solo stuff I've never heard before purely on the basis of his vocals, but it's still the Smiths' stuff that makes up the vast majority of high points. How Soon is Now? is particularly outstanding.

The set wears on a bit, the second half considerably weaker than the first, but I amuse myself by looking at all the fans. Morrissey fans all look like Morrissey wearing a Morrissey t-shirt. It's great. They're also either all old, fat and gay or young, skinny and undecided. At one point he sticks the mic in the crowd and this guy grabs it and shouts, emphatically, Mancunianly and, I think, through tears "Morrissey we love you, we've come all the way from Manchester again to see you and we will follow you everywhere you go because we love you Morrissey". It's great, I mean, it's hilarious. I'm enjoying the gig but it hasn't turned me into a teenage girl at an NKOTB concert. Grown men crying. Brilliant.

After his encore Morrissey rips his shirt off, wipes it all over his large sweaty trunk and lobs it into the crowd. They love it, obviously, and I like it because it makes it clear I shouldn't wait around for a second encore. As I leave the support act are trying to give their CDs away in the foyer. No one wants one. Because they are shit.

And for all those crazy obsessive Morrissey fans that may stumble upon this review, here's a setlist:

Edit this setlist | More Morrissey setlists

Action Beat/Agaskodo Teliverek - Buffalo Bar 17/07/09

2009-07-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

Action Beat play hard, breaking sweats, strings, sticks. They conjure up a whirlwind of distortion, the faintest hints of melody swirling around with it, occasionally surfacing to something approaching clarity before being dragged back into the maelstrom. Eventually, one of the guitarists has had enough and dives into a drumkit, then another drumkit, and finally one more drumkit, as it becomes apparent that the coolest thing about having three drummers is that you can do three drumkit dives at the end of your set.

In contrast to the loose rocking style of Action Beat, my old friends Agaskodo Teliverek play their unique line in schizophrenic surfy grunge-pop, jerking and grooving, switching between wonky guitar melodies and bumblebee swarm riffing, jungle breakbeat and easy listening jazz drumming. The set is a bit sloppy by their standards, but that's not to say it isn't good, after all, their standards are higher than most.

1st Annual UK Noise Conference - Old Blue Last 07/07/09

2009-07-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

The way this was set up the abundant acts were on constant rotation playing really short sets so I don't think I managed to quite see everyone, but I saw a whole bunch of good stuff. Here's some mini reviews in no particular order:

Sloppy Seconds did a twin rabbit costumed drum and guitar confusion, smashed up a clock and chalked times on the floor, with the audience trapped inbetween them looking a bit bewildered.

Blue Sabbath Black Fiji were described by someone I overheard as 'fun'. Not really my idea of fun but I can't deny that they are chock full of beans, and every time they play they spill those beans everywhere, all over their stuff, all over the place, and it makes a big fucking racket.

Cementimental freaked out with a modded megaphone, flailing around, fighting with his tools.

Timothy C Holehouse played vile plunger triggered noise with a screaming beard and little hat.

Defibrillators had a very exciting looking drumkit, which failed to excite too much.

Team Brick looked a bit annoyed.

A guy I know only as 'Ryan' played the highlight of the night, an intense strobe experiment that stabbed eyes and ears simultaneously, repeatedly, rapidly, with sharp bursts of blinding light and damaging sound. Extreme, almost agonising, utterly brilliant.

Thou/Moloch/Jackal Headed Guardian Of The Dead/Haar - Henry's Cellar Bar (Edinburgh) 25/06/09

2009-06-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: In truth I'm writing this a month after the show and I have no notes to reference and I don't remember too much about it, but I don't like to skip over gigs on this blog so here's some stuff I'm pretty sure happened...

I can take a certain amount of theatricality and gothic affectation but Haar strayed into silly territory and I can't take silly seriously, so I went outside and smoked a fag. Next up were Jackal Headed Guardian of the Dead who were like a sloppy Sleep, with a drummer who seemed to not really know what was going on and a guitarist who put as much emphasis on standing with his legs wide apart and sticking his tongue out as he did on his riffs, but the spirit was genuine and the show was solidly entertaining.

Comprising some ex-Army of Flying Robots and some other guys, Moloch stepped on stage and straight away hoisted a weighty bucket of sludge upon the audience, covering our heads in it and getting it in our ears, which is what we wanted to hear, here, tonight. I think. It's fine, nothing new really, but done well and played well by good musicians. I particularly like the guitarist who looks about eight. That's a good look.

Crawling all the way from the swamps of Louisiana and headlining the night was Thou, soon to be put out on Southern Lord, which for any sludgey doom type band is a great thing to have on your CV. They sounded the part for sure, and even had a satisfyingly redneck looking vocalist, wild eyed and weasely, with a hell of a tortured scream on him. With heaving, droning guitars, crushing drums and deep, slow bass penetration they ticked all the requisite boxes with a pen dipped in the blood of a sacrificed goat. Not jolly, but a jolly good show.

All in all not bad for a night chanced upon and attended on a whim whilst in Edinburgh. I even picked up a copy of The Hardcore/Punk Guide to Christianity from the zine section of the merch stall, which by the way all shows should have a zine section. It answers questions like what does Jesus think of tattoos. It's not as funny as it sounds.

Mogwai - HMV Picturehouse (Edinburgh) 24/06/09

2009-06-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

This was the UK Premiere of the ATP film, where they'd promised an 'extra special Scottish band' was going to be performing after the film, which I already knew was going to be Mogwai, but I came to see the film so that didn't put me off. Anyway, they played and I was there so I'll do the review.

They were boring as usual.

Burial Hex/Saturn Finger/Kinit Her - Cafe Oto 16/06/09

2009-06-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

Kinit Her up first with an odd mixture of growling, extremely high pitched vocals and staid metal riffs which you'd assume were a joke if they didn't look so serious about it. I wouldn't recommend it.

I'd come to see Burial Hex who was apparently going to perform a set especially adapted for the idiosyncrasies of Cafe Oto, which turned out to mean he played Oto's grand piano for a bit before continuing on as normal, smashing bits of metal into each other and manipulating distorted loops with effects pedals. The piano was accomplished and morose in the extreme and accompanied by some chanting and growling vocals, with very quiet, soft, noise under it all. It was all satisfyingly gloomy. The perfect intro to the crushing noise that made up the rest of the set, like something irascible was lurking there and spurred to erupt. Very angry, almost frightening, and utterly engrossing.

Rounding off the night were Saturn Finger, who just sounded like a couple of amiable but demented alpaca farmers calling upon some Peruvian god for god knows what. Something exciting maybe? Their god wasn't very forthcoming.

Wooden Pigs - The Winchester, Bournemouth 06/06/09

2009-06-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest, this is my cousin's band and that's why I went to see them. I knew they liked Kings of Leon a lot so I wasn't expecting it to be my bag, and it wasn't really my bag, but it was a good bag nonetheless. A bag that a lot of people would love, I'm sure.

This was a charity gig and to please the crowd they played a bunch of Kings of Leon covers in amongst their own stuff, which was uneccessary really, because as far as I could tell, their stuff was better than the KoL stuff. The band has all the elements in place, pretty much. A solid rhythm section, a talented guitarist and a singer with just the right amount of attitude. It's all there and if they can find their own voice just a little bit more then they could do really well I reckon, selling their bag in all good retailers nationwide.

Primavera Sound - Parc Del Forum, Barcelona 28-30/5/09

2009-06-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Barcelona is so lovely and the line up for Primavera Sound looked pretty amazing so I thought I'd go along and miss quite a lot of it, due to having free beer on tap all weekend thanks to my friend sorting me out with a magic ticket.

Here's some stuff I remember. The first thing I saw was Lightning Bolt, which was surprising because usually most people can't actually see them because they're on the floor in the crowd. But so this time they played on stage, I don't know if that's a first, but it was a first for me and I've seen them a whole bunch of times. Considering it's like an integral part of their shtick that they play on the floor, it was actually really great to see them play on stage. Perversely it had a kind of novelty value, I guess. Seeing a band on stage. Anyway, they rocked pretty hard.

Then I saw Jesus Lizard again, which was even better than last time I saw them a couple of weeks ago, somehow, although there was nowhere near the same level of stage diving action from Yow. He made up for it by doing a lot of freaky dancing though, which was a sight to behold. I think I saw Dead Meadow next, who were drunk as hell, just like me. It was great, they just locked into their grooves and played real slack. It was obvious they were having a good time and it really osmosed into the crowd and everyone was swaying in that drunk and stoned manner that people do at laid back psychedelic shows, until the bass player stumbled backwards a bit too much, knocked over his wine bottle and said something to the guitarist that I presume was Man I'm so fucking drunk I can't play because they stopped pretty much right then and were rewarded with much slack applause and heartfelt but flaccid whistling from the wasted crowd.

Made it back up to the big ass beer sponsored stage to drink more sponsored beers while it was fingers in your ears for My Bloody Valentine's increasingly infamous noise holocaust finale. I like watching other people watching this bit, it's funny how much everyone is looking forward to seeing MBV play and how much everyone can't stand listening to it by the end. Different strokes and all that, I just like listening to solid noise played really fucking loud.

What was next, oh yeah, Aphex played a way better set than at Bloc, despite it being a bit 'going through the motions', but I mean whaddya want from the guy? Some stuff to dance to with a bit of a fucking weirdo attitude to it, pretty much. Really great visuals too, including some scat stuff that made me glad I hadn't managed to get any drugs because that would mess with a my high something terrible.

Squarepusher played next but he's a boring old self cheering muso whose current output is overwrought, soulless bullshit really isn't he? So I called it a night.

The next two nights were far less eventful, friday starting out terribly with Art Brut, possibly the most vile band I've ever seen. Hey this next one is about when I realised that there's only two things that matter in life and that's DC comics and chocolate milkshake. Hey this next one is about heroin addiction. I mean seriously just fuck off. So damn punchable.

Thankfully Sunn O))) played a brief but great set. Seeing the Grimmrobe Demos outdoors in Spain as the sun is going down is really a special thing, especially when you turn around and the path leading down to the stage is rammed full of people throwing horns in the air. I love that shit.

Jarvis Cocker is endearing.

Shellac are incredible. I don't know if it's the intoxication of holiday, or alcohol, or heat, or what, but this set is the best I've seen them play in a long time. Solid dirty crunchy fucking snide rock music.

And that's about it. Saturday just had a disappointing Neil Young (he finished with a Beatles cover and keep on rocking in the free world for Christ's sake) an underwhelming Sonic Youth and a Zombie Zombie that played really late that I couldn't be bothered to sit through the Black Lips for because I really can't stand the Black Lips. Man I'm a bit gutted, I really wanted to see Zombie Zombie you know. Oh well.

Overall I guess I liked the festival, although it climaxed on the thursday for me and then just had two more nights pumping away with dwindling effectiveness. It was certainly nicer than Sonar, but almost all the good stuff was on the ATP stage, so I dunno who to praise really. I'm getting pretty fed up with praising ATP, but it's not their fault they keep putting on great bands now is it?

Right, now the festival is over I'm off to the beach to get constantly hounded by people trying to sell me shit. Fun in the sun, people.

Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu)/Prurient & Cold Cave - Cargo 25/05/09

2009-06-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

I went to this because the Prurient set I saw a couple of years ago was fucking incredible. This show tonight was a load of shit. I mean it was laughable. He was playing with Cold Cave. I don't know who Cold Cave are but I can tell you one thing, they look like gestapo hipsters. Actually, two things, they sound like shit New Order. Prurient sticks some noise behind it all but it's no use. It's beyond help. I go outside to smoke.

I hoped that Jamie Stewart would be a nice surprise, he was the reason this was so expensive after all. Well, turns out he was a surprise, not exactly good, more just very odd. An obviously heartfelt performance, stripped down Xiu xiu tracks for the most part, just vocals and guitar with an occasional blurt of casio keyboard. Really very inventive in many ways, but trite in as many others. Extremely crass gay lyrics which fluctuated between brilliant and stupid and managed to get the high density bear crowd emoting all over the place. I really couldn't decide whether I liked him or not but I felt fairly compelled to continue watching him, and that's better than most acts manage I suppose.

Kayaking - The Macbeth 25/05/09

2009-06-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Two lovely girls, one heavy gig. Industrial and brutal drums over pyschadelic synths, it's the soundtrack to an outer space mining colony. I'm biased, because my girlfriend is one of the two girls, but they are dead good and everyone should check them out. Just don't hit on the tall one.

ATP vs The Fans - Minehead 8-10/5/09

2009-05-13T03:55:00.000-07:00

All Tomorrow's Parties again. An odd line-up all in all but that's what you get when half the bands are chosen by the fans. Still, having Jesus Lizard, Sleep, Harvey Milk, Electric Wizard and DEVO all on the same bill makes me happy enough that they could flesh the rest of it out with utter crap and I'd still be more than up for it. It turns out they did pretty much fill the rest of it up with utter crap.

Well whatever, Beirut and Spiritualised just aren't my bag. And Liam Finn is a bag of shite. Frankly, I'd seen a lot of acts before and didn't want to see them ever again. There were some exceptions though, well, one exception that I can recall, and that was Nico Muhly. He was one of those acts I really had to drag my ass out of the chalet to go and see during the day. Turns out that a tired ass on a comedown is a great thing to sit on whilst listening to this guy. Sounding like some strange avant-garde ambient folk music, all the parts adrift on a calm sea, slowly washing in and out of sync, it's genuinely soothing music and a real contrast to everything else I was into this weekend. He was my new discovery, of which there is always one (and only one) at each and every ATP.

The rest went as planned, pretty much, I saw all the bands I wanted to see and all of them were amazing, especially Sleep, who closed my weekend with one of the greatest sets I've seen from any band, ever. Heavy fucking riffs. David Yow was everything you'd hope for with Jesus Lizard, stage diving before he'd even spit his first acerbic line and repeat offending to the extent that he probably spent more time on the crowd than in front of it. I should give a mention to Killing Joke, not because they were any good, but because their hilarious rants about supermarkets intentionally poisoning our food really tickled me, the crazy old shitters. Other than that, my band played and got shut down, then played again, didn't get shut down and were awarded the accolade of "best moment of ATP" by whoever wrote the review for Dazed and Confused. Oh and, perhaps - in retrospect - inspired by DEVO's urge to devolve, I stripped down to my pants and ran into the sea.

USA is a Monster/Shigeru Ishihara - Bardens Boudoir 03/05/09

2009-05-05T05:38:00.000-07:00

Shige is aka DJ Scotch Egg and he plays tonight with Horacio Pollard and a couple of other guys, jamming with synths and guitars, Shige conducting by way of the mixing desk. It's a cosmic happening you know, it swells and freaks out. I could hear it through my skin, like a spilt liquid narcotic. It's hip, babe, and I can dig it with a space shovel..

I didn't know anything about USA is a Monster other than LOAD record affiliations and a general murmur that they are supposed to be the hot shit. They come out looking like four schools made a band out of their number one least popular kids. The drummer looks like Robert Crumb's self portrait got tied and dyed, the guitarist looks like a big wodge of cake someone trod into the carpet, and the other guys... I don't remember. One was a girl, actually. But whatever, they get going and it's like what. Never has something looked so wrong and sounded so right. Fucking insane drum licks, shifting time, and everyone keeping up, the trodden cake's terrible dreads flailing around as he frantically fingers his guitar like a mum watching Manilow. It goes all over the place too, from exceptional grooves to stuff that sounds like American college chants at sports matches. Only about half of it actually sounds appealing, but the whole thing is absolutely enjoyable purely for its sheer imagination and the wonder of it all. Like how much practice that must take. And how does that drummer's brain work?

We went to a house party after with Shige and the trodden cake and got kicked out straight away which was cool because the party was terrible. We stood and drank outside for a while hoping people would fall out of the window, but no-one did.

Eugene S Robinson - The Old Blue Last 30/04/09

2009-05-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

Eugene is a big fucker. Anyone who's seen him on stage with Oxbow will attest to that. He is a hulking man, and not only that but he enjoys his size. He enjoys the theatrics of it all. He enjoys being imposing, appearing powerful. He doesn't enjoy violence though, he's just interested in it. Well that's his official stance on the subject anyway.

He's promoting a book he's written called 'Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked For Asking' which is a compendium of stories about his youth, interviews with various fighting types from pro's to bar room brawlers, and illustrated tips on how to beat the shit out of people. Sat downstairs at the Old Blue Last he relays stories of violence over the general noise of the pub. He's a decent enough raconteur and the stories split evenly between him getting beaten up and him doing the beating. They're all pretty nasty. He maintains that his interest lies in investigating the nature of evil and the red mist that takes over when a violent man gets violent. Apparently he talked to Charles Manson about it and he didn't know what Eugene was going on about.

It's entertaining enough, if a little worrying being sat close enough to see how his eyes kind of crazily wander off when he starts talking about kicking people in. I'm not convinced by his motives though. It seems to me he's attached this ponderous human psyche angle to what is essentially a love of violence. It's odd because actually behind all the fighting talk he seems like a really nice guy, and certainly an interesting character, and his stories stand up without this unconvincing justification he's attached to them. But you know, whatever, I'm not gonna argue with the guy, he's a big fucker.

Horacio Pollard - The Black Sheep 29/04/09

2009-04-30T03:13:00.000-07:00

This was in Croydon. Fucking CROYDON. I'd never been to Croydon before and within minutes of getting off the train it became obvious why as I saw a two men trying to kill each other, one of them eventually picking up a length of I think corrugated iron - I mean like a large pointed shard of rusted fence - and chasing after the other one with it.

So that was fun and I found the place, late, missed Cementimental and Bbblood and got a terrible pint of cider from the bar. Horacio Pollard played a wildly different set to the manic screaming horror of the recent show I'd seen, this one more of a sombre affair, but no less imposing. Slower and lower, an ocean liner of tortured corpses, perpetually sailing into a midnight harbour. The screams, sickening. Literally sickening. Even moreso than the stuff they serve on draught here.

A hellish landscape that fit Croydon like a black leather glove.

Ingested - Old Blue Last 25/04/09

2009-04-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

I am way behind on these write ups, so much so that I can barely remember this gig other than I was supposed to be going to some terrible club to see someone but at the last minute got told not to bother because everyone was leaving and just to go to some other place and wait, at which point I got a sudden recollection that wasn't there supposed to be some metal gig on at The Old Blah Blah so I went there instead because it was just around the corner and lo and behold there WAS a metal gig on and it was a blast.

Sure, it was probably helped by the fact that I dodged a dodgy dance club bullet and ended up there by surprise, but regardless, it was decent. There was leather and hair and sweat and BC Riches. They played death metal I guess, who knows, metal genres are a fucking minefield but they were tight, fast and heavy and really fucking entertaining so what more do you want from them? Saved my night. They tore it up and looked dead pleased with themselves. And rightly so.

Skullflower - St Giles in the Field Church 18/04/09

2009-04-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

As the drone swirls within the capacious domes and alcoves of the St Giles in the Field church, the slow figures of Matt Bower and his comrades sway in front of the altar, guitars strung low. It's the perfect setting for Skullflower's dense, spiralling sound, the building manipulating the group as it swallows and reverberates at will, a complex mind of its own.

A darkly alternative church service, consuming, forever escalating and ultimately... queerly soothing. It's not quite a religious experience but it's certainly a pleasantly affecting one and it has me slipping from pew to aisle as the heaviness plays literal on my head and I lay there supine, fuzzy and content.

David Byrne - The Royal festival Hall 12/04/09

2009-04-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

I booked these tickets so long ago that by the time tonight came around I was pretty much vibrating with anticipation. David fucking Byrne in the grand surroundings of the Royal Festival Hall. Yes please.

So we sit down and the show starts and Byrne is humble and joking around, looking perfect in all white with silver hair and he kicks into some Byrne and Eno stuff that I'm not mad into but it's fine, and then he really gets a groove on and it's the oddest thing just sitting there in the RFH. Just sitting there while Byrne struts that signature jerky head pecking style, it's awkward. I want to get up and move and I want everyone to get up and move because this is just a real strange thing to witness right now, sat here in a seat, thinking about is the woman next to me pissed off 'cause I'm using the armrest there. It's like how do you go to see David Byrne and sit there and barely even nod your head to the beat, people? Bizarre. It had the feel of all the fun was on stage and the crowd was just staring at it.

And then he plays Crosseyed and Painless and thank fuck people are hoisted up and we run to the front and dance and we don't stop for the rest of the set and we dance through two, three, four(?) encores and it is a wonderful thing as he goes from one incredible groove to the next. Grooves worn in to your ears but never worn out. Impossible to wear out. And surrounding those grooves is the performance on stage, choreographed but loose, the cynic in me wanted to dismiss it - these silly prancing dancers - but it's too much fun. It's only good vibes and you can't ignore good vibes big enough to fill a place like this.

So. Damn. Fun.

Wet Paint - The Old Blue Last 09/04/09

2009-04-10T04:48:00.001-07:00

Ah Wet Paint, you sound like my own personal nostalgia. All Pavemented and Dino Juniored up, I can hear you from bygone times, the buzz of youth still audible in your amps, despite being drained from your faces.

It's maybe a year since I last saw these guys and evidently they've been practising. They're tight now, but still retain the appealing fuzz to it all, like they've been serviced but neglected to opt for the full valet. And with welcome new addition Macks Faulkron chewing away on bass they've injected a touch of the Thin Lizzy into the proceedings, which is like who wouldn't want that?

So hooray for Wet paint, a band far more entertaining to watch than their literal namesake. I will see you again, because you are my mates.

Aaron Dilloway/Nate Young/Family Battle Snake - The Grosvenor 07/04/09

2009-04-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

Slowly slowly builds the background, swirling up behind the insistant dull thud that almost sounds like it's coming from next door. It's drone and it's a fairly unremarkable set from Family Battle Snake but it serves as a decent enough warm up to the evening's events, lulling everyone into a half asleep, half wired state, perfect recepticles for the slow noise meanderings to come.

Nate Young sits in front of his contraption stacks with a single drum at his side and gurns his way through a quiet, creepy set. All itchy contact mic abuse, delayed into a rhythm and uncomfortably sustained as if restrained by shackles, prevented from dissipating into the atmosphere. There's even a bit of spoken word in the middle there, evoking black holes and bottomless pits, complementing the soundtrack far more than sounds likely on paper. And there's a stunning transition midway, when the almost overwhelmingly tense, slowly growing rough boulder of sound is suddenly crushed to a distant rumble, only to become the deep beat running under the rest of the set. Affecting stuff.

Not to be outdone, Aaron Dilloway takes to the stage and sets in motion the whisper of a tape, the loose loop of it hanging over the back of his desk, artfully placed on the heads so it slithers around, wrong and organic looking. And the set winds slowly denser, with more tape manipulations and noise administrations, the quiet caution gradually abandoned until two contact mics are stuffed inside his cheeks, wires trailing out of his mouth like a war torture victim and the creature that seemed so reluctant to be heard is suddenly bearing down on you, fitting and spasming and tearing at your ears, a pained sound, attacking out of fear like a cornered animal until it's abruptly shot dead by it's own father.

Fucking excellent.

International Noise Conference: Laundry Room Squelchers/Bbblood/Horacio Pollard/Blue Sabbath Black Fiji/Girl Mountain - Gramaphone 06/04/09

2009-04-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

The concept for this Noise Conference evening is punchy little sets with no lappies. Kind of a raw noise smorgasbord. I caught the second half of the eight act roster, still reeling from a heavy weekend, I figured a noise gig would go down a treat. And it did.

Girl Mountain are a one boy one girl duo sitting with no shoes on running vox and mini keys through a rack of pedals and knobs in a set that was just one long crescendo. Like being
pulled through a forest of dead leaves, the howling wind slowly picking up and distorting more and more but with a warmth there, under it all. Not unpleasant, quite soothing even, but ultimately the lack of dynamics rendered this set a right old plain jane.

So then on to the markedly different Horacio Pollard old buddy old pal. Stripped down to just a mic, a few pedals and a guitar amp, Pollard rips the atmosphere to shreds with a wild beast of a performance. Pure aggression just tears through the mic, like being shouted at by an angry, industrial goliath. It's all spontaneous and reactive but it's controlled which is the real trick here, the intent. There's nothing extraneous, no leaking feedback, just a fucking staccato horror that demands your full attention. And you give it willingly.

Up next are Glasgow based lovers Blue Sabbath Black Fiji and their enthusiastic crunchings. Full of verve they roughly spank their guitars and drum machine and etceteras, It's all very free and fun and full of verve but really it's not doing much, the excitement visible on stage never really managing to emerge in the sound. An edgeless blur, an unfocused experiment, lacking results.

So to a personal favourite, the Baron, Bbblood. This is the guy. A man at one with his switch array, it's all power. All clunking metal. It's a terrible car factory built wrong, spitting out lethal vehicles. You can make out the screams of the twisted car frames in pain, and Bbblood is taunting them, poking at them with an electric prod and guiding them into the compactor. A sadistic foreman with absolute authority over his machinery. Fearsome stuff.

And topping off this lovely evening are the amorphous, Miami living, Rat Bastard headed gang o' weirdos, The Laundry Room Squelchers, with a two minute long freak out of screaming, singing, flying about, dragging along and inadvertant wire unplugging. It's a condensed mess, it's fine, it is what it is, freestyle over substance.

Wevie Stonder/Agaskodo Teliverek - Some secret location in Limehouse 04/04/09

2009-04-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

The big, secret gate opens and I go down and around and down and around to the bottom of what is pretty much just a big empty squat and there's a load of wobbly squatters all watching Agaskodo Teliverek doing their thing. Their thing has changed up a quite a bit too, most tracks rearranged, re-goulashed with new bits, new jerky stop start bits, groovier sections and better drums. Much better drums actually. And new tracks to boot. They've upped their crazy game substantially and I like it a lot. It's fun, it rocks, it's jiggy, it's like they've made lego models out of duplo and technic and regular bright red bricks and left them in the garden to get a bit dirty. It's a jolly good time.

And then yes, so, waiting for Wevie and this place is whirling almost exclusively with drunk guys sporting caps and tracky tops and slaughtered girls with skirts over jeans because like why. But it's a good vibe nonetheless and when Wevie S hit the stage it's a big dance comedy party. The freakishly tall freakishly toothed frontman stamps a rubber stamp on my arm that says Wevie Stonder: Survival of the Shittest as they all jump around in wigs and hodgepodge coats made of photos and fur toys, playing instruments and pretending to play instruments in equal measures, it seems. For a complete load of nonsense it's all very accomplished really, the whole ridiculous thing like some drunk old bunch of seaside circus anarchists. There's even a knobbly knee competition with a disqualified contestant. See. Thoroughly bloody enjoyable.

BLOC Weekender - Butlins Minehead 13-15/03/09

2009-03-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

Load of crap.

I decided to go because I had a free ticket. I decided I'd miss the Ramesses gig at the Old Blue Last on the saturday because there would be enough stuff at BLOC to make up for it. I made an incorrect decision.

Rather than go through and explain that almost everything was shit, and not just shit, but somehow shitter than when I went two years ago and had a terrible time, I'll just highlight the highlights. Because there's no need to say that Carl Craig was shit. Or that FSOL were shit and didn't even come to the festival, opting instead to play from their studio on a shit webcam. Or that pretty much dance music has just gone to shit. Or that the Butlins staff were once again being complete fucking assholes... ok I can sympathise to an extent this time, I suppose, because the punters were mostly wankers. Wankers in hats. But still, Butlins police, no thanks.

So yeah, I'll do the highlights, here goes:

Friday night - Big Alan insists that this one kid is really amazing, this one kid who's playing at fuckin' 5am or some shit. So I endure the rest (gay cowboy dancers?) and wait for Rusty. And yeah Rusty is actually dead good. Mixing all kinds of bass heavy stuff in very odd and inventive ways, with that crisp baseball cap and oversized cartoon t-shirt smirky attitude that only a genuinely talented eighteen year old can pull off. Yeah, I'm glad I stayed up for that, I'd go see him again.

Saturday - Egyptian Lover was a laugh, dead old in a fancy black shirt doing the shit you'd want to hear him do, his old electro shit. And he was dancing, which was entertaining, and he picked up his 808 and went "you know what this is? Eight-Oh motherfuckin' eight" and played with it and that was entertaining. He was a dude.

Aphex Twin and Hecker, one of two reasons I thought it would be worth coming, turned out to be disappointing. I believe the idea was to have Hecker do surround sound effects while Aphex played whatever he wanted but they hadn't tried this out beforehand and it was all a shambles and didn't work properly and was very underwhelming and the set was a disjointed load of stops and starts and hard techno and kind of naff. I got a nosebleed towards the end which I suppose counts for something.

Sunday - The second of two reasons I thought it would be worth coming, Russell Haswell, DJ'd on sunday evening and didn't disappoint, thank fuck. He did his anti DJ thing of like mixing nasty techno really badly and then abruptly stopping it to play some fucking really quiet bee swarm sounds or a helicopter ride or something. I really like it. It's completely fuck everyone.

He was followed up by DJ Bennetti aka William Bennett of power electronics legends Whitehouse, who stood there in a fur coat and mixed really bad italo disco for an hour. I was intrigued but it was no fun, and so I left.

So there you have it, an almost complete waste of time. And apparently Ramesses were amazing. Fuck you world!

Sunn O))) - Corsica Studios 22/02/09

2009-02-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

ONLY DEATH IS REEEEEEEAAAAAAAAALLL

As the robed protagonists take to the stage the call of a lone youngster on drugs breaks the grim theatrical atmosphere Sunn O))) just spent twenty minutes building up. And the show is all the better for it. This one off gig, celebrating a decade of extended doom, sees the band stripped down to its two founding members Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, within the notably diminutive confines of the Corsica Studios. An intimate bare bones set up that manages to yield probably the most affecting Sunn O))) set since the first time I saw them.

Going to see them play multiple times is like going to the theatre to see the same play over and over, but with a changing cast in different theatres, so to be wowed anew by them is quite a feat. Everyone there was into it, everyone caught up in it, swaying entranced, and when O'Malley turned around during the final section of amp dial fiddling to see his and Anderson's guitars both hanging from the ceiling surrounded by fog and undeniably sublime frequencies, and to see a crowd of horns raised in approval, he grinned. Which I'm pretty sure is a first.

Flower Corsano Duo/Arrington De Dionyso/Zun Zun Egui - Bardens Boudoir 20/02/09

2009-02-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

I liked Zun Zun Egui and I liked the way the dude incorporated slagging off the placid London audience into his frankly weirdo vocal style and managed to make it sound pretty cool still. They were a bit 'world jazz' but enough psychedelic for it to not be a problem when it went all virtuoso instrument noodling. Yeah, fun.

Arrington De Dionyso is fucking terrible and drove me to up my drinking which meant that by the time Flowers/Corsano came on I was too easily distracted by stuff like Big Alan getting punched by a teenager outside and like, pinball.

Chris Corsano looks like he's just been born, like he just fell out of a vagina onto a drumkit and started hitting them and my theory here helps to explain why he plays like he's never heard anyone else play the drums before. Which is a good thing, in this case, in case you were wondering.

Dopplereffekt/Mu-Ziq - Corsica Studios 07/02/09

2009-02-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

NOTE: I forgot I went to this gig, so it's out of chronological order. So what? Fucking sue me.

Motherfucking Dopplereffekt! I've wanted to see these guys for a decade. Gesamkunstwerk is amongst my most worn out records and my gawd I'm hot for this shit tonight. They step up in black masks and play korgs facing each other and barely move for the entire set, it's eerie, it's regimented, it's science fiction but it's happening right there and I can see it with my big flying saucer eyes. The audience reaction is mixed, with a lot of people expecting to hear some bad ass underwater Cold War electro type shit seemingly disappointed by the stark alien planet soundtracks seeping out of the speakers, some of them even fucking incredulously standing there for the entire set talking over it about how they didn't like it and shoving their big fucking tarlike hairdo into my face instead of shutting up or getting out like any reasonable person would. Other people did like it though, me included. Apparently it's their penultimate gig and I'm so damn glad I was there.

Mu-Ziq was shit surprise surprise who cares.

Il Goblini/Lasers from Atlantis - Old Blue Last 13/02/09

2009-02-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Lasers from Atlantis are about twelve, they were so cute. You just wanted to eat them up. Aw. Their sound was a nice little psychy proggy sound for kids, it was like a birthday party freakout. It was SO cute. Anyway, maybe I should afford them more respect, but whatever. The guitarist and the keyboardist are probably destined for great things, in about ten years. Bless 'em.

Continuing the kids out past their bedtime theme of the night, Il Goblini are Goblin covers band at a school band bash. Comprised of virtuoso kids dressed up like what they think adults dress like, they've emerged from their bedrooms to bring us the music of the best italian horror funk band, with none of the italian horror funk. It was lacking, like playing pacman on a phone. Il Goblini are the wank, to Goblin's full sex. Sure they're fun, and they're tight, but they just don't compare. But then, how could they?

Cove - january some time.

2009-02-13T09:58:00.000-08:00

I ain't been keeping up to date because I've been away, abroad or something, I dunno. Playing with my balls. Anyway, I saw Cove play in January and they were drunk. Especially Dave.

Dimension X/Doddodo/Scul Hazzards - 16/12/08

2008-12-19T04:07:00.000-08:00

I came in halfway through Scul Hazzards and I was digging it but something was lacking. I caouldn't put my finger on it. It was all in the vein of Jesus Lizard, Big Black... sharp noisy guitars and that. Quite fat, plodding bass. Not up to the standard of those bands but the comparison is fair enough. Somehow they failed to get a rise out of anyone. I think they were just boring to watch. Yeah, they were just boring to watch. Oh well.

I haven't seen Doddodo for about three years. She's doing the same stuff really. A bit less hectic but still, same old Doddodo. Which isn't a bad thing because she's a very entertaining little cute pocket sized sweety who does something pretty unique, very Japanese and oddly theatrical. And hip hoppy. Good fun.

Dimension X being as it is Chris Corsano drumwunderkind, the awesome bass guy from Zu and some other guy on guitar who is a sixteen year old looking guy, put on a decent show with plenty of improvisation let down only really by the bass amp breaking early on and being replaced by a distinctly less fat one. The slightly crap sci fi related dialogue samples could have been left out but otherwise yeah, nice one.

Chrome Hoof - Cargo 12/12/08

2008-12-19T04:06:00.000-08:00

Chrome Hoof put on a good show but every time I see them I'm just waiting for them to do that one ultra heavy bit with the gladiator mask right at the end of the set.

That shit is straight from some cosmic hell type shit.

ATP Nightmare before Christmas curated by The Melvins and Mike Patton 05-07/12/08

2008-12-15T08:47:00.002-08:00

Everybody was ill, including me. We all missed everything.

One thing that happened of note was that Bad Guys performed their debut gig in a chalet on saturday night after Squarepusher kicked out. Most of the festival attended and every single one of them was high, I think. Having had one rehearsal and come up with five minutes worth of material, it's pretty admirable that Bad Guys managed to play for how long? Like forty minutes I think? I dunno, I was gone. The set ended when Jared from The Melvins decided he simply had to get in to the by that point bursting chalet and broke the amp.

The bill was £450. The Butlins people looked confused by the footprints on the ceiling.

I lost my voice again.

Oh yeah, and Porn were fucking great.

The Locust - Bardens Boudoir 04/12/08

2008-12-15T08:47:00.001-08:00

I love seeing The Locust play live. They really live up to their name, sounding like a horrifying swarm, operating with a hive mind. It's brutal, aggressive and impressive. It gets you riled.

I headed straight to the epicentre of the pit as soon as the set started and held my ground there throughout, witnessing kids getting brained on the ceiling protrusions and having their glasses smashed underfoot, and suffering leg-breaking, rib cracking crushes myself. Multiple times one particularly brittle young boy was thrown forth into the drumkit, eventually fucking the bass mic and causing The Locust drummer to throw a hissy fit and complain that people were being rowdy.

That, actually, was the one downside to the night. It's become apparent to me through seeing interviews with the band and seeing them live a couple of times that they are basically dicks. Or at least certain members are. Which sucks because they play like fucking demons. Oh well, I woke up the next day feeling like I'd had the shit kicked out of me for an hour and feeling like it was worth it, and feeling like how the fuck am I supposed to go to ATP for three days and nights and not die now?

Agaskodo Teliverek - Buffalo Bar 02/12/08

2008-12-15T08:46:00.001-08:00

After taking part in Kania Tiefer's mass hypnotisation of every straight guy and lesbian in the place - the result of a combination of an impeccably cute belgian accent, silly euro-nonsense performance, sports socks and short shorts - I picked my jaw up off the bar, tucked my approval into the waistband of my jeans and suffered the offensively bland Three Trapped Tigers who sounded like the kind of stupid future version of the world which people imagine is Utopia but is actually mindnumbingly unentertaining to the point of making you feel suicidal. In a bad way.

Then Agaskodo Teliverek step to the stage and Jesus Christ Hiroe looks fucking insane she's wearing a Patrick Bateman raincoat over a bikini and she's one month short of giving birth. Her screaming has got better since last I saw this bunch of peculiar hungarian surf grunge dance pioneers (although not a patch on the screaming she'll be doing in January, no doubt). The whole act is regimented and tight and performed with military precision, admirable considering the psychotic, schizophrenic style of songwriting on display and it's obvious these guys are serious about their fun music, which is good news for us.

Hulk Dash 6 - Korsan Bar 29/11/08

2008-12-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

The free barbecue was cancelled! Disappointed, I hoped the acts would make up for it, they were certainly abundant enough to give it a shot. So abundant in fact that I kept missing them simply by going out for a cigarette.

Highlights included the end bit (the only bit I caught) of Ghouls of Reduction's noise noodlings, extnddntwrk's confused terrorist playing confused music act, **k's bricklaying paced set that amounted to a skyscraper and Toxic Pijin's raucous bread throwing music. Special mention must also go to Cementimental for flipping some switch in half of Ghouls of Reduction's mind and sending him satellite dish smashing loco, rolling all over everything and kicking in drums.

The only lowlight was Smash T.V. who were being irritating luminous dicks all night, displaying the kind of skinny wideboy bragadocio that makes you want to take an axe to their faces and culminating in a giant, shithouse, audibly garish jerk off set of shit MCing over shit gabba and the type of bleeping that makes you feel like you're being poked in the head by the local fuckwit. And the fuckwit is wearing a hat with shit graffiti on it. And an ironic bright red unignorable sweatshirt. And that was it really. Luckily they were last so leaving during their bouncing shitfest wasn't an issue.

But lets not let that detract from the rest of night which was bloody good fun. Thanks Hulk Dash, see you next time.

Zaimph/Bridget Hayden/Library Tapes - The Miller 28/11/08

2008-12-01T07:06:00.001-08:00

Why is it everyone from Iceland sounds the same? Melancholy ambient strings and twinkly piano like snowflakes melting into tears. Way to reinforce stereotypes Library Tapes. You've even got the wooly hat to go with it. Why are you crying in the corner go buy a happy lamp.

Bridget Hayden: Boring barefoot cross-eyed bowed guitar bullshit with faux ethnic chanting. Boringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboring

I saw Hototogisu a while back and it was pretty good, pretty solid guitar noise shit so I thought hey maybe Marcia Bassett will be good by herself and you know what? She was alright. Quite nice. Quite Euphoric. Not totally special. Bit boring. But professional.

Racebannon/Trencher - Lexington 27/11/08

2008-11-28T03:47:00.000-08:00

If my memory serves me correctly (which it rarely does) I used to watch Trencher every week a couple of years ago. Now it seems their shows are significantly thinner on the ground, but no less heavy on the ears, or on my ears at least. Tonight the crowd, which was about ten people strong, was made up of vegetables and the whole performance seemed to pass everyone by, including Trencher. But I enjoyed it well enough. Their casio-horror-metal sound is easily recognisable and they've crafted a decent repertoire out of it, nothing spectacularly good, but they're solid and I'm glad they're still going. All the best to them.

I'd heard Racebannon were supposed to be 'freaking ace' or something, but to me it was more like 'freaking tell your vocalist to leave'. The guys with the instruments are cool. They look like they still practice in their parent's garage. They look like spotty metal teens in thirty-five year old bodies and they play like they look, which is to say they are unabashedly heavy and unironically metal. But the singer is a big whirling curly turd who should whine and wiggle about someplace else.

Disappointing.

BBBlood/Legless/Mutant Ape/Horacio Pollard - The Foundry 19/11/08

2008-11-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

This American dude Legless has come over and put on a one-off noise gig at shit-art arsehole shithole bar/post apocalyptic teenager's bedroom The Foundry. So I go.

Horacio Pollard plugs a bunch of pedals and a mic and a tape machine and a guitar into a big amp and gets angry in front of everyone while he fiddles with it all. Rolling around on the floor, the noise seems to be working directly against him and the more he protests the more subdued the sound becomes, like he's shouting it down. It's a unique set and really very satisfying.

Onwards and downwards, Mutant Ape plays background drone loud enough for it to enter the foreground. Like a record run-out groove straightened out and laid down a dirt path, slowly going nowhere.

Curator Legless is up next. What new sounds do you bring from America good sir? Good sir I have travelled from America to bring you no new ideas at all. Enjoy! He rattles a tin around to little effect as his trite distortion does little to stimulate anything. Very done. No need to do again.

Then, like a huge fucking bright red beacon of hope, BBBlood headlines the night with an excellent display of total brainfuck horror noise. Ten minutes of highly invasive surgery, lung and gut disrupting bass and high frequency saws cutting your skull into bits. Fuck yes. The Baron stakes his claim as top London noise dog by bayonetting your spastic heart into submission. Beautiful.

Monotonix - The Luminaire 13/11/08

2008-11-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

Ten quid advertised, turns out it's twelve and no support. And the trains to Brondesbury are down for the month. this better be worth it.

Having seen them do their three man party thing at ULU earlier on in the year it was a no-brainer deciding whether to go to this or not. I'd be surprised if there was another band with such a huge disparity between CD and stage performance because seeing them play is like taking a trip to the circus. With an extra long forty five minute slot to fill they really need to pull out all the stops so we get a mix of the usual bins on heads, drums on the bar, pint stealing, ass mooning mayhem, with some new tricks in the mix like an acrobatic intro, a bit of stand up and a drawn out funeral and resurrection improv section outro. All this is fine and entertaining and it's all good vibes and partylicious and everything but let's step back out of the fray for a moment, go and lean on the bar and watch it play out from beyond the scrum.

Do they sound any good?

Yeah they sound fine. They're not amazing by any stretch but they've got some good riffs and they've got a good drummer even though he's rarely got his whole kit available to him. The part of the music that's lacking is the vocals, which pretty much do nothing except provide an excuse for the main clown to be there. Don't get me wrong, I like these guys, I love watching them play, but I don't go for the music I go for the laughs, and I wonder how long the gimmick is gonna last before people just sack it off and complain that the main dude basically smells and I wish he'd stop touching me.

Sun Ra's Arkestra @ Hokaben Festival - 93 Feet East 09/11/08

2008-11-10T10:24:00.001-08:00

Illness, Stockhausen and money prevented me from attending the friday and saturday night of this decent looking festival that had been in my diary since summer, but I mustered up the energy and the twenty three quid necessary to get down on the sunday evening 'cause Sun Ra's Arkestra were on and despite the glaring omission of Sun Ra in the band due to him being dead, I figure they must be worth seeing anyway.

In the run up to that I see a few other acts, one of which is Lords who have somehow managed to amass a decent following despite sounding like Reef. Ok, that's a bit harsh, it's just the vocals really. And the guitars.

Some other crappy bands played like Rolo Tomassi and, I dunno, some others, including one band called I'm Being Good who, despite spouting vocals weaker than an eight year old with ME and their unconvincingly heavy guitar generics, did manage to have a really fucking cool drummer with that 'pro-basketball jew' look, slam dunking snares and bass drum in your face meester.

With all that out of the way the Arkestra plodded on stage in their sequined space travel ponchos and did some jazz music. Headed up by Marshall Allan (who I saw in Denmark last year playing with a terrible group of kids) they worked their way through a selection of fun time freaky licks before delving into a bit of Duke Ellington, some early Sun Ra stuff and eventually just kind of settling into a more trad sound with a kind of token Arkestra trip inflection underneath it all. It was initially brilliant. Just a shedload of real fun, but by the time I left it had descended into what one might call 'a good wedding band', if one were to be a little harsh. And one is.

The fact is the older, more longserving members of the Arkestra looked pretty apathetic (it's in the eyes, and the way they can't even be bothered to put their special outfit on properly), or like they just plain didn't want to be there (checking their watch after each solo). And I got the kind of impression that no-one liked being bossed about by Marshall Allan.

It's unrealistic to expect something akin to a classic 60's freakout performance, especially considering the main man is dead (or on Saturn or whatever) but I think it's fair to set your hopes a little higher than a slowly deflating balloon of a set, considering the credentials of those involved. It was just pedestrian, which is not what you want from intergalactic travellers, but I suppose even spacemen gotta pay the bills.

London Sinfonietta play Stockhausen - Southbank Centre 08/11/08

2008-11-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

First up is 'three songs for alto voice and chamber orchestra', which commences once the giant conductor Oliver Knussen heaves his way onto the stage. The three pieces are constantly at odds with themselves, jerking and flowing, evoking an air of dread one moment and goofy frolics the next. The effect is enhanced by the alto whose resolutely no nonsense voice is offset by her zany facial contortions, all inquisitive and laughing and frighteningly stern as if in the throes of a particularly strong microdot experiment. She looks so confused whilst perfectly fronting the sinfonietta you imagine she might have been bestowed with this incredible vocal power minutes before being thrust on to the stage. Perhaps it comes from the magnificent green velvet dress she's stuffed her toad-like german bosom into, like the singing equivalent of football's Billy's boots.

In fact much of the enjoyment is garnered from watching the various personalities evident within the Sinfonietta, an activity at least as entertaining as the music itself. The nimble fingertips of the hulking conductor and the intense concentration of the barely used xylophonist are two particular highlights, and so it is that when the second section is presented, completely pre-recorded, with the lights out and nothing but the suggestion of a full moon (one spotlight) left on stage, that events become significantly less delightful. 'Urantia' is a great swirling mass of electronically manipulated string sounds with a lone soprano emitting drone notes over the top as it all gets panned around in glorious surround sound in the dark. The result is nausea, plain and simple, followed by a sense of admiration for the effectiveness and tenacity of the piece, followed by a premature desire for the interval. It comes eventually.

For the last section a different iteration of the Sinfonietta appears on stage, sans German lung muscle, and play (for the first time in the UK!) 'Zodiac', which is fine and dandy and suddenly becomes elevated to highlight of the night status when from out of nowhere (stage left) a ruddled man appears with a tuba and deep farts in the silence. The tubby tubist then proceeds to plod about the stage, stopping intermittently to deliver another preposterous pomp, much to the crowd's amusement. After a circuit he's done, he bows, he leaves and the Sinfonietta finish off the piece.

A pleasant, if somewhat accidentally amusing, evening.

ATP Release The Bats Halloween Party - The Forum 31/10/08

2008-11-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

Wow what a great line-up, glad I got tickets before it sold out, this is going to be one hell of a halloween, I just hope it isn't ruined by security staff who despite mostly being black and not 1940's Germans, think being a Nazi is fucking right on.

There is no need. There is simply no need for it because there is not going to be any trouble at a gig whose audience consists solely of indie kids, most of which are over thirty and the rest of which are twigs. And why can't I have a cigarette until half nine? And why do we have to walk clockwise into and out of the dancefloor area when there is literally no congestion at all. Who is in charge here? Please leave.

Oh right, the bands. Lightning Bolt are good but their stack falls way short of filling this large venue. Plus it's half six. How the fuck are you supposed to listen to Lightning Bolt at half six?

The beer is £3.50 a can and they pour it into a plastic pint glass so you get a non full pint of non draft beer. Fuck you Forum.

Pissed Jeans are fancy dressed and rock semi-dissappointingly, with the singer doing a drag act that's so convincing it's distracting and ultimately has you wanting them all in jeans and t-shirts just rock n rolling and no fucking about.

"You cannot stand unless you are standing in front of a seat".
"But I'm not blocking an aisle, or a fire exit or in any way whatsoever being potentially hazardous or inconvenient to anyone".
"That is not the point".
That is exactly the fucking point.

Om are the same as every other time. It's fine but quite frankly, I don't want to go back in. I like it outside with my cigarette. Back in the free world, you know.

Les Savy Fav are crap and blurry.

Shellac have the best costumes (Steve Albini makes a great mummy and Todd Trainer is a vampire) and they rock because they always rock but their staid old palette of songs isn't enough to make up for all the shortcomings of the night and I leave a few tracks before the end and wait outside for my buddies with a bitter taste in my mouth despite all the sugary fake blood around it. I've had a good time but nothing compared to the potential of the night.

Maybe I'm just pissed off 'cause my Jojo the dog boy costume was a failure, but I wouldn't have won the competition anyway. No, that award has to go to the Forum itself, for its incredibly convincing 'fascist state' disguise.

Gang Gang Dance - Hoxton Bar and Grill 11/10/08

2008-10-14T08:53:00.001-07:00

I don't know really, I guess these guys are ok. I mean the singer is a good performer and the band has a lot of energy and a nice vibe to their whole thing but there's something in this muddle of dance and psychedelia, pop and rock that doesn't sit right with me at all. It's all schizophrenic. For everything they do right, they do something wrong. The singer and the synth guy are exceptional, the guitarist and the other guy - the bassist or whatever - are unremarkable. For every infectiously groovy surprise, there's a dire tribal trance version of My Bloody Valentine.

I'm all for experimentation, but their style seems to me less 'musical discovery' and more 'chaotic whatever' and at the end of the day, it's tiring listening to a fucking mental yoyo.

Alexander Tucker/Sculpture - Cafe Oto 08/10/08

2008-10-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

Alex Tucker is fucking boring.

Sculpture was great. I mean, he was actually pretty excellent with his messed up dance music and his messed up mic style, in spite of the shitty set-up they have there at Cafe Oto. Go Sculpture.

But Alex Tucker is fucking boring. I sat in front of him and fell asleep immediately. Then I woke up and walked out.

That's my review.

Captain Sons and Daughters - The Stone, NYC 26/09/08

2008-09-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Completing a trio of visits to my new favourite place on the planet, The Stone, I come tonight to witness a two piece, man and woman, junk and organ, Captain Sons and Daughters. I come on a newfound friend's recommendation, and it's well placed. The duo start up with the dude creating subtle loops on his collection of metal boxes with dials and switches and wires sticking out them, while the dame plays long drone notes over the top on her manually fanned organ. It all sounds very aged, a long worn and sepia toned sound, like they're tapping into something that has been playing since all this was just fields. As his extended delays constantly fade and replenish themselves in slight variations a railway momentum is gathered and her organ delves into melody, it's all so lovely and heartwarming it's like seeing your grandparents smile at each other.

If it hadn't finished I could have slept there and used the sound as a blanket. So comfortable.

Manorexia - The Stone, NYC 25/09/08

2008-09-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

Jim Thirlwell is the curator for september at The Stone and tonight he brings his own Manorexia project to the stage, or at least the bit of floor where you imagine a stage would be, if The Stone wasn't so damn humble and minimal and so fucking god damn cool.

So it's a performance of fairly creepy, subtly exciting and wonderfully rendered pieces, featuring three lovely ladies on violins, one equally lovely lady on cello, one super chap on percussion and xylophones and whatnot and the foetus J.G.Thirlwell himself on laptop.

The least noticable part is played by Jim and frankly I have trouble figuring out exactly what is coming from his laptop, but it's unimportant. The whole thing is easily enthralling enough to pop me out of my Brooklyn Beer induced premature semi-slumber and raise the hairs on my neck. It's not horror music, but it is subcutaneous and it is impressive in its execution to the level that makes you sick and delirious with awe. It rolls and changes and surprises you. It is a show that finishes with you immediately walking up to buy a CD despite knowing that there is no way it can recreate what you just witnessed. It is one of those rare shows that makes you feel exceptionally lucky to be in a certain place at a certain time.

It is what it is all about. It is why I go out.

Andrew WK - The Stone, NYC 24/09/08

2008-09-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

So The Stone is a little place John Zorn set up as a 'not-for-profit performance space dedicated to the EXPERIMENTAL and AVANT-GARDE'. Just a tiny room with some fold out chairs, a grand piano and no lock on the toilet. It is a fucking cool place. Every month a different artist curates two acts a night, six nights a week. That's a lot of music.

The door is inconspicuous, a corner near nothing else, 'The Stone' in tiny silver letters by the handle, but it's easy to spot the place tonight by the line (this is America so it's a line, not a queue. I learnt this) of hip kids outside. Pourquoi? Andrew WK is playing. A solo improvised piano set. What am I supposed to expect from this? His reputation is firmly rooted in how hard he parties not how well he makes stuff up on the piano, but I figure it's worth checking out. And it is.

He walks out, shorter than I expected, in a white suit and sits and fiddles with a couple of keys. He continues to fiddle with the two keys while developing a light melody over the top. Soon he's in the middle of some very nice, delicate, quick and repetitive piano piece, reminiscent of Steve Reich, maybe, only the bits that sound off are more accidental. He continues on, surprising the fuck out of me a few times before coughing into the microphone, uncertain of what to do next. A few false starts and jokes starts and a shaking head. The mood is exceptionally light. An um and an ah and he's off and his ass is out the seat and he's singing wop bop a loo bop and shaking his legs about and he's had enough and it's 'thanks everyone' and he's off back through the door to the basement, sweating a little.

I leave feeling more confused about who the fuck Andrew WK is than when I went in. Regardless, whatever he is he's alright on the piano. I know that much.

All Tomorrows Parties New York - Kutshers Country Club, Monticello NY 19/09/08 - 21/09/08

2008-09-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

I went to New York baby. This is what happened:

Friiii-day.

I take the Shortline bus from New York City to Monticello in the Catskills, upstate New York. It's eighty degrees out and we cruise along the highway as the leaves turn colour and the daytrippers park their SUVs by the chrome diners at the side of the road. There's Madlib on my ipod. It's the last thing I'll ever play on it before it disappears somewhere in the three day blur waiting to kick off at the other end of the bus route, at Kutshers Country Club.

Kutshers has charm. An erstwhile golfing suave-hole rendered semi-creepy kitsch from lack of modernisation. The chandeliers are square brown glass affairs, the wallpaper peeling and as Patton Oswalt points out in his friday night stand up routine, "David Lynch could shoot here. Just turn up and fire his set designer 'cause all his work's done for him". Friday night is all about the stand up for me. There's a bunch of bands playing a bunch of 'classic' albums on the main stage, but nothing that appeals enough to distract me from the jokers. I catch the end of Joe DeRosa, I laugh a couple of times. I watch Maria Bamford play the funny freak, occasionally lapsing into just plain freak. I see Eugene Mirman deliver a consistently chucklesome set, as satisfactory as a well timed light lunch. And I take in Patton Oswalt's set, as long as the other three combined it delivers the lowest lulls and the heartiest lols of the night. Funny guys.

Saaad-a-day

Must have got fucked up after the comics 'cause saturday I woke up wanting to eat pancakes for breakfast for the first time in my life. We go hitch a lift to a giant Walmart. I say it's giant I don't know how big a regular Walmart is but this thing was huge. There were giants in it too, scooting around in electric trolley cars, buying giant sodas and giant bags of Cheetos. Giant TVs. We get to a roadside diner and go all 'when in Rome' ordering fries and steaks and a stack of pancakes and coffee, coke and OJ. The woman at the table next to us is ninety and talks thick bronx like an eighty a day New York narrator. The waitress is fat, black and friendly and fucking perfect.

The sun is so bright. The roads are so wide. The liquor store puts the vodka and rum in brown paper bags. We take a cab back to Kutschers with some Californians, all nice people, covered in sunshine. Everybody all weekend is nice people. The day is spent drinking in the heat by the boats by the lake. Smoking cigarettes. We just don't bother with anything else. I don't see Alexander Tucker play but he see's me dancing to the tele through my bedroom window. After half the acts have played I finally drag my ass to go see Edan and Dagha, doing this whole thing of rapping about rapping while scratching and mixing, whilst scratching and mixing. I get it you know. Rappers need to learn to rap about something that ain't rapping, how good they are at rapping, how their rapping is better than other rapping or how they can rap and do other shit at the same time. You don't see guys in bands playing guitar and singing over the top about oh my god see how I play the guitar whilst singing as well. More people should rap about Satan, the dark lord of hell. Or something. I digress though, and Edan was actually pretty entertaining. Like really good cabaret or something. He even wears wigs. And Dagha did a stellar job of standing next to him, occasionally saying shit and fucking about with an echoplex. Blah. My flask is drained.

Oh I have to go film Low. My god I cannot hold a camera still. This footage is useless. This band is boring. Go back to the room and drink to Shellac. Wait it's too early to start drinking to Shellac. Oh shit. What's that? Lightning Bolt were great? Weren't they playing straight after Shellac? Yeah. Fuck. Fucking Rum overdose. Fuck it. Wasted. What a waste. Well, I'll stick the general consensus in here, in lieu of a first hand review. Shellac and Lightning Bolt were both awesome. Of course they were fucking awesome, they're always awesome. They're awesome bands. They're live bands.

Afterwards some guy is playing Mario music on the grand piano in the lounge area. It's one of my favourite sets of the weekend and it's from a punter. Straight up. Stomping on those keys like goombas.

Suuun-day.

Whoops. Fucked up that night huh. Ok let's get some work done. Let's film everything today.
Le Volume Courbe. Jesus it's barely even lunchtime. Pfft at this weak-ass twee-ass ass-music. Pfft right at it. Music for people whose toes point inwards. Who's next? The Wounded Knees? Did I even see them? Might as well not have. Sunday is boring to look at. I'm falling asleep looking at the line-up. It's bands with a capital L after the b. Gemma Hayes? Good Lord no thanks. If I wanted those vibes I'd sit in a cake shop full of babies. Hold up, EPMD are playing. how on earth did that happen? (Gawd bless ATP) They're a total anomaly but thank fuck for that. Here they come, old motherfuckers playing to the whitest crowd they've ever seen. They declare that they are going to school everyone in the meaning and essence of real hip hop. Hooray! No-one has ever done that before! Good job EPMD. Well, you're entertaining and all, it's a bit weird all your mates just hanging around on stage with you but whatever, I like your raps. I like your rapping ways.

I don't like Mercury Rev and then I watch Mercury Rev and I've gotta admit, I liked watching Mercury Rev. It's not my bag you know, but it's clear these guys are experienced in the art of performing music. And so they should be, because they're old. The singer looks like a faun in some fantasy theatre production and he keeps pretending he's flying. It works, somehow. It's a big sound. Over on the second stage I don't like Trail of Dead enough to be bothered to write their name out in full, but they did ok. They made a little bit of the ceiling fall down, which is pretty cool in my book. No-one was hurt though, which was boring, and the set maintained a level of excitement which didn't match up to the energy they all seemed to be putting in to it, which is probably somehow bad for the environment. Their fans seemed to love it though, but they're fans of Trail of Dead, so who cares?

Next up was Mogwai, a band I have somehow seen quite a few times despite not liking them at all. Every show a boring load of durr. A load of building up to nothing. Now I don't know if it was the setting tonight, I don't know if they were on tip top form playing the tip top cream of their catalogue, but they raised hairs on me. There were pay-offs at the end of the slow climbs. They were trudging up those mountains and when they broke through the clouds at the top there was beauty there for everyone. Bravo those Scots.

After avoiding Dino Jr and avoiding writing about Brian Jonestown Massacre because yawn, so all that's left on the bill was the main event, the curators of the day, My Bloody Valentine, and people were excited all over. I already reviewed MBV at one of the Roundhouse gigs in Camden earlier on this year and this was more of the same except I wore earplugs for the famous holocaust finale because last time I damaged my ears. The first time around tipped this one but probably just 'cause it was the first time around. Still, it was special and a real fitting end to the festival line-up, all noise-talgic and dreamily brutal.

Once MBV was over I got to put down the camera and pick up the vodka. A drink by the lake, a drink in the bar, a dance, a girl punching me trying to get me to dance with her like that's gonna work (it might), closing time, a party of twelve (approximately) left on site, a man with a speaker on his back like the pied piper of indie leads us to the shack from Friday the 13th on the other side of the lake, run down and beat up and full of mattresses and no electricity. I leave and howl across the lake to a party of stragglers. We get back to the jetty and running jump into the lake as the sun starts to rise. The security return us to our room where I shower then wake up elsewhere, back in the lounge area by the grand piano, several hours after checkout.

We have a three hour wait at the shortline bus station so we take a walk around Monticello. It's quiet. The trees are beautiful. The houses perfect. I could move there, I think. I could read all day, I think. Sit on my porch, I think. Then I get on the bus back to the city and when I see the Manhattan skyline I remember how much more exciting it is having people around. And I realise that I had a really great time at ATP, but it wasn't the music, and it wasn't even the setting. It was the people. It always is. Every last one of those friendly fuckers.

Mark Kozelek w/ Sun Kil Moon - The Scala 17/09/08

2008-09-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

I absolutely expected Mark Kozelek to be an intolerably depressed guy. I love a lot of his music but I understand that he can write it because he's had a lot of shit in his life like wife cancer and dead parents so I thought man I'm looking forward to this but I'm not looking forward to him being all sad and shit, moping around like a donkey. I was so wrong. So so wrong. The guy could have done stand up.

He comes out and he looks like Elvis and he says how y'all doin and people murmur and someone says how are you and he tells us about his uk tour, how he's spent the last two weeks travelling around really shitty places playing to small audiences consisting solely of fat guys with backpacks.

His set is so nice, like a wind-up toy perpetually winding down, everything slow and delicate and haunting, everything covered in dust, evoking nostalgia despite the absence of memories. He plays variations on recordings, extended tracks and complete reworkings. They have movements really, they have prologues and epilogues, musically and lyrically, and there's magic in the transitions. It's so damn sad and beautiful.

And he plays all night.

And it's perfect.

Secret Chiefs 3/Zu/Skullflower - Cargo 16/09/08

2008-09-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

As is fast becoming a regrettable habit for me, I missed the first act - Skullflower - due to arriving at a reasonable time, rather than a ridiculously early one. This is unfortunate for Skullflower, as it means I can't review their performance on here, one of the most reviled blogs on the internet. I mean respected not reviled, thast was a typo. And thast.

So I'll give you an approximation of haute-couture-porn peddler Mike Keelin's review in lieu of my own, because he got there early enough to see it, because he lives thirty seconds walk away. This is what he said: It was alright, droney.

Sounds good to me.

So I arrived, got some wine and took a trip to the Zu and they were dirty heavy. I mean even all of their instruments looked physically heavy. Low slung pendulous bass, brassy mammoth sax and, well, the drums actually just looked like any drums but they sounded bad-ass and it all came together and it all sounded crushing, the rhythm section so weighed down, anchoring your neck to the floor with a cast iron chunky bass choker and embellished chain-link drum riffs, while the sax flew around above you and got tangled in your hair like a god damn jazz pipistrelle. Maddening, but so satisfying. They reminded me of Noxagt, but with a saxaphone, but somehow without reminding me of Ultralyd. What I'm trying to say is that they rocked. Really hard. And they jazzed hard too. It was all in my ears and eyes and all over my face. The jazz. And then I had a cigarette.

So I smoke and drink wine and then it's back for the Secret Chiefs 3 and their so-crazy-how-could-it-not-work approach to genre blending. Heavy meddle psych-reggae from the fiddle east served with a bowl of thick guitar singapore noodles. What the fuck is this music and how does it not sound like nonsense? The fact that all of the musicians in the band are fucking awesome probably helps. Seriously, these guys are tighter than spandex and ten times as fun. They jerk on stage like parodical robots, luxury metal, and launch magnificently into a well lubed irish/arabic mindfuck fiddler on the roofies sound. A staccato flow. It's a thing.

Maybe they'll play again in another twelve years. You should see them if they do. Don't take acid though 'cause it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

Deerhunter - Rough Trade East 13/09/08

2008-09-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Never been to a free gig in the huge new(ish) Rough Trade store just off Brick Lane before. I wondered how it would work, how they'd prevent shoplifting and how they'd make it sound any good. Turns out they just don't bother. I guess the clientele at Rough Trade East are assumed to be too twee to steal anything and too busy jerking off in their pocket over the generic indie boys on stage to notice the shitty sound.

Who cares anyway? Deerhunter play pretty regular indie rock (but wait, indie rock isn't a sound it just means independant rock! No it doesn't you know exactly what it sounds like stop being pedantic) and pretty regular indie rock is pretty boring but has it's moments. They played five or six tracks of their 'neutered Sonic Youth' sound, of which approximately one track achieved the heady heights of 'ok'. That was its 'moment' then. One of the main problems in enjoying the set arose when I realised who it was the singer sounded like. It'd been irking me for the first few tracks before it hit me: He sounds like Bono Vox. And that was it, now I can't like Deerhunter. Oh well, no great loss huh. Still I feel sorry for the guy, not because he's got that skeletal condition that makes you look a Tim Burton creation (that's indie, it suits him) but because he now, to me at least, sounds like the most arrogant prick on earth. I'm sure he's not. he only came off as mildy arrogant when heckling the audience during a technical failure. "Like talking into a void" he said. Yeah well maybe if your band had any substance we'd give a shit.

Queen of Swords/Teeth - Old Blue Last 11/09/08

2008-09-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

I think they were called Teeth, that's what it said on the website, but all I could see was legs. Really great legs. Sure there was this surfs up looking dude on a laptop playing diddlywiddly acid rhythms and some hip guy on a stripped down drumkit bashing along but really all I could see was the legs on the girl singing. At least I think she was singing, I couldn't really hear her, or I wasn't listening. It was some ra ra ra kind of stuff I think. Anyway, my god what a set of pins. Great band.

Then Queen of Swords came on and did this synth heavy horror set that was very satisfying, all drone and drum fills. A nice hefty sound. Some guy behind me who I've never met in my life taps me on the shoulder and jerks his chin at the bassist and tuts and goes "playin' with his back to the audience innee, tsch, TURN AROUND MATE" to which my response was a confused nod of agreeance because I didn't really know why he thought it necessary to tell me that and inwardly I was of the opinion that I hadn't noticed because I was just listening to the music and who cares if he's facing the wrong way because he's a fat dude and I don't care what his face looks like I don't want to gaze longingly into his eyes or anything - the dude is just some fat dude - but obviously this guy has a problem with it and I don't want to upset him. Guy looks ready to flip and I don't want to die at the hands of a man who has a problem with bassists that face the wrong way. That is not what I want at all. That was it though, that was all he wanted to say to me and once that was out of the way I got on with the business of enjoying Queen of Swords. Which I did with ease because they're very good.

Later on I stole an ashtray from another bar because why the fuck not.

Faust/Shit n Shine/Goodiepal - CARGO 02/09/08

2008-09-03T03:48:00.000-07:00

I arrived late so Goodiepal is going to be reviewed by a special guest person, Kaya from Pighole Records, because I liked what she said about it last night. Be sure to come back once this post has been updated because she hasn't done it yet. Oh but no-one reads this blog so who cares.

UPDATE UPDATE, KAYA's REVIEW ARRIVED: they're like the band in Godard's weekend. a drummer, singer and one market seller talking nonsense. nice thing to see at the beginning of the night.

I've seen Shit n Shine a few times now. Tonight was good, I'd rate it in the middle somewhere, overall. In fact exactly in the middle, between the first time I saw them (worst) and the second time I saw them (best). I'd rate it second. Out of three. Silver medal I'd give it, if I gave medals to specific performances of bands. I don't. I wish they'd change up their drums a bit. Three quality drummers but not enough drumming. Ain't that a thing? Echellento guitarings though. Very delicately manipulated feedback. Very satisfying.

Then comes the Kraut stylings of der Faust band. Starting out sounding like Phil Collins (what on earth was that) but a spot of likeable improvisation later and it's into party arty mode as the main midget grey German hippy goes all french grins and funky bass, the giant mashes the drums, the greasy sleezebag harasses the guitar and the amdram failure woman overacts on eggshaker and dire vocals. You can bug out to that. Then comes the chainsaw and live painting followed by the chainsaw passing through the live painting. It's not usual, but it's not particularly good either. It's mildly entertaining is what it is. I got some MDF in my eye. Some art-debris.

Oh and all the staff were assholes.

Le Couteau Jaune/Melviß Tibet/Team Brick/Sputniko!/Real Feel - Korsan Bar 28/08/08

2008-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

Melviß Tibet lives upstairs in my house but today she was on the floor in the Korsan bar playing a guitar through some cymbals with a friend, Helen (maybe not called Helen but I just don't know). Eking subtle twangs from their unorthodoxly amplified instruments, they soundtracked a dingy mindset under the roar of rude conversation at the bar, to a select audience of three hooded cult members sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the left amp. I watched from the side and slightly feared for their wellbeing. But in the end, nobody was hurt.

Mr Brick was up next, a one man team machine fueled on caffeine and nicotine. He sang well, played the guitar badly and sporadically made rackets the likes of which would have Roger Federer saying 'there's been a misunderstanding, this is a different type of racket to the one I need. Look it up'. I doubt Monsieur Bricko cares though, as by the end of his set he's off in Morocco charming snakes. The snake was all GET A HAIRCUT. And Brick is like thanks very much, good night.

Then who was it? Oh yeah Real Feel. They were essentially boring with short flashes of hmmmm maybe and extended sections of naah. Very school. Miklos of super-psycho-hyper-surfers Agaskodo Teliverek joined them afterwards for a birthday jam session which came out more like chutney but at least it had some taste to it, even if it was a bit onions.

Sputniko! was a lot easier on the eye than the ear but then garish bleeping jumping up and down ffwding j-pop isn't my thing. I think her equipment ate too many Smarties.

Then I saw Le Couteau Jaune dressing up like heroin parrots. I didn't watch them play but I've seen them before and that's why. Very, very, Shoreditch.

Howlin Rain/Magik Markers/Mothlite - Corsica Studios 15/08/08

2008-08-18T04:15:00.000-07:00

Mothlite are bits of other bands, good bands like Guapo and Chrome Hoof, but they were only good fifty percent of the time, mainly just when they sounded like Guapo. The rest of the time it was just whiny vocals and wanky attitudes. Alex Tucker was on backing vocals. Beard.

The last time I remember seeing Magik Markers was at the Luminaire ages ago, I think they played with Lightning Bolt or something, anyway, there was a bunch of them then and they were oh-kay. This time they were playing all stripped down to just Pete Nolan on drums and Elisa Ambrogio on guitar twatting and vocals and it was a million times better. Her guitar playing is fucking rubbish and absolutely brilliant, the drumming is clunky, like he's pissed off and bored and just wants to play drums for a bit, and it's all overlaid with bouts of great vocals, really simple nineties charm and great tits. Elisa is real deal and had more straight up fuck you rock band attitude in her than the rest of the line-up that night put together.

Howlin Rain genuinely wowed me at ATP in may, Ethan Miller made me want to be him. Their cover of You Keep Me Hanging On had me buying a t-shirt. So it was disappointing to see them in pedestrian mode tonight, they looked like they were having a real good time n all but the whole thing just failed to move me. I don't think the pa was up to scratch but then, I don't think the band was either. Everything sounded the same. That's the problem right there.

Magik Markers though. Top draw.

Haunted Fucking/Deathscalator/Broken Arm/Icarus Line - Old Blue Last 10/08/08

2008-08-13T05:10:00.000-07:00

Didn't see Haunted Fucking, sorry 'bout that Haunted Fucking but you were on too early. Deathscalator were boring, I think PJ said something like I can hear rock music coming out of the speakers but I can't see a rock band on the stage, I dunno, maybe that was Broken Arm. Fuck knows. Both of them were boring as hell. It was kind of worrying actually because really they weren't doing anything particularly wrong it's just they sounded like who the fuck cares? I'm serious I don't even remember seeing two different bands before Icarus Line that's how invisible they sounded. Oh dear. I got pretty drunk and I walked into a door and really hurt my face. I mean it really fucking hurt y'know, all down one side, the edge of the door slamming into the edge of my eye socket and my cheekbone. Fuck, man. Seriously. Icarus Line played and they were like a weak Stooges so I just went and had a cigarette then had an argument about sex and went home and when I woke up the next day I didn't even have a black eye or a hangover or anything. Maybe I'm a mutant or something I dunno.

Nisennenmondai - Bardens Boudoir 05/08/08

2008-08-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a guy vibrating at the front. A blur. No joke. I've seen calmer epileptics. These girls, they force fits on you. Pale and frail in long white cotton dresses, all three look like ghosts, barely there until suddenly they berserk on the spot. The drummer whirls and flails around, her long black hair never touching her shoulders, her sticks never missing a single one of the million beats she fits in a second. The guitarist stumbles and fumbles and hits every spike just right, just noise enough. The bassist rapidly plays simple three note basslines, solid as a continent and slipping slowly likewise, to form new landscapes.

It's trance music in the true sense of the word. The crowd are the churchgoers and the tracks are the snakes that writhe around them as they hold their hands aloft, reaching for the beautiful place, a place so beautiful it inspired me to write this ridiculous nonsense about churchgoers.

Nurse With Wound - Hackney Lido 19/07/08

2008-07-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

It is an odd thing to go to a gig and have all these people you recognise from countless other gigs suddenly rock up in their shorts and bikinis, all milky white and over furry. Reality bellyflops.

The set is a perfectly slow and eerie soundscape. Faint but crisp whispers over fades of tuning forks, dissipating through the blue water as I weave around the listeners' legs suspended below the surface, the hairy roots of pale fleshy trunks. Diving deeper, looking up, the overhanging trees complement the rhythmic creaking almost too perfectly as they sway in the setting sun, and when a grey cloud looms over the lido to the sound of Andrew Liles biting a balloon everything hits a peculiar space between creepy and serene. I spend the end of the set sitting at the bottom of the deep end, staring at these perfect curves in a red bikini treading water above me while a soft french looping vocal swirls down my earholes and off into nothing. Me the creep, the situation serene.

And after it's all over Steve Stapleton asks us all what it sounded like and thanks us for being his guinea pigs and it's good but I'm freezing and I'm shaking and my ears are full of water and I just want to go to bed. I buy a pizza I don't eat and fall asleep watching Ghostbusters.

It's a classic.

Mark E. Smith - Southbank Centre 16/07/08

2008-07-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

Not a gig, a talk. Well, a conversation. Well it was supposed to be a conversation but actually it was just a complete shambles. I don't know what they expected. Let's get Mark E. Smith at the London Literature Festival, sit him down and talk to him seriously about his official biography. That'll work. Oh wait, no it won't. There's not a chance that'll work at all.

A pissed M.E.S. saunters on stage and immediately snaps the top off his chat show mic so he's just a distorted rumbling mess until eventually they give him a new one which he only remembers to use about half the time, treating the audience to the tail ends of a load of slurred mutterings. The journalist he's supposed to be in conversation with spends the entire thing being smirked at and getting his questions mocked and the whole embarrassing farce ends after about thirty minutes when M.E.S decides he's had enough and pulls apart part of the stage railings to get out because he can't remember where the door is he came in through.

Highlights include:

Answering one of the first questions about the book by simply saying 'I dunno I ain't read it'.

When asked to elaborate on what was written about his father and grandfather, responding 'Is that what it says? Pfff I dunno man, you know these things, you've got a certain amount of words to fill so you just have to make stuff up'.

When asked what the time is by the journalist, replying 'Time you got a watch mate innit'.

The whole thing made for quite an entertaining evening, really. Well it was better than the last Fall gig I went to anyway.

Supersonic Festival - The Custard Factory, Birmingham 11-13/07/08

2008-07-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

I've never been to Birmingham before. It's the home of heavy metal, the home of Black Sabbath, Napalm Death and Duran Duran. It's also a fucking boring ugly piece of shit city. The Selfridges building is so amazingly shit it actually fucks with your eyes to the point where it's impossible to look directly at it. You know a place has problems when the guide points you to a pen museum as a top place of interest. There's a redeeming feature though, the Supersonic Festival. I went. It was great. Listen (read).

Friday.

Don't leave London in a van on a friday afternoon unless you want to spend five times longer than necessary getting to Birmingham. We arrived ages after Dokkebi Q were supposed to do their soundcheck, which sounds unimportant until you factor in that they were in the same van as me. First thing I did upon getting out of the van was get straight back in because it was fucking freezing. Then I went to the pub next to the Custard Factory and immediately felt at home seeing as it was full of all the same people that are at every gig in Dalston. Makes sense really.

So, two pints and a burger later, the festival starts its oddball friday night line-up. After checking a bit of Cutting Pink With Knives I got to reinforce my opinion of them as being a bit rubbish and annoying and decided not to care at all that it was to be their last ever show. I mean, they weren't totally shit but it's no great loss. The majority of the rest of the evening was spent at the smaller second stage, which was hosting the Osaka Invasion Crew. Whosever idea it was to put DJ Scotch Egg in charge of a stage for a whole night is a brave idiot, but it turned out better than I would expect. His latest project Drumize (previously Baka) played decent, cartoonish prog-something, maybe krautrock, man I dunno but they were entertaining enough whatever they were doing. Next up, fellow van-mates Dokkebi Q put the whole thing into party mode with their quirky but never less than solid dub, supercaner Go constantly tweaking and refining their sound while Kiki laid her versatile vocal skills over the top. Knees did bend, heads did nod.

Bogulta followed with their first UK set and damn it was good. Super-spazzy ultra-fuzzy bass and a drummer whose style could best be described as falling down the stairs style. Some kind of demented drunken master, repeatedly thrusting his junk at the audience and never really seeming to know exactly where the kit was but still sounding not a million miles away from Zach Hill which is a damn good place to be. A damn rubbish place to be, on the other hand, was back at the main stage, where Dalek were doing their thing that everyone goes on about. Seriously, I don't get it. I love a lot of hip hop, I love a lot of electronica, I love when people try to do something different, but I think Dalek are just shit. Boring shit. I just don't see the appeal, it sounds like music for teenagers who think they're dark. They're not dark, they're just rubbish. And they look like shit to boot. All tits and caps.

So I went back to the second stage and watched Ove Naxx, who was fun, at least, even if I'm not really down with his boxing glove on a spring kinda sound. Then when Scotch Egg was on while DJ Rupture took to the main stage I spent a long period sat down waiting for something else because I didn't want to listen to either. Seemingly everyone there agreed with me halfway because no-one was watching Rupture. It was odd. I felt kind of sorry for him. Then I remembered that he was playing boring and obvious played out shit and I stopped.

I passed the time waiting for Maruosa to come on by eating another burger then I watched Maruosa then I went back to the van and fell asleep immediately. Maruosa was as insane as usual, writhing around screaming, a man possessed. I was as sane as usual, laying there sleeping, a man at rest.

Saturday!

I walked around for four hours trying to find gherkins in Birmingham. You can not buy gherkins in Birmingham. I'm not joking. I settled for these mini-cornichons from Sainsburys which actually turned out quite well with the pastrami but that shouldn't detract from the utterly unnacceptable attitude that Birmingham shopkeepers have towards gherkins. Fuck you Birmingham. And fuck your shopkeepers.

So after eating my breakfast closer to dinnertime I drank half a bottle of wine and fell asleep then I got up and went to see Black Sun who were kind of shit but doing ok, pretty standard metal band, not really doing too much wrong, until the drummer, before the last track, pulls out a plastic gun and starts pretending to shoot the audience and his fellow band members and himself while - get this - holding the gun sideways and making gun sounds into the microphone without even a hint of irony thereby killing any modicum of respect I had for his band that silly idiot man. Their t-shirts say 'you won't like it' on the back and they're spot on.

Then, after I successfully avoided Alexander Tucker and The Owl Service (because they sound like boring talentless shit and boring twee shit respectively), The Courtesy Group ambled on to the stage to play everyone their average wannabe Nick Cave type shit. Fucking YAWN. I was pretty drunk by this point and decided to get some cake so I went and got some cake and it was great. There's this constant hinting in all Supersonic related promotional literature that there's really great cake there and it's true, there is. I had a big bit of apple and cinnamon and it was great. Cinnamon makes me kind of horny.

Eventually, a good band came on, prog-rocking freakout freaks, Guapo, who are damn good and damn good fun. They sound like they rock because they do, and their instruments sound good because they can play them really well. This is a band who are a good band. This band is good and I like them.

I didn't go see Justice Yeldham because, well, I saw him recently and I don't imagine he's got much else to offer seeing as he'd run out of ideas halfway through his set last time. So I waited for Thrones to come on. This man, Joe Preston, he is a legend. This was one of my most anticipated acts of the weekend and if the sound hadn't been a total shambles it probably would have been quite a time, but the sound was a total shambles and so it was just kind of ok, bit annoying, quite dissappointing, vocals too loud, guitar sounded like shit. Maybe he missed soundcheck or something, I dunno. Frustrating. I'm not sure exactly what happened after this but probably I drank some more drink until Oxbow came on.

Oxbow, man. Damn. Eugene just starts out as King Kong in a suit, then quickly becomes King Kong in some tatty blue underpants, masturbating. Oh dear I think the acid part of the 2-CB was kicking in and it was all a bit much. I was stood a good ten or fifteen metres from the stage and was still significantly worried by him. He looked like he'd be able to jump pretty far if the mood took him. Jump on me and maul me and shake me into a pulp. He looked like he might transform into some altogether different beast at any moment, like horns could sprout from anywhere, or he could suddenly start prowling on all fours like some Gozerian demon ready to eat your face whilst fucking you in the heart. I had to leave to go see Noxagt, which was a blessing, and I turned to Kiki who'd been stood next to me throughout the set and I said 'hey I'm gonna go see Noxagt' and there was just a really old little woman standing there. An 80 year old little woman just standing there looking up at me. I ran away and I think a little bit of piss came out.

Noxagt have a new guitarist. Man I love Noxagt. The tight, heavy, jazz inflected rhythm section under this new noise guitar handler works all mechanic organic like a JCB over-run with vines. Perhaps not quite as good as they have been in previous iterations but still way better than most all of their peers, this set knocked me sideways so hard the next thing I knew I was standing in front of a different stage looking at Wooden Shjips who may as well have been tie died and draped over a washing line. I could barely look at them I think they were using prisms instead of amps.

The stuff was working then.

Something happened and I was watching Battles who looked like a bunch of assholes. Talented assholes, though. The drummer had his crash up ten feet in the air like a dick, but he was amazing. The dudes around him were playing guitar and synths and anon at the same time I mean hammering on with the left hand and keystroking with the right just a ridiculous way to go about things but they have a real good sound like a weird lagging sound that falls behind itself always tripping up like the guitars are running for the train the drums are driving and it works and it's dance inducing which is the weirdest thing. They do all look like assholes though. I left and watched Harvey Milk who are amazing and played for about a week, rocking on, smoking weed, rocking on, smoking weed. The guys look like they met at a garage and just decided to fuck about. I nodded a bit, sat down a bit, nodded a bit, sat down a bit, went to sleep in the van.

Sunday.

Obviously I woke up feeling like a million bucks. A million bucks people had used to snort their drugs through. Me and my gang of fucking excellent friends went looking for breakfast and ended up in this Polish community centre eating giant sausages and three types of salad. It wasn't what I needed at all. Transitional started the day's music as it was destined to go on, really down, really loud, really fucking dark. A concrete wall of industrial noise from two guitars and vocals all forced through a trough of pedals. It sounded like tanks hunting for victims. It didn't sit well with the sausage. I loved it all the same.

Next up, Black Sabbath played in Spanish oh no wait they didn't I mean Orthodox played. In Spanish. These guys, these Orthodox guys, they're so... authentic. Throw the horns up. They look and sound exactly how they should. Metal. Old, sludgy, heavy, metal. Breath it in. Try not to choke on the hair. Seriously fun. Moving steadily downtempo, ASVA, a beast comprising various limbs from Burning Witch, Mr Bungle and The Accused, get everyone's heads lolling at about six nods per minute. With a guitarist who genuinely looks like a dungeons and dragons forest guide and a drummer with a disease instead of hair it's not hard to concieve that these guys actually do go all out Aleistair Crowley on the weekends. Wyrd to your mum, they came to drop bongs.

Like a big fat necessary spanner in the works, Fucked Up bowl onto the stage and play the least fucked up set of the day. Hardcore with a sweet outer shell, a big fuck off gobstopper of a band with a self-maiming Big Mac frontman and some italian kid from the movies on guitar. And the big man cuts his head with what looks like a diet coke can. But he always cuts his head. It would probably be more shocking if he just didn't. After Fucked Up I fucked off and fucked about. I was tired, I was in the dead zone. I sat down. I heard Earth from outside of where they were playing. They sounded the same as ever, just a bit distant. But they always sound distant. They sounded fine. Whatever.

The thing that really swung it for me, when I was thinking of going to this festival, this Supersonic festival in Birmingham, was when they announced that Merzbow would be playing with Keiji Haino. That was it. No way I was gonna miss it. A friend of mine once compared these two to an archetypal anime hero and villain pairing. Merzbow all dressed in black with long black hair and a quiet, brooding persona, capable of unleashing a hellish, destructive superpower at any time. Keiji Haino the androgynous, silver haired smirking wrongdoer, elegant, strapped to a six stringed weapon handled with mad precision. Always in sunglasses. In Kikuri they bring this comic book to life with the highlight set of the weekend. While all around them bands headed to the graveyard for inspiration, Kikuri took a detour to the insane asylum, scaled the iron gate, climbed in the window and got the inmates to rape the nurses while they took notes. A really bad trip. Merzbow sporadically bursts forth with brain grating noise while Haino freaks out on guitar and mutant theremin and summons the weirdest, most horrible singing and yelping from the depths of some terrible Japanese torture garden. Weirdo lungs. When He pulls out some fucked up mandolin looking thing and starts plonking away, every twang turns brain matter to jelly, every scream liquifies another vertebrae and by the time Merzbow gets on the drums and starts bashing your skull in you can't imagine you'll be coming back from this one. Total mind ablation.

I felt sick. Thank fuck I hadn't taken any (many) drugs. Thank fuck there was only one act left before this god damn festival was over. One act to drain away my last remaining dregs of mental competence. Gravetemple. Shrouded in smoke, as usual, O'Malley and Csihar and Ambarchi and that drummer guy push you down with their incessent doom and gloom horror show like an axeman's hand on the back of your neck, positioning you on the block. Csihar's maniacal cackling and deep demonic growling is genuinely unnerving and the sporadic frantic drumming sections batter your ears open to make way for the funereal procession of guitar drones. It's an oppressive sound, the sound of death and decay. Throughout the set the audience drops off one by one, first to their knees, then prostrate, forced into submission by deep mental lassitude. It's conceivable that one day the house lights will come up at the end of a show and the entire audience lay dead, their minds tricked into thinking this is the end of everything. But not this time. One terrifying, earstabbing scream from Attila and the festival is over. Well, apart from Harmonia but they're shit nowadays.

I drag myself to the van and get carted back to London in the small hours, lying in the back, the soft rhythm of the streetlights flashing past the window lulling me to sleep. Fellow van-mate Go puts it like this: "Man, that was amazing but it's so much doom. No more doom man. Too much doom. I can only listen to pop now. Put on some Britney Spears or something".

Comets On Fire - The Luminaire 05/07/08

2008-07-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

Arriving just one hour after the band had started playing, I got to witness something like five tracks of psych-country noise guitar wankery which is approximately perfect. Any more and I might be permanently progged out. They sound like a whole era of music where people didn't do ketamine, updated to include ketamine abuse. They sound like NASA plugged into an Echoplex, buzzing Aldrin. By the end of the gig everyone was standing on the drum-kit, playing guitars. That's called rocking out. I love this band. Ethan Miller sweats profusely.

Comanechi/Mirror Mirror/Epideme - The Macbeth 03/07/08

2008-07-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Didn't see Epideme but apparently they are well known for being rubbish so no big deal I guess.

Mirror Mirror were a bunch of good looking young boys who work out and play one bassline and one drum beat and pad it out with some bloody nonsense rubbish. They like to take off their shirts and show off their lovely hairless chests while they run around swapping instruments in an attempt to convince you they're not playing the same thing they just played just now. Not only that but it's been getting played since the eighties, but then, being born in the nineties they're probably oblivious. I liked the little drummer kid though, he was simply darling with his little gold chain and cute little pecs. The singer was wholly repulsive however, by turns scary and camp, a very confused and confusing man-boy. He looked like he might unabashedly rape you with his foot long hairless willy, simply because he'd refuse to believe that being forcefully buggered by him isn't what you want. At all. It was weird. You could see it in his eyes.

Oh I still like Comanechi, they have good riffs. I like the simplicity of it all. It's refreshing, especially after watching five boys on too much fizzy pop. Just simple drums, dirty shouty vocals and heavy fuzzy riffs all just raaarh get some you fucking audience bastards. Good little band that.

Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arts - Not London 27-29/06/08

2008-07-04T05:17:00.000-07:00

I didn't look at who was playing but I got in on a welfare tip in exchange for 'working' a total of eight hours on lost property so I thought fuck it it's a holiday. First thing I did when I got to the festival was buy the world's shittest most expensive burger and pay over the odds for some wellies 'cause chucks just don't cut it in the mud, obviously, idiot. Second thing I did was get twatted and watch my good friend Horacio Pollard play a riotous new set. He's really refined his screaming now, it's quite a thing. That was a highlight of the festival and it was the day before the festival.

The festival proper was just a bunch of shitty bands playing in a bunch of shitty tents to a shitload of white people, half of whom had dreads. You know what the best thing that can happen to a white guy with dreads is? Die in a hole.

Trance is shit.

People who smoke weed as a lifestyle choice are idiots.

The two best things at the whole festival were the only two black guys there, Dizzee Rascal and Jay-Z the rappers. They both put on top shows. Jay-Z imparticular was very good indeed, rhyming words at the end of almost every line he said, and even some in the middle of lines. And at one point, inbetween close-ups of his face, they projected a big picture of Barack Obama, but I don't think many people realised because they are all from the countryside and they've never seen one of those before. They probably thought it was just a bad camera angle of Jay-Z. Curiously, as if in some kind of attempt to leave the crowd feeling like they might have actually enjoyed their sets, both Rasket and Jay-Zed closed with terrible rap/white-music crossover tracks. Regretful stains on otherwise very satisfying sets. For shame.

Hot Chip were shit.

At some point I did some work on lost property which consisted of getting people to describe their car keys in minute detail while I ate free food. Overall the Glastonbury experience was quite good fun but I wouldn't pay £160 for it or bed down with all the scum in scousers' paradise. Fuck that.

See you next year Eavis.

My Bloody Valentine - The Roundhouse 24/06/08

2008-07-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Really fucking loud actually. Even after people harping on about how the previous nights' shows had been really loud and me being all yeah whatever mate I go to full on noise gigs all the time, I'll take Merzbow with a cup of tea and the sunday paper thanks very much lightweight ears. But they were right and I was wrong. MBV. Really fucking loud. The last I dunno fifteen minutes or so was just glorious, unrelenting noise. Like taking a bath in a wire wool cloud. I liked it so much I had to celebrate by getting totally shitfaced at pubs and waking up on a sofa and being two and a half hours late for work like a twat.