Monday 16 March 2009

ETTA Gig Redux

"Can you hear me through the speakers? Then it's fucking working"
P For Persia tear the room a new psychedelic doom hole to pour the audience's brains through. Their set veers (and I think that's the right word) from wild treble-heavy electronic splattered rocking out, right down to a sludgy slow motion metal dirge (which is a good word). 'Teetering on the brink of collapse' is an overused descriptor but here it almost holds true - although with PFP it seems more like they are tearing themselves apart. Good again.

Second on were Who Owns Death TV who we did not enjoy at all. Although that might be a bit unfair - they are pretty competent at recreating that bass heavy bounce of 'Dirty' Sonic Youth but they do it unnecessarily loudly within an ill-deployed range of frequencies which fucked our hearing for the rest of the gig which would take the edge of the other bands (and mean me squinting my ears to get my DJing levels, though no chance anyone else noticed!) Maybe we should wear earplugs, or maybe they shouldn't.

"This is our last song...ever"
Elks have an experimental low-slung blues sound that owes as much to Fugazi as it does to the four-bar, tying wide-open melodies to dynamic highway rhythms with a healthy dose of screaming dissonance. They also have a loose casual swing to their stride combined with an engaging presence that does well to win us over. Given that we are well into bands like Crippled Black Phoenix and US Christmas at the moment, Elks are driving a road that leads straight to our hearts.

"I think there's rohypnol in my drink"
Everyone To The Anderson hit it hard and noisy, their new tracks even leaner and more tightly focussed than their previous Doodlebug stuff with a couple sporting some seriously savage jumps into distorted blow outs. Their Dischord hardened post-punk-rock is out there on it's own as one of the keenest sounds in town, stripped of anything extraneous every second is a compelling rush with an ever present sense of danger and intensity, this is deadly serious music delivered with a sense of fun, or vice versa. Both ends simultaneously possible when it comes to ETTA.


In between all this, I played all these:

A Death Cinematic - The Grasses Will Grow Tall Over Our Cities (intensely effected electric guitar)
Pocahaunted – Salt (dense Eagle Rock CA style dub)
Mi Ami - Echonoecho (afro beats + noise + screeching)
Hind Ear – Coconut (debut track from the new incarnation of Revenge of Shinobi)
Clockcleaner – Skinhead Lady (gutter punk bellow)
Women – Lawncare (Velvets styled indie noise drone)
Gay Witch Abortion – Action Cop (hard edged noise rock)
Kontakte – Flightpaths (hissing post-rock white-out)
Fever Ray – Coconut (beatific and bleak Swedish beats)
Nissenenmondai – Destination Tokyo (Japanese krautrock incidental musique)
Nullifier – If Days Corrode (the perfect pop song in seven stages)
Action Beat – Le Chap ()
Blank Dogs – The Other Way (mumbling tumbling fade out odd-pop)
US Christmas – The Scalphunters (space-rock kicked into hyperdrive)
Turbowolf – Seven Severed Heads (minute and a half of disco metal)
Hotel Wrecking City Traders – Cup Weekend Murders (stoner speed riffs)
Mayors – Airplanes (like a plane crashing to a beat)
Quttinirpaaq – Down By The River (electronics hued rainbow spectrum doom)
Alva Noto - Xerrox Phaser Acat 1 (bassy textural fuzz)
Cobalt – A Clean, Well Lighted Place (merciless modern metal)
Goth Trad – Far East Assassin (Distance Remix) (Japan dubstep meets London grimbass)
Tussle – Night Of The Hunter (Prins Thomas Remix) (day-glo electro-kraut remix)



Thanks again to Ben for inviting us to DJ his night, we had a blast.

MxBx

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