HISTORY PAINTING
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‘Sound storm’, Actress at CAMP, London
Storm of sound. Air shaken wildly. Werk it.
(video found here)
‘Light-speed, psychedelic’, Daedelus at The Rhythm Factory, London
Before commencing a late night set in one of the hottest London summers in recent memory, Alfred ‘Daedelus‘ Darlington with an ear-to-ear smile beamed into the mic, ‘this reminds me of LA… it’s crazy… thanks for coming out on such a hot night… ‘. He was right, 12.45am and still t-shirt weather outside. Lush day followed by balmy night. ‘… we’re gonna have some fun’. Correct again. Mic down, faders up, East London’s Rhythm Factory was treated to a whole ridiculously generous hour and a half of pure bliss. His furious production blended with Beach Boys samples, snatches of Dilla beats and even a low-end-rich rework of East Flatbush Project’s’ ‘Tried by Twelve’. All delivered at a blistering pace and performed in Darlington’s inimitable style, never far away from a change-rabid rapid sonic shift. BPM nudged high to match the intensity of the summer heat. Every beat tripping over into the next. The stuttering intensity of the soundsystem-stretching set echoed by the flicking limbs of the beat hungry crowd, happily giving their minds and bodies up to a shattered, light-speed, psychedelic odyssey. London just got a few degrees hotter.
‘Work Work’ Pre-‘Ministry-Ministry’ Ministry
Pre-‘Ministry-Ministry’ Ministry is an altogether different kind of experience to ‘Ministry-Ministry’ Ministry. Both good I guess. Just different. No value judgement there. But given the choice personally, today (much of which was spent on trains, sun beaming across spreading smiles) it might have to be P-‘M-M’M. Heard this (or rather, the 12″ dub mix) again recently on the Metro Area Fabric Mix and has been stuck in my head for a bit now. So I’m passing on the pleasant affliction.
‘Au or Gold’, Banjo or Freakout at The Macbeth, London
Photo ripped from BOF myspace – credited to Elly
Banjo or Freakout are an unmistakably vital live group currently doing the rounds in London’s clubs. On record, there’s a lush restrained, tense thing going on, but live, the whole thing’s exploding out. Peaking levels oozing forth from a couple of SP555s, overdriven guitar -made-alien through a bank of stomp boxes, insistently pounding drums, like a Native American drum circle, and the abstract swirl of Natalizia’s super-delayed vocals. Go see these after one of these hot summer days. They will make your evening. This is THE summer. Pure goldsounds. Au.
p.s. New record out too…
It’s called ‘Upside Down’
http://halfmachinerecords.bigcartel.com/product/banjo-or-freakout-upside-down-12
‘Everything forever’, Mi Ami at The Macbeth, London
Photo ripped from Mi Ami myspace (location/ photographer unknown)
Last night Mi Ami played at The Macbeth on Hoxton Street, taking in a London stop on their Euro tour. After a tentative start (which through no fault of their own included a badly behaved mic stand that appeared to have been possessed by the spirit of a Harold Lloyd prop, Fantasia-style, spinning around away from wherever it needed it to be), Mi Ami, took the gathered crowd at The Macbeth, primed their minds with intricate little polyrhythms, slicked the whole affair up with heavy bass, distracting their bodies into relaxing, spaced things out with heavily delayed sharp guitar clank, and delivered the sucker punch of brilliantly sore throat inducing androdgyvox. The audience was so wowed and thirsty for more, they found it impossible to just let the band go home and rest their weary limbs. A number of encores ensued, and the amicable three-piece were kind enough to oblige and attempt to quench the thirst. Of course, these attempts were equivalent to pouring petrol on a fire to put it out… the more they played, the more they were wanted. Absolutely brilliant. Carved out a (deep) space and drew us all in. This was a mind blowing show. Pure Energie. Try and catch them before the venues are too big for the intensity of the experience available at cosy spaces like this place.
In the meantime… buy EVERYTHING before it sells out FOREVER. Everything. Stoke this flame. Bring them back to the UK. Picked a few up at the show and they are lush looking/feeling/sounding things. New vinyl excitingly titled “Techno 1.1” due soon too on Hoss Records…http://www.myspace.com/miamiamiami
Oh, and here’s a clip of their penultimate encore song…
‘Speechless like…’, Antipop Consortium at Cargo, London
Fluorescent Black – the mysterious recording that’s been spoken about ever since the first whispers of an Anti Pop Consortium reformation.
Let me rewind a touch. Anti Pop Consortium are an IMPORTANT group. All caps. No doubt. Two Warp records releases under their collective belt, a break from the group (at the height of their notoriety) and numerous releases and side projects later, they are back, this time with the mighty Big Dada. Tonight’s show at Cargo is spellbinding. The sheer energy being exchanged between APC & the crowd is phenomenal. The mix is good… vocals well audible, beats crisp, synths stabs alternately warm analogue and cold digi. Pure bliss. “We’ll never fake moves” exclaimed Earl Blaise as they teased the crowd with the only piece of retrospective work performed that night… beginning as Ghostlawns the way we all know it, but not even a bar in, everything but vocals dropped out. Acapella. So yeah – that’s Ghostlawns acapella. Kick yourself if you weren’t there.
All the new material sounds totally amazing – both the skewed instrumentals and blistering vocal tracks. Awaiting Autumn and the APC’s new dawn. They had better be coming back to London! Volcano.
‘If dancefloors could dream’, Flying Lotus at FWD, Plastic People
*picture (from a Stateside show) by Ian Mayer ripped from The Fader
A random myspace bulletin check on a Sunday night train bore juicy fruit last night. After missing out on tickets for the Vauxhall show, I found that Flying Lotus would be playing London again in an hour or so at Plastic People. Heading into the dark box was a pretty different story to Theo Parrish the night before. Where for Theo, there was a nice amount of space & air to compliment his breezy show, tonight, FWD was a proper pit – a mass of twitching frames & shuffling feet. Kode 9 played an alien breed of rhythms to coax human muscles into new forms, then after a number of rewinds, passed over to homme du jour, Flying Lotus. If dancefloors could dream, it would sound something like this. Echoes of dubs past, left floating in dusty, stagnant echo chambers were called upon to drift and shuffle past each other, their ragged frames mutated through the sheer velocity of their travel, leaving searing, acidic traces behind of their own particular strain of low frequency radiation. Condensed hardcore continuum history lesson. Lotus on Fire. Check the mp3…http://dubstep.lv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=719&sid=eafdd7d0811168fbc1a557b8ffedd90f
BTW… at the start of the FlyLo set, where it all stops and the MC is all like, “We’ve got some technicals… I thought that was the tune” Well, to me, that shit sounded pretty good too. More ‘technicals’ please.
BTW part 2… 42 minutes in – Kode 9. Pitch shifting, mangled, C21, attention deficit version of early 90s house. If you know what that tune’s called & where I can buy it. Comment and let me know.
BTW part 3… essential reading – Kode 9 & Derek Walmsley unedited Wire magazine interview transcript. http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/2439/?pageno=1
‘When I’m sixty-four’, Cluster at Rich Mix, London
Photo – unknown source
Picture yourself at sixty-four. Now seventy-four. Now forget what you just imagined & watch these guys (Cluster – seminal groop) at Rich Mix rinsing some of the wildest sounds this side of the stars: Hans-Joachim Roedelius (74 years old) & Dieter Moebius (64 years old). Post 60… bring it on.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at all… the journey there held premonitions of a trip down memory lane… Old original kit-porn fest for the analog crew… or worst-case scenario, some awful and disappointingly out of touch sounding new stuff. None of these were even slightly accurate. Was thinking that ‘memory lane x kit-porn’ would’ve been just fine but Roedelius and Moebius had other plans for the (brilliantly) youthful crowd (had this been held on the Southbank somewhere, it would’ve been totally different). If there was ever an SMS, letter, phone call, or conversation even that included a mission statement type exchange about this show, the key word could only have been ‘Schlagverstand’ (rough translation – ‘blow minds’). And minds were blown for sure. Skittering insectoid beats and tones that you’d expect to her coming from a particularly enlightened & avant obsessed teenager’s overheating laptop shook neutrons and neurons. Come back soon! Play Plastic People. Blow minds.
‘Don’t Look Now’ – Broadcast live soundtrack improv at Shunt Lounge, London
Tonight Trunk Records and Ghost Box got together and took over the Shunt Lounge to throw a party. Shunt proved to be the perfectly disorientating setting for the strange esoteric films and music being shown during the evening.
After leaving the outside world behind in London Bridge Tube station, and following the echoing sounds into the heart of the somehow very British brick vaults, I was greeted by the sound of ‘Tanzmusik’ from Ralf & Florian blasting out to accompany a quick drink. That was as sweet a moment as you can expect to have thirty seconds into arriving at any venue. After a little milling around, it came to light that there was a screening room set up showing back-to-back TV drama & public information films, which ranged from really quite sublimely beautiful, to funny, unsettling & scary, all the way to pretty silly – sometimes within the space of a minute or so of one film!
Disorientation seemed to be the order of the night, as a strange mixture of squat party, ancient castle, and underground cult youth club started to set in as the place filled up, sonics from the films and DJ sets spilling forth into the jet black corners.
Back in the screening room, as a film came to a close, in (un)matching red and blue anoraks, James Cargill and Trish Keenan (Broadcast) took to the stage to perform a live soundtrack to Julian House’s short film. Eager fans squeezed in to find a spot as the electronics began to whir around the space & the video sprang into motion. The first live performance in London by Broadcast for quite some time was pretty special. See/hear for yourself:
‘You keep the beats’ – Plug at the Hub, London
Plug played support tonight at the fairly new Disolvenza night at E1’s the Hub, but I can’t see why any promoter would have it that way. Raw, smart & direct songs were blasted forth from a beautifully minimal setup – 2-piece on bass and drums (with the occasional little additional Bontempi keyboard-style accompaniment).
Painfully lame nights out that end with you waiting in the rain for a nightbus – unfulfilled and questioning the state of all things music are all about nights like tonight. In that nights like tonight are what make all those cruddy gig nights worth it. You can’t orchestrate a chance encounter with something special – you can just be ready to pay your four quid entry fee & wait patiently.
If you hadn’t gathered, tonight was more than worth it. Plug were vital and uncompromising in their directness and clarity. It’s been a long time since I heard a new band who sounded so mature in their focus. What they chose to leave out – what they decided not do, weighed a ton. Imagine a parallel world where Siouxie Sioux cooly, calmly, but defiantly & angrily masterminded the sharply minimal Young Marble Giants – but in a 2009 where the best new music was reacting against the fact that much of the new music often sounded like it had forgotten that the future was yet to be written. And a Young Marble Giants that had spent as much time listening to the urgently present old Die Monitr Batss singles, and the raw rhythms of Ramellzee & Benga as it had Eno & Can.
Now imagine you’re in an SU bar, enjoying the cheap beer, catching up with old friends, sitting with your back to the seemingly distant stage, when suddenly, to sit feels just wrong. Well that’s when Plug are five seconds into their first song. Like a sharp point – sonic trepanation or something – Plug’s sparse bass riffs, lit-savvy lyrics and insistent drum patterns cut through the fog of cheap beers to amass an appreciative and excited audience, hanging on every smash of the tom and thwack of the strings. A great band that I sincerely hope stick around for a while.
A little sleuthing will reveal that they have a 7″ single out on Parlour Records. You can get that on their myspace page http://www.myspace.com/plugddd.
They’re playing a fair few nights soon, so go see them & see/hear what I’m on about – guaranteed no regrets:
24th Feb – South of the Border, Old St /// 26th Feb – Ryan’s Bar, Stokie /// 18th March – The Pictures Night, Barden’s, Dalston
Don’t come crying in a year when you’re trying to get a ticket to see them & its all sold out.
HISTORY PAINTING 