2008 |
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 Boris;Growing ULU, London 23 April 2008 Ah, what better way is there to celebrate St George's Day than to avoid all the jingoistic flag-waving nonsense and go and see a band who come from the other side of the world? Probably none. None whatsofuckingever. First up we get Growing, who I heard described by someone in the queue as “a friendlier Black Dice”. That's not far off the mark, really. True, a lot of it's just “I could do that!” noodling, but when they lock into a motorik groove there's something really quite jaunty and hard to dislike about the whole affair. And then there's the part where a Beefheart-esque guitar phrase gets fucked with, and you suddenly feel like you're trapped in a factory. A factory making clowns. ROBOT CLOWNS OF DEATH. And it's all a bit scary. But still a lot of fun. Now, I've got this awesome idea for the next Indiana Jones movie. Check this out. Bricks will be shat. Indy goes on a quest to find the legendary Hammer Of The Gods, much renowned for its abilty to, well, smite the shit out of stuff. It was last seen in the 1970s, in a bizarre joint custody deal between Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi. After a series of adventures, Indy finds out the location of the Hammer. And it's in Japan. And Boris have got it. Add a car chase and a romantic interest subplot, and you've got box office gold, my friend. Box office fucking gold.  And
boy, if it isn't true. Boris rock. By the time they're three tracks in,
playing the title track from Pink,
they've reached a level of intensity that they don't depart from for
the rest of their set. Going from Guitar
Wolf-esque
thrash-punk shenanigans to delicate J-Pop balladry without breaking
stride, they prove themselves to be masters of all speeds. The only
other band I can think of who manage to cover all genres of metal
within ten minutes are the mighty Mastodon,
though there's something a lot more delicate hiding within Boris's
apocalyptic roar. This is structured chaos, and it's not hard to see
why their collaboration with Sunn0)))
was such an amazing combination. If Sunn0))) are masters of making amps
do what they want, whether or not the amps want to themselves, then
Boris do the same trick with guitars. As far as I'm concerned, there
are only two people on the planet who aren't in Boris who can make
(double-necked, in Boris' case) guitars sing, roar and everything else
like this, and they're Justin
Broadrick and Kevin
Shields. And if you can't tell that that's esteemed
fucking company indeed, then you seriously need to sort yourself out.Finishing, appropriately enough, with "Farewell", (prior to which we've had an exemplary piece of crowd-surfing from Atsuo), they depart, leaving the stunned audience with the sense that they've just watched METAL. Not a metal band. Not a few metal bands. But METAL, in its purest, Platonic form. METAL ITSELF. Alarmingly, I'm reminded of a recent conversation I had with about why bands never seemed to be loud enough these days, which concluded with us embracing the very real possibility that they probably were, and we'd just fucked our ears. Well, that's not true. Boris were very loud. The downside is that now I think I have fucked my ears. Ah well. It was worth it. “Hoo boy”, Indy will say just before the credits roll. “That Hammer Of The Gods is some hot shit”. -Deuteronemu 90210 who is now pretty much deaf and may not be reviewing anything else for a while- |
 Butthole
SurfersThe Forum, London 26 July 2008  They're
certainly not 22 going on 23 any more, but the Butthole Surfers
have
taken measures to ensure their set goes down in properly deranged
psychedelic hardcore style tonight. First, it's the classic late
Eighties lineup
of Gibby Haynes
and Paul Leary
at the front and centre, with the rhythm
section filled out by Theresa
Nervosa and King
Coffey, still managing
to stand up and drums like being posseessed, and the
heavily-bearded, flying-axed bass courtesy of Jeff Pinkus provides
a
suitably weird backwoods presence, especially as the rest of the band
seem to have grown into a look which harks back to their meeting as
accountancy students all those decades ago, one which is deceptively,
oddly, normal-looking. Secondly,
the Buttholes have recruited Paul
Green's School of Rock as their
support act, collaborators and orchestra, and there seem to be an
endless stream of teenagers flitting across the stage to fill in on
guitar, bass, screaming choruses and anything else appropriate or
otherwise (and being teenagers, it's also quite likely many of
them will have seen far worse than the not actually that
shocking projections of softcore and less so imagery being sprayed
across the backdrop at suitable moments. Ok, maybe not the graphic
circumcision videos; they're decidedly painful to watch). Thirdly,
there's not much from the less satisfying albums which emerged fiftully
after the patchy Electriclarryland
being
played tonight - instead the selection is fantastic, and consists of
what a good proportion of the audience seem to have hoped for; what
perversly might be called their greatest hits.  The
set itself takes a while to get going, though opening up with "22 Going
on 23" was also probably something of a self-deprecating statement.
there's plenty of banter with the audience, Gibby trying to get a rise
out of the crowd by mocking English accents, but somehow they don't
seem like their stage presence is actually quite as crazy as
it
used to be - no nudity, no wacky costumes and sadly no sousaphones
either. But by the time "Sweat Loaf" kicks in, everything goes apeshit
and the sweat really
hits
the fans in the moshpit, with buckets of the stuff seeming to drench
the heaving throng who appear determined to lose kilos in weight the
rock
and roll way; that and to fling themselves headfirst into excess
consumption of whatever substances might make some members of the
public lurch with alarming
regularity towards the floor.Having a group of girls shrieking their accompaniment to "Tornadoes" adds intensely to the effect of a the piece; joining in with singalongs of "I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas" or the divinely demented "Moving To Florida" also has to be one of the odder gig experiences, if only for the sheer lysergic sillness of the lyrics - and the fact that a whole crowd would know them well enough to chant along. Perhaps that's the secret of the Butthole's appeal - the combination of outrageous right-brain weirdness with some seriously dedicated psychedelic music underpinning it all. Who else could dive headlong into a twisted skull-scraper of a song like "Cherub", at once sinister and touching, Gibby wheezing and snarling into his megaphone while maximising the electronic distension possibilities of his box of tricks; who else could also pull off the difficult trick of being both the people most parents really wouldn't want to be in charge of their children and still be entrusted with taking a bunch of kids onstage with them for a tour of this degree of musical craziness?   The
answer is of course the band who close the show with Gibby congratulate
two of the School of Rock's students on their shared sixteenth
birthdays, complete with miniature cakes, then leading the crowd in
singing "Happy Birthday" before hurling the confectionery to the
sweltering masses as Paul Leary lurches viscerally into to a still
gut-busting rendition of "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave" -
another vitriol-filled tune to get the audience shouting along with
glee to the comprehensively mashed lyrics - complete with a horde of
kids who scream through megaphones, wrap themselves in electrical tape,
and rock out like they're having serious fun. The only question
left unanswered by the end of the gig is when will the
Butthole
Surfers be back, if only to play songs like "Pepper" or "Human
Cannonball" next time around which didn't make it on to tonight's set
list? Because if this show is anything to go by, then it could be well
worth coming back for more, and fuelling their pension funds yet
further - because they deserve it.-Richard Fontenoy- |
 Chrome
HoofDingwall's, London 7 August 2008  Chrome Hoof should
be appreciated by the light of a billion braincells misfiring; by the
sound of a world exploding, because that's what they're capable of
resembling on a good night - and tonight is one such event. Though it
takes while for Dingwall's to gather the crowd they deserve, by the
time the spangle-clad crew hit the stage, the place may not be heaving,
but it's soon a-jumping. There are at least twelve of the alien
invasion force on the podium tonight, but lurking beneath the sequins
and facepaint are - apparently - a bunch of human musicians, intent on
sending out the space waves in a funk-metal style, like no-one (but
no-one) has heard before. Actually,
that's
not quite the whole truth. Chrome Hoof are proud, it seems, to
wear the
influences on their capes. Sun
Ra, Magma
and Earth, Wind
& Fire rub
shoulders with a whole heap of metal, not least Leo Smee's own
Cathedral,
but more of them (or more to the point, their riffage) later. With a
lung-lashing performance from Lola
 Olafisoye
to keep the lyrical focus tightly-wound and more than a tad operatic,
and not
forgetting the dynamic dancing duo sweltering in their silvery suits on
the stage front, lost as they are
to the absence of room on the boards. Sadly, the giant goat puppet has
long since been sacrificed to the flames of a festival sunset, but the
ensemble crammed onto the stage tonight more than make up for the
weirdly absent caprine cavortions - and if it's never been seen, has
the metallic goat of the offworld woods been missed by the audience
tonight? Then again, who needs gimmicks, grand and
impressive as they might be? Who needs chemical stimulation, as
beneficial to the overall experience of this most fried of bands as
those powders and pills might also (allegedly) be? When Chrome Hoof are
in the
area, everyone in the crowd should be transported out of their face,
knowing it or no, blasted into space - or they simply don't have the
funk, don't get the essential power of a space oddity for the
post-disco age set shimmering on the wings of bassoons, brass and
blatant wackiness in an outré entertainment not entirely of this planet.  It's
not all disco and
glamtastic musicianship - there's pointy-headed guitars waiting to
thrill, and a hetfy metal bassline to kick into touch, as the mighty
Graeco-Roman-Martian helm is donned and some serious riffing goes down.
Headbanging is only dancing without the necessity for a groove, so the
conjunction of the two makes perfect sense - getting into the rhythms,
then moshing up a storm while being pulled into the strange world which
the not-so-alien after all Chrome Hoof provide. Listening to them on
record is one thing; but the live experience is everthing - there is
simply no substitute for being elevated to a higher plane of weirdness
by this band, and it's something which can only make the case for
extraerrestial influence on the development of the human rave seem more
plausible, at least for those glitterball nights when Chrome Hoof
descend to Earth.-Linus Tossio- |
| Fuck
Buttons; Alexander Tucker The Institute for Contemporary Arts, London 30 January 2008
First on was fellow ATP label mate Alexander Tucker, who built up a goodly wall of avant-folk loops. Tucker is always worth seeing and didn't disappoint on this occasion. Playing a solo set, he built up his loops using a cello, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and voice. He lulled the audience into a false sense of security before saturating the ICA with noise, which reappeared and vanished as abruptly as it came.
Seeing them live added a whole new dimension to Fuck Buttons for me. Their sheer enthusiasm for music is infectious, and their music is seriously physical stuff. They leaped around the stage as manically as they screamed into toy microphones and jumped up and down the table like they were playing some crazed electronic version of table tennis. When they played "Bright Tomorrow" the house started to rock to its pounding drum beat, by the end the audience were nodding their heads like a convention of different drummers. Fuck
Buttons are more
than loud loud loud ...but don't get me wrong. They are loud,
especially in a venue the size of the ICA. I walked back to Charing
Cross
partially deaf and feeling like my sense of balance had been
impaired. It was worth it, though. Fuck Buttons are great fun live
and not to be missed. |
| Man
From Uranus; Glass A Music Club at The Others, London 25 July 2008   Glass
used to have more members, but tonight they're a duo who make their
presence felt as is, shimmering and rattling their soft motorik way through
a set which shows copius affinity for the soporific psychedelia of Spacemen 3 and Harmonia's
elevated drum machine rattle and hum. Guitarist Ben keeps the mood
vibrant on a cluster of simple yet effective strokes of the strings,
while Chris (sometimes cupping his ear intently as if he is listening
to signals from a different world) at the controls of the keyboards and
sundry electronics brings a bright set of curvaceous drones and tones
to life over the backing track - which manages to
sound like it was recorded on a wheezing vintage
electrical percussion device - and occasional vocals, some of
which appear to be sung backwards. Glass's set
evokes an electronic superhighway which never was, and the endless
skies of a bright
RGB yesteryear, an analogue dronescape where the pastoral pleasures of
rattling along to the sound of a v-6 beat make more than
enough
headway for the long journey into blissout.  When
Man From Uranus
shimmies onstage, he announces that he'd probably have preferred to
call himself Rockhausen. While this certainly would have saved
him from
the endless innuendo the name he's stuck with brings, Phil Uranus
still cuts an eccentric figure in his Sun Ra t-shirt and
scientist-gone-bad-on-experimental-drugs demeanour. No-one could accuse
him of not engaging with his audience, and Phil annotates each number
with
footnotes before tending to his machines with the air of someone who
loves and cares for them, but really, really wants to abuse the sounds
they can make.So there are gurgling and droning loops, beats made manifestly unhinged, analogue bass thumps and some hardcore avantgarde interference with the notion of the straightahead four-four rhythm, mostly selected from MFU's new Amazing Science Friction Volume One CD. No sound is left unstoned, the mood shifting between happy-go-lucky toytown electronica and a scattering of heaving stabs fried enough to bring the electricians in to check the wiring. Phil brings in various boxes of tricks into play in his best electronic rock star manner, twisting them to his midriff and wrenching further sparks from their innards; the best buzzing coming from a Stylophone amped up to eleven and used to strip paint from the walls. All the time he is obviously enthralled by the malformed sounds the various devices are capabale of having coaxed from them - and anyone still so misguided as to believe that electronic music is dry or devoid of emotion should come and see Man From Uranus some time for a lesson in applied synthesized dementia. -Tango-Mango- |
| Merzbow ULU, London 19 April 2008   Merzbow
was brutal. That could be the whole review. We went in knowing he would
be brutal and he delivered. We came back out deaf, balance impaired,
and probably several shades paler. Merzbow, aka Akita Masami,
is one of the pre-eminent industrial noise artists and has had
a
prolific career since the late seventies. As with some of his other
recent releases, the concert had traces of beat, pounding distorted and
garbled rhythms that battered the audience into submission. The guy
standing next to me was trying to dance, but mainly succeeded in acting
out a (more than likely) ecstasy mime representation of being deafened.
The sonic attack was a mixture of laptops (with slogans reflecting
Merzbow's belief in animal rights) and a home made guitar ... played
with what looked like an electromagnet. It was savage, and noise needs
to be savage. There are too many noise artists who lack Merzbow's
purity and aggression. Noise is extreme; it is an assault on all the
senses, it bombards the listener and causes sensory overload. Merzbow
did all of these; Merzbow was brutal.-Niko Bellic- |
 Nurse
With WoundLondon Fields Lido, London 19 July 2008 Nurse With Wound at London Fields Lido. It just sounds so right. And it was, too: pleasingly strange, charmingly eccentric. It was the culmination of a series of underwater sound events, staged at various venues around the UK under the banner of Wet Sounds. Their website will tell you what you need to know there. Essentially, the set-up is this: music is played through a high-quality underwater sound system installed (temporarily) in a public swimming pool. Those swimming in the pool can thus have a quite literally immersive musical experience: with ears below the water line, a whole new listening experience is suddenly available.  NWW and Andrew Liles were
perfect for this, since the setting and atmosphere of the pool, and the
quirkiness of the event, were evocative of a particular strand of surrealistic English whimsy that
both artists exemplify. But before they played, matters got underway with a performance by Le
Couteau Jaune, about whom I know nothing except that they
appear to be some sort of street (or pool in this case) theatre/performance art group. Their contribution consisted of a
bloke and a woman in 'wacky' costumes, chasing each other in the pool.
It was like open-mic afternoon in the performance art tent at
Glastonbury circa 1985. Naff, in other words. Things picked up with Andrew Liles' set, which included a guest
appearance from the very camp Ernesto Tomasini who regaled the swimmers with a rousing rendition of "I Do
Like To Be Beside The Seaside" in
mock-operatic style. After this, Mr Liles played an assortment of
electronic loops and noises and the underwater
listening effect became apparent. While it was possible to hear the
music outside the pool, when listening underwater the clarity and
detail were vastly improved, the overall effect being almost like wearing very high-definition in-ear phones. 
When NWW (Steven Stapleton, Liles and Matt Waldron of Irr.app.ext,
for the purposes of this
performance - it was surprising that Colin Potter wasn't there) got going,
they
used a much richer array of sounds and textures than Liles' solo set.
The effect was fascinating and it was interesting to watch people
experimenting with different listening techniques, the most
straightforward being to lie on one's back such that the ears were in
the water, but the nose and mouth weren't. I also tried swimming around
underwater and found that the sound palette, and the overall feel of
the thing, changed according to one's location in the pool, and also
whether there were other swimmers nearby, and the pool was large enough
that sometimes you could find yourself swimming underwater with no-one
else in view. Most of the music was based around Salt Marie Celeste
(an obvious choice
really) but they were adding plenty of extra live sounds, including
whispered vocals by Matt Waldron which were scarcely audible out of the
water, but sounded crystal clear when submerged.  When I first read about this gig, I thought it was more a gimmick than anything else - an oddball setting for a performance, more than a genuine musical experiment - but it ended up being both of these things, and a very successful experiment at that. At the end Steve Stapleton came out from behind his gadgets to ask what it had sounded like, and seemed pleasantly surprised to be told how well it had worked. I hope it can be repeated. I was reminded of the story about Salvador Dalí commissioning a diving suit to be made for him - he planned to wear it for a lecture he was due to give. The manufacturers asked him to specify the depth of the descent he intended to make. He responded with a telegram that said, "Mr Dali will descend into the unconscious". -Manfred Scholido- |
 O'DeathConcrete And Glass Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London 2 October 2008  When you go to a show by a shirtless, rabble-rousing mob like O'Death,
you really expect to see the band set up on the floor, separated from
their sweaty audience by little more than a few blobs of spit and
sawdust. That's how I imagined it anyway, so it is with some
apprehension that I view the venue at the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen.
With a sleek black interior, expensive light fittings and a stage at
least three feet higher than I had hoped, this cold-fish setting makes
me wonder how O'Death are ever going to manage to forge a connection
with the notoriously cold-fish Hoxton punters. Well, not to keep you all in suspense, they manage just fine. And while the renowned rollicking hillbilly energy of O'Death's live set definitely goes some way towards melting the Hoxton ice, it's the suprisingly intimate moments that really make the show. Whether it's a lingering hand-clasp with an Andy Warhol lookalike, bonding with a shaven-headed metal dude over his "metal up your ass" Metallica t-shirt, or joshing about the (frequent and shrill) requests for their old songs, O'Death somehow make us feel like we're all old friends. The band are relaxed, unhurried; they take luxurious breaks between songs, strumming, tuning, stroking their beards, and exhortations  from the crowd are gently
rebuffed – "gee, you guys are even more impatient than New Yorkers". By
the time O'Death are done, this hipster citadel seems as warm and
jovial as if they'd been playing a pick-up gig in some whisky-soaked
backroom – say, one belonging to a pub that charges a reasonable price
for a pint. If the joint (though packed to
the gills) isn't exactly jumpin', you have to remember that this is
still Hoxton, and no amount of down-home hoe-down spirit is going to
get some of these haircuts to shake their skinny jeans. But a sizeable
and raucous minority take up the mantle, whooping and stomping and
hollering along boozily with the big numbers – particularly the
sing-along hits "Fire on Peshtigo" and "Mountain Shifts". By the time
O'Death had kicked up the hootenanny to its glorious peak, an
over-the-top metal take on "Allie Mae Reynolds", even the impassive
head-nodders were bobbing their heads in a decidedly down-home way.
Nothing short of a triumph, really.-Anton Allen- |
| Oxbow; Harvey Milk; Part Chimp; The Underworld, London 15 July 2008 The first time I came across Part Chimp, a few years back, they were tipped as The Loudest Band in London, but now that the reanimated corpse of My Bloody Valentine has reclaimed that title with its rotting, maggoty fingers, Part Chimp have mellowed a little. They’ve also shed a bass player recently, and no doubt that has something to do with it. In any case, the volume level as they open this night at the Underworld has eased from “blistering” to something more like “mild sunburn”. Their songs have matured to fill the volume vacuum, though; whereas they previously played Black Sabbath riffs at ketamine speed and relied on sheer decibel level to get their message across, the band now have room for a little more complexity and, god forbid, even a little subtlety. There was this one Spinal Tap moment when one of the guitar players, I think his name's Tim, was playing his guitar with another guitar, but even then Part Chimp didn't quite turn it up to 11. (PROTIP: Part Chimp are in fact 99.9% chimpanzee, genetically speaking. Except the drummer, he's part octopus.) After the surprisingly mellifluous opening act, Harvey Milk make your fillings hurt. They kick off with twenty solid minutes of relentless sonic assault - the word "sludge" doesn't seem to do justice to this deep, sulphurous, anaerobic guitar mud. The tracks roll forward at glacial speed, held together by a rhythm section both stoic and brutal. With the first break, however, comes possibly the most shocking moment of the whole evening. The vocals so far have been a scraping, guttural howl, so when vocalist Creston cracks into some stage banter you expect to hear a voice like Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse, all lava and scorpions. Instead, he opens his mouth and out comes a soft, pleasant, southern twang. I’m floored. Then halfway through a sentence the guitars roar into life and it’s back to whisky and razor blades. We haven’t heard the last of those dulcet pipes, though, they’re called upon later for some delicate melodic passages, which sprout briefly amid the murk before they're crushed again under the guitars, as fragile and bruised as so many audience members' eardrums. There are a few of us looking a bit dazed and in need of a comforting pint by this point, but when San Francisco's Oxbow take the stage the entire room's attention snaps to them and stays glued there for the whole set. It was he opposite of the usual stand-around-chatting-to-your-mates London indifference - Oxbow are simply riveting. This is mostly due to the sheer physical presence of front man Eugene Robinson, a hugely-muscled, tattooed black dude with taped-up ears and hair like the bride of Frankenstein. He snarls, screams, croons, and dances – yes, dances – his way through the final set. When was the last time you saw a metal frontman dance? Like, never? Well, mine eyes have seen and all I can say is MORE, damn it there should be more of this. Not that Oxbow just play metal, of course, they dabble in a slew of styles: there are shades of the Birthday Party, stripes of the Melvins, a sprinkling of the Boredoms, and… hell, what else IS there, really? Credit must be given to the rhythm section who lurch from straight-up hardcore drive all the way to mutated swampy backbeat and back again like it ain’t no thing, but the uniting factor through all of this is the menace and magnetism Eugene brings to the whole show. He starts the set in a three-piece suit and finishes it with his cock flopping around in tiny pants, tattoos and a waistcoat, it’s crazy and beautiful and intense as all hell. -Anton Allen- |
 Wolves In The Throne Room;Naked Shit - Earth; Sir Richard Bishop The Underworld, London 10 and 12 February 2008  The
day after a chunk of Camden Market burnt down, Southern Lord's finest
black metal act touch down in The
Underworld. Thankfully the
conflagration was at the other end of the High Street, so the gig
continued as scheduled with the only hint that something had occured
being the line of police officers across the road by the tube station.Support act Naked Shit are notable not only for their terrible name, which at least sparks debate as to whether it's a nude turd or an excretion performed in the altogether, but for the presence of a horse as the bass player. Ok, so it's really a man in a suit with a horse head on, but it looks great - even with the trailing locks under the neck which does make it seem like the mane becomes a mullet. As gimmicks go it certainly works, so there's a sizable audience for their two-drummer and one bass sludgefest. To be fair, the horse-man would have difficulty playing much more than the sub-doom rumble on his guitar with the restrictions imposed by his mask, but the simple bassline and twin drum action don't have quite the body and detail required to keep the half hour or so they rumble on interesting. "Horseshit!", someone in the crowd shouts predictably enough at the end. "Shergar!", calls another, more obliquely.   Wolves In The Throne Room
on the other hand have both an excellently evocative name and the
ability to overpower with the sheer brutality of their sound. Playing
to a blacked-out room lit only by a few candles and little blue LEDs on
the horns of their guitars, WITTR start with feedback, add in some more
for good measure and
build into an intense throb only made all the more demonic by the
unearthly howling shrieks which Nathan Weaver
utters at strategic points in the
performance. The downside with the gig is that, compared to the variety
and depth of their albums - particularly the recent Two Hunters -
the monolithic live set is something of a disappointment by
comparison, let down slightly by somewhat murky sound. Where the
records work in a dynamic loud-quiet-loud format, tonight's set sticks
mostly to loud-loud-loud with drone interludes, and perhaps for the
full weight of the punishment meted out to fully satisfy requires
the more reflective sections. However, it is still one of the most
metal events to have descended like a never-ending thundercrack, even
for somewhere as drenched in the storm and sweat of extreme rock and
roll as
The Underworld. WITTR leave ears pounding and bodies feeling
battered by the sheer immensity - if not, surprisingly, volume - of the
sound, particularly by a low end which sets clothes flapping under its
pressure. It's really only by imaginary comparison to
what is perhaps wishful thinking as to what the impressively large
sound the band have captured on record could have been like if it were
being performed on stage tonight that this gig falls short: by all
other standards, it's a monster.  One
knock-on effect of the fire damage is that Dingwall's, located
over the
road from the heart of the blaze, could not put on the Earth and Sir Richard Bishop
gig as planned for two days later. So instead the show relocates to The
Underworld, making for a second night of Southern Lord-related
heaviness in the venue.Sir Richard Bishop is guitarist with the long-travelling psychedelic jam band Sun City Girls.Tonight he's showcasing his solo guitar work, having most recently demonstrated on the exquisite Polytheistic Fragments his deft ability to combine the free-flowing folk style of John Fahey with the blues, and eastern scales which occasionally take him into states of melodic elevation sharing more than a little affinity with the blissful swells of the later soundtrack works of Popul Vuh. Tonight and every night it's just him and his blood-red Les Paul semi-acoustic. A beatific, benign thrum fills the room, and no-one talks when Sir Richard Bishop starts playing; why would they want to? He starts to slowly rip up the dead quiet hush fallen on the venue with the power of his flamenco-dusted rhythms fluttering around the tawng of the electrically-amplified steel strings, turning out a crystal-clear shimmer which rambles into a mesmerising Nirvana. Nevertheless, there is a purpose to this music, one which is as timeless and hypnotic as the movements of the heavens - and if that sounds like hyperbole, then it's also a set of jolly pleasant tunes to occupy space and time in the company of four hundred like-minded souls.   As
with Sir Richard Bishop, Earth's amplification is as much part
of
the sonic palette, their instrumentals sharing the same ability to
slowly shred space and time with far more brightly-sparked energy than
a dozen flashy hair metal geetar dudes spanking their planks at a
hundred and twenty double-taps per second could ever hope to achieve.
Both have a Zen abilty to shift and ride with the
music, to drive a roomful of people up to float in hushed ecstacy
through the simple combination of coiled steel, brushed drums and
speaker cones turned up to just the right level of volume. Their pace is sedate, as orbital as the name suggests, and the occasional trombone phrases and Wurlitzer drones from Steve Moore bring a perfect sense of melancholic flavour to the already thoughtfully-slow tunes. Dylan Carlson keeps up the countrified guitar end of the spectrum, while Don McGreevy's bass holds a thunderous low end down with poised frugality, a light touch on the strings shaking the foundations and reverberating chest cavities. Adrienne Davies hardly strikes her drums at more than a few tens of beats per minute, if that, but the punctuation is definite, precise, and guides the band with a light yet firm touch.   Together,
Bishop and Earth represent a wide-open tradition of American guitar
music which owes as much to the vastness of the country as their
musical heritage elsewhere and a
history which has been typically blended and evolved its own nuances
and motifs - the environmental imagery which sweeps from tree-covered
mountains to seemingly endless deserts is an obvious - yet potent -
one, and even in a sweltering basement in old Europe, it's impossible
not to be caught up in the beguiling landscapes which they embody in
their own very different ways.-Richard Fontenoy- |
© The Contributors and Freq 2008 |