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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.