Florian Hecker Sound Installation - Chisenhale Gallery

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!

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.

Horacio Pollard - The Black Sheep 29/04/09

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.

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

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.

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

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.