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

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).

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

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.

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

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.

The Locust - Bardens Boudoir 04/12/08

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?

Nisennenmondai - Bardens Boudoir 05/08/08

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.