NFR Setlist 3rd September, 2009

This month was a blast. One of the most fun sets we've played for a while I think - and thanks to everyone that came up and chatted about the tracks. We are as pleased that you hate stuff as much as you love it, because we're that kind of contrary and you love to hate really and it's all part of the same fun innit?

Here's my Meatbreak September setlist for you. Cut it out, keep it and tick off everything you collect.

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Click Box – Nebula (Wake Up Call, Minus)
Brazilian techno/electro meshes with clipped glitch propelling itself like Villalobos with the atmospherics of Gui Boratto. Really nice and lush.

Halogen – Not The Remix (Recycled Broadcasts Ep, Self-Released)
More lushness from the fields of Brighton’s underground electronics scene. This was a free download last year – go find Mr Halogen and ask him if he’s still giving his flotation tank immersion experience away.

Worriedaboutsatan – Pissing About (Arrivals, Gizeh)
Leeds based post-IDM ambient electronics duo produce one of our albums of the year – some tracks have only punctuation as titles, others have names like this but the music you cannot take anything but seriously.

Awesome Wells – I Think Thanks-Giving Will Turn Kurt Cobain Around (The Highs And Lows Of Dewitte A Stanton, Red Deer Club)
Beautiful post-folk sampled weirdness from one of Brighton’s most interesting should-be superstars.

Sun Araw – Heavy Deeds (Heavy Deeds, Not Not Fun)
Heavy dose of Quaalude heavy heavy psych drone cloud bathing your lobes with a heavy rain of multi-colours

Lightning Bolt – Sound Guardians (Earthly Delights, Load)
Picking it up right out of the electronic and abstract, this is the first track off the new LB record and it slams – wave upon wave of destructive tidal guitars smashing into the battering drums – flashes of effects and more audible vocals punctuate it. The Bolt are back.

Pissed Jeans –Dream Smotherer (King Of Jeans, Sub Pop)
Harrowing tale of the life of an office worker – living for the night – after dark is when these people come alive and what they live for. Just one day they turn up to work with petrol bombs and shotguns. Dangerous music for dangerous people.

Cold Cave – The Trees Grew Emotions And Died (Love Comes Close, Heartworm Press)
LA based solo artists vision of an 80’s that filtered through the 2000’s via the 90s….yeah. The last 20 years of electronics triple filtered into a smooth after dinner hip shaking shimmy of perfection.

Brain Children – Lucky Land Of Skin (Brain Children, Stained Circles)
Australian 80’s nostalgia fest that we can dig. Not that we’re actually into nostalgia all that heavily, or too much electronic 80’s pop, but there’s a lot around at the moment that is fun – and we’re definitely into fun.

Power Up – NFR Jingle
Fun like this!

Neon Indian – Should Have Taken Acid With You (Psychic Chasms, Lefse VCR)
And this! Even if the guy’s from Texas I still call it NY Loft-Core because by rights this synth beat glitter-wave should be hipster detritus but it strikes every chord in every right way.

Music Go Music – Lights Of Love (Expressions, Secretly Canadian)
Nu-Balaeric Italo-disco by way of Abba and the Ronettes. Like Phil Spector recorded a Christmas song for the middle of summer. If you don’t fucking hate it you will fucking love it.

Engineers – Sometimes I Realise (Three Fact Fader, Kscope)
Manchester’s best kept secret won’t stay hidden for much longer once people’s end of year lists start putting this dense shoegazy Northern dance record in their top 10s. Trust us.

Magic Wands – Kiss Me Dead (Magic Love & Dreams, Bright Antenna)
Sky gazing star-scraping cosmic pop. Enchanting, entrancing, exciting.

Blues Control – Good Morning (Local Flavor, Siltbreeze)
Total change of direction as we get BC’s smashing together of every hairy rock genre known to man. Cool and heavy, brother.

Ulaan Khol – ‘Untitled’ (I, Soft Abuse)
Otherworldy free folk cosmic drone from a one man guitar tone synaesthete.

xbx – Shut Up NFR Jingle
Our favourite resident of Bethany, Oklahoma made us 2 jingles which make. This one has a dog barking. Hahahahahaha. Seriously.

Kong – Snake Magnet – Blood Of A Dove (Snake Magnet, Brew)
Devastatingly twisted taut heaviness from Manchester’s sellotape-faced 3-piece like Slint with an undercurrent of Mogwai. Just when you think it couldn’t ratchet up the tension and intensity any harder it goes twice as far where you wouldn’t expect it. Track of the night for me, no doubt.

Nullifier – 30 Minute Heat (Demo)
Super smashing mega hyper pop from Brighton’s OIB oriented supergroup. Super heart this band.

Silver Bullets – Flight From Babylon (Free Radical, Stunned Records)
Far out space shanty rattling disco groove that keeps on going to infinity and beyond.

The xx – Basic Space (Jamie xx Bass Remix)
Expansive deep and low remake of his own band’s flagship track.

Grey Machine – Wolf At The Door (Disconnected, Hydra Head)
Justin Broadrick’s new venture is possibly the bleakest, unyielding and intense of them all. An increasingly overwhelming advance of industrial doom that sucked the light from the room.

Atlas Sound – Walkabout
This is where we totally turn on the fun and pace again. Noah Lennox and Bradford Cox team up in an indie wet-dream wedding of ethereal harmony and liquid groove.

Factory Floor – Taxidermist (Planning Application, One Of One)
A gritty urban rhythm machine of a track that has a bit of early Liars about it. Hard to twell what the guitars are actually doing, there so much white drum noise against a stark grey cloud background.

Pinkshinyultrablast – Deerland (Happy Songs For Happy Zombies, Odd Box)
Russian post-rock shoegaze supernova. Starts of pretty hard and keeps on churning down that furrow.

A Place To Bury Strangers – Deadbeat (Exploding Head, Mute)
US post-rock shoegaze supernova. A dull bladed bassline knifes in and out of increasingly sever noise blowouts. “Why? WTF? Would you break my heart?”

Future Of The Left – Arming Eritrea (Travels With Myself And Another, 4AD)
”C’mon Rick!” Thi sband is as essential as they come - funny and lighthearted yet unyieldingly serious and in yr face.

Oneida -10:30 At The Oasis (Rated O, Jagjaguwar)
One of the many highlights from this album – this one a really long kraut-comische ebb and throb. More in a moment…

Gold Panda – Triangle Cloud (Before, Self-Released)
Really short, enigmatic little electronic calling card type track that buries you underneath it and evaporates before you evenrealise it was there. This little mini-album is made up of 6 of them and they are all beautiful little works of micro-music.

Oneida – Brownout In Lagos (Rated O, Jagjaguwar)
…The first track of the Oneida album is a steaming skanking dub beast with sparse toasting vocals courtesy of an old school friend of the band. So different their label thought they were joking when they submitted it in an album years ago but took it ion this when they knew they were serious.

SunnO))) & Pan Sonic – Che (Che Ep, Blast First Petite)
With Alan Vega on vocals! Amazing cover of the Suicide track that hums with the street dirt the original was carved out of, but deeper and grimier as only the lowest bass can bring.

Tenhornedbeast – Ruins Son (My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Earth, Cold Spring)
Me and the Wolfe mixed this into birdsong for a good few minutes before I ballsed it up and cut it off for no apparent reason leaving us with some dead air ruining that special candle-lit-séance-with-the-window-open moment we had going. Maybe just as well.

US Christmas – The Scalphunters (Eat The Low Dogs, Neurot)
Kick it up a gear into Stooges Vs. Spiritualised cosmic rock. We love our delay/phasers/flange and reverb around here. The more the merrier.

xbx – WolfMeat Jingle
Second jingle from our friend over the ocean, this one a mashup of our names until the dude gives up and calls it NFR.

The Middle Computer - Epic (Ultra Console Mayhem, Non-Applicable)
An oldie but goodie. PC powered post-rock that keeps on expanding in scale and grandeur.

Fever Ray – Seven (Crookers Remix)
Totally fucked remix of a beautiful haunting track – littered with cheap phone ring effects and bassness, there’s little room left for the original. As potentially annoying as it is brilliant.

Pissed Jeans – Human Upskirt (King Of Jeans, Sub Pop)
Another track of this awesome album – like In Utero era Nirvana - ”And I don’t like him / He’s probably bursting / well I don’t blame him / it might be worse / it might be worse”.

Yob – Burning The Altar (The Great Cessation, Profound Lore)
A properly massive and imposing doom metal track to finish. Suitably so. Profound Lore know how to pick their bands and YOB know how to deploy the riffs.



And that was and is the END. That's all from us this month.

We're back at the Penthouse on 1st October, above the Pompeii/Air Castles gig when we'll have all sorts of new demos and missives from the underground for you.

'Til them (or at least, untikl our next blog post)..byebye.

MxBx