‘Flickering embers’ – Arch M at Luminaire, London

January 23, 2009 at 3:52 am · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: ARCH M, CAT GRAVE, LIVE, LONDON, LUMINAIRE

The enigmatic Arch M and his ‘bahama bedroom band’  played a surprisingly sprawling freeform show tonight at London’s Luminaire, inside from the dank January rain outside & under the glimmer of the intimate venue’s mirrorball.  A delicate concoction of percussion, blistering delays, and feedback were put on slow burn from the start, gradually enveloping the room in it’s repetitive & defiantly hedonistic density.  Pulsing toms punctuated by occasional crashes – all subjected to a huge slithery delay – were joined by propulsive  squalls of overdriven feedback and sparse guitar & bass.  

This deceptively simple soup somehow suggested the ghosts of a number of deep avant dance musics from the 1980s through to the mid 90s (think Maximum Joy, Lifetones, Factory’s Hacienda…), and could quite happily have ridden that wave forever.  That’s not what happened though.  After this slow movement onwards continued, the bliss expanded further with layered & delayed guitar until the whole thing popped with some lyrics from Reid uttered repeatedly – shaman-like into one of a number of assembled microphones. From what had up until this point been lush clouds of shifting melodic gestures, simultaneously falling into & out of themselves,  sprung a mutant rendition of Cat Grave – slipping out of the speakers & around the heads of the gathered crowd.  It’s hard to explain what it sounded like, but if you can imagine the version you’ve heard, but rendered longform, trance-inducing and loose, yet somehow opulent and technoid – well, that would be it.

Then, all of a sudden it was over,  and with a simple “Enjoy the music”, the band left the stage, mirror ball still glistening like flickering embers.

http://www.myspace.com/archm

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