It is an interesting spectacle, because although the crowd knows to look forward to two forty-five minute sets and a short intermission, what those two sets might entail is anyone's guess. The air of anticipation is further heightened by the lack of a support slot, so nothing interferes with the trio's planned or unplanned journeys.
live review
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It's kind of psychedelic music, if that wasn't principally rubbish. The reference for me is something like Les Rallizes Dénudés, thought that is also off. What LRD do is to take a basic doo-wop poppy structure in the rhythm section and have a guitar go waaaay into the red. Fushitsusha use that as a kind of springboard, and take out the predictable rhythm section. Where most rock music -- most music -- deals in clearly repetitious elements, pulses and such, Fushitsusha take whatever is repetitious and hide it.
On record there are over a hundred guitar tracks on each track -- live, where I see them at The Troxy, there are just two hooded men, standing in front of a veritable Stonehenge of amps, all labouring and straining under the force of the sound. Which is where the true music comes from.
Strange angels pouring into the on-screen fractal shapes and patterned orbits. Jarboe silhouetted, long hair flowing over her face, upturned hands to her solemnly pointed words, occasionally raising them in alter-like reverence to the intensity
They don’t let the intensity dip; they just hurl themselves at their instruments and search for each others’ groove. They find it, and then they keep going. We want them to. People in the audience are finding their inner head-banger.
The people on the bill tonight feel like threads from the same dark bass wagon; they don’t necessarily sound alike (although they share a sympathy for low tones and steel beats) but they feel like they are parts of a wider subliminal zeitgeist.
...in summary: banging festival. I don't want to miss out on the important social stuff -- it was really heartening to see so many people as much interested in chatting to distant (and often online) pals as they were watching music. Largely the acts were new names on me (no surprise -- I don't follow this scene much) and all of them deserving of the larger stage.
It is cosmic and dusty, like a long road across a desert. It is windblown music, or rather music than rides into the storm until, disorientated and windblown, you find yourself in the eye. It feels like big country music.
...scenes of desolate forest, urban strip malls, industrial zones, police brutality, stock market tickers and images of technical blueprints
...it's certainly singular and perhaps dry, but it's equally a showing of some breathtaking capacity for keeping the listener on their toes. He closes with some leaping and clattering that belie his seventy-three years -- Keiji Haino's not ready to stop hitting shit really fucking hard and long may he continue.
Nominally to promote last year's England's Screaming album, it felt more like an opportunity to engage with an audience who had clearly travelled many miles with him over the years, such was the familiarity and ease of atmosphere. The Face Bar is an interesting venue, looking like a social club suite with a series of interconnected rooms and the stage for tonight is set up in front of some very comfy looking chairs and makes for a convivial setting. An engaging character and raconteur, Eric is armed only with two guitars and a series of effects pedals to lay waste to songs old and new.
Celebrating Buried Treasure’s latest Extracellular comp (which is going to get its own well deserved write up soon, I promise), label boss Alan Gubby invited a few of its featured artists to perform at a tiny arts centre just off the London Road in Reading, Berkshire. Knowing the calibre of the label’s eclectic radar and having sampled many previous happenings this was definitely an opportunity not to be missed
Paul Horlick has long been one of the of the most influential people on the Bristol gig scene. As well as co-owning Invada Records and running the sadly missed Swarf Finger, he has been a Teenager In Trouble, been part of Black Sheep and exhaustively and enthusiastically promoted shows in the city for longer than I can remember. So to hear that another label was up and running and there was to be a showcase for Black Mound Sound Lab in the cellar of The Exchange with five acts, entrance for a fiver and lots of merch available
There’s a falling spaceman on screen and you feel the helplessness in the sonic tumble of those sharpened melodics rush on over you. A life-affirming experience that ends on an updated version of "The Hacker" that mauls supernova, stuttering in harshly beaten majesty, rough-cut keys and an urgent thrust of images that pile upon your retina in stark black'n'white.
...my first time seeing these legends, and with their recent Touch LP figure-heading the proceedings those open-ended adventurers flew fiery from the start. Nevada(ry) soft focus they descend -- all desert twilights and snaky rhythms, the cold black backdrop behind rippling with an ochre glow as John Herndon’s drums held command over the flex.
With four red lights and plenty of dry ice, the group in their sharp suits and nonchalant swagger looked like a dissolute Rat Pack, each member moving in time with the music, already caught up in the atmosphere... Definitely a night to remember, like a snapshot in time reflected into the future.
Songs mutate and evolve, improvised elements sticking and becoming part of the canon. In fact, Swans evolve to such a degree that I reckon given a long enough tour, one of their songs is infinitely more likely to develop sentience than any fucking LLM.
When I first moved to London in 1990 at the tender age of eighteen, I was in part drawn by the lure of a city offering plenty of live music. So of course the first thing I did was go to see Fields Of The Nephilim at The Town and Country Club. And now, thirty-five years later, here they are in the same building (though now it’s called The Forum), celebrating their own fortieth anniversary.