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Pocahaunted/Sun Araw/High Wolf - The Luminaire, London, 20.06.09

Everyone is crowded around the stage, but I can't see anyone performing. I move down to the front. Two people are kneeling on the floor. A chain of effects pedals are arranged in a neat semi-circle. There is a keyboard and something that looks like an etch-a-sketch. They are both wearing masks of emotionless, white faces. Cowls of fabric hang down from them over the neck and shoulders, obscuring the identity of the performers.

The blank, frozen, faces on the masks weave about as the crouched members of High Wolf continually tweak the equipment in front of them. Electronic squiggles leak out from the yards of wires and effects pedals. It's as if we are listening to them flit from one pedal to another trying to escape. There is something forlorn and distant about their sound. Like a faraway howl heard in moon lit hills, trees silhouetted against the skyline.

The sound changes to a slow thud, like hearing your own heartbeat deafening in your ears. A small pipe makes a sound like the Islamic call to prayer. The second half of the set has more emphasis on rhythm. Rattling percussive thumps are synced with the pulsing heartbeat. My interest wanes. There is a lot of this stuff around and the form is hard to critique. All I can say is they had something at the start of their set, but it slipped away.

Sun Araw lay down a heavy, murky, dubbed out rhythm. Dub reggae reinterpreted via stoned indie-rock. Two guitars. One repeats a reggae skank whilst the other plays a slow motion solo. There's reggae riffs and keyboard chords and echoed out vocals. It's woozy, permanently out of focus. As if they've stopped trying to play exact music. Perhaps we should stop trying to listen for it. It's like the aural equivalent of magic eye puzzles. You have to let things get blurry. Only then will you actually hear what there.

Pocahaunted play as a five piece, fleshed out by members of Sun Araw. Strong dubbed reggae vibes. The guitarist, who plays with his legs glued together, plays piston-armed skanks. The keyboard is echoed out in triplicate. The singer performs an ersatz shaman's dance throughout. It always looks a little awkward. Pocahaunted are more forceful live than on record. The spectral coalescences of distant wailing, shambling, primitivist camp-fire percussion, loops and wire thin guitar lines is supplanted by bass, groove, funk and propelled by trad drum kit.

And for that something is lost. The wispy beauty of their records, where their best songs are glimpses of their influences obscured by the mist and fog of their production, is tonight absent.

Saturn Finger/Burial Hex/Kinit Her - Cafe Oto, London, 16.06.09

I am a hypocrite. My criticism is unfair. My opinion compromised. I acknowledge this now.

My judgement of Kinit Her should be based on their music and performance. Nothing else should matter. But I am hung-up on their appearance.

One is wearing purple shorts, and another skinny jeans and a fashionista's moustache. It is only really a problem because they are playing black metal.

To me Kinit Her play a middling hybrid of folk, electronics and black metal. The riffing is relentlessly mid-paced, never summoning the screaming, blurry, guitar holocaust of prime black metal. The vocals are almost operatic. Not just in their glass shattering pitch, but also in the theatrical delivery of the singer, who waves his arms around as if he is in a concert hall.

But I can't help fearing that my opinion is polluted.

I grew up on metal, with Mayhem, Beherit and Darkthrone. I know the derision heaped on metallers with long hair and corpse paint. I didn't think that abuse was fair. To just be judged on how you look. But now I find myself making similar judgements about Kinit Her.

On some level it is about authenticity. Extreme metal, in different forms, has crossed over and become popular with fans of non-metal music. Do Kinit Her only exist because black metal is now cool with their friends?

Metal used to lack self confidence. Metal fans were derided and scorned by the public and friends alike. It bred a defensiveness that still lives in my psyche. I need to know if a band are for real.

But as I sit in the audience making sweeping judgements about Kinit Her, I can't ignore my own utterly, fatally, compromised position. Am I very different from anyone in Kinit Her? I started out in metal, but now I'm in all sorts of experimental, esoteric places. No-one is telling me to go back to my Burzum demos.

Maybe underneath this is a deeply repressed feeling of my own moral superiority. I want people to know I was into this stuff before they were. That I own this music, and they're just a guest. I admit this, because I fear it has filtered into my judgements on the band. This is my view. You should decide your own.

I cease my self analysis before Burial Hex begin. Freed from my introspection I am able to enjoy his set on it's merits alone. Over ominous groans, cracks, clicks and creaks tumbles classically inspired piano. Like Chopin gone black metal. There is an eerie, unsettling disparity between this union of elements. As if a virtuoso pianist had been warped into some barren, blackened, alien tundra. Somehow it works.

Saturn Finger are a noise drone duo. They deploy the usual array of effects pedals along with ukelele, and other stuff. I can't remember and I didn't make notes. Long hours at work mean I can barely keep awake through their set. I think I fell asleep for a bit. I hope they thought I was just concentrating on their music. What I remember wasn't that good. There didn't seem any shape to their music, just random stuff.

I cycle home. It barely wakes me up.

I'm Being Good/Jack Allett/Lamp - The Freebutt, Brighton, 6 June 2009

I have been going to gigs at The Freebutt for half my life and it has never looked so forbidding. It's windows have been boarded up. It looks like it's closed down.

When I first came here the venue was the size of someone's front room. When bands played everyone used the women's toilet because the bands amps and gear had to go in front of the gents. Then, sometime years back - I can't remember - they knocked through into another room and created a bigger space. However, the odd L-shaped space this created wasn't any better. For whilst you could get more people in there, only the same number could still see the stage.

Since then they have redesigned again and put the stage of the apex of the L, but there is a massive pillar in the centre of the room where you'd be most likely to stand. In a few years I imagine they'll try again.

Lamp. Three piece. Two guitars. Drums. No vocals. Their songs follow a similar pattern. Mid-paced amble leading to controlled crescendo. It makes me think of late era Polvo and tonight's headliners. Sometimes they meander rather than amble and go on for a bit too long. They could do with loosening up on the rock-outs.

Jack Allett is half of Towering Breaker. It is hard to announce yourself when you play noise/drone/whatever. There's no drummer to give a few thumps and cue the audience that you're about to start. So a lot of people ignore the start of Allett's set. I'm listening though. I hear what sounds like harshly bowed string instruments and low end drones, hums and pops, which summon memories of listening to Popol Vuh on headphones with my eyes closed. There's a dull bit half-way through, but then some low end throb is introduced and it's as if we're in a submarine with ships passing overhead with only a malfunctioning modem for a crewmate.  

I head to the toilet. I can use the gents now, but the latest renovations means that they can only be reached by heading up a flight of stairs to the upstairs bar. From here you go through the bar and down another flight of stairs down to the toilets. You'd be in trouble if you had urgent business.

Like The Freebutt I'm Being Good are another permanent presence in my life. I saw their fourth or fifth ever gig back in 1993 and I've seen them regularly since then. They are down to a three piece. Andrew now has a beard. They play a set of new songs. At least I don't recognise any. The songs sound like recent IBG output. Clear chime-y riffs and math-y knots of rhythm resolve and tangle themselves. It makes me think of late-era Polvo and, er, Lamp.

Fleshpress/Bong/Shift/Cities Prepare For Attack - The Grosvenor, London, 30/5/09

A man sits motionless on stage. His head bowed. Regular distorted gong strikes ring out. Periodically the man picks up his guitar and plays. Sometimes it's shimmery sustain, other times low bass notes. Afterwards he lays his guitar down and resumes his wait. The gong changes to a droning hum before I am assaulted by glass shatteringly high guitar. I wish I'd put my ear plugs in earlier.

If Cities Prepare For Attack were a study in minimalism then Shift seem intent on out doing them. Or rather doing even less. The drummer plays the same five, thudding, beats for 20 minutes. The black metal, screamo vocals are mixed down creating texture rather than dominating the music. The bassist repeats the same monolithic riff in slow motion. The vocalist keeps nipping between his mike and an electronic box with lots of green lights on. I can't quite work out if, or what, extra he is contributing.  A wood of autumnal, bare-branched, trees is projected onto the wall behind the band. The disconcerting coalescence of imagery and music suggest an alternative soundtrack to Twin Peaks. They play a second, shorter, track. The drummer actually plays a bit on this song. It's amazing that he can remember what to do after the coma inducing repetition of their first number. 

A pint glass full of joss sticks is placed at the front of the stage. A thick cloud of scented smoke drifts upwards, over and around the audience. It's a heady aphrodisiac for Bong's lava speed riffing. Each one is of seismic weight. Like the shifting of tectonic plates. Bass, guitar and drums are augmented by sitar which they use to conduct cosomonautic, explorations of psychedelic raga drone. They slowly spiral in a decaying orbit into a sun going supernova. Vocals are sporadic, deep, monotone, intonements, like a druid reciting an incantation. The effect is mind dementing. A woman hugs the speaker stacks ignoring the deafening volume before spending the rest of the set dancing suggestively in-front of the speaker stacks. The audience bay for more at the end of the set. An absolutely killer performance.

Fleshpress blur together about five different elements of metal. Black, death, doom, stoner and psych. They remind me a lot of Autopsy circa their Mental Funeral LP where grindcore thrash and chugging doom were stitched together with sickened and twisted guitar solos. Fleshpress pull off this genre twitching feat with skill, never compromising their heaviness or the integrity of the songs.

Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides/Tony Marsh - Cafe Oto, London, 29 May 2009

I am crashing fast. My beer tastes like ash. I am paying for a succession of late nights and early mornings. If I hadn't already bought a ticket I probably wouldn't be here.

Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides aren't going to inspire a sudden adrenaline boost in my system, they're more a soothing lullaby. They start quietly with dry taps of the keys on the flute. When it's blown the flute been given an echoed out dub effect. The swirling textures soar, arc and wheel like a flight of birds. With, between, and against this drummer taps, raps and knocks the edges of his kit as if afraid to conventially strike it. He creates an infinite pitter patter of beats as if he isn't allowed to play the same ones twice.

Tony Marsh is a jazz drummer of 30 years standing. I must confess that I had not previously come across him. He plays a solo set. It begins with extended, pulsing, cymbal shimmer, like waves on a shore. Then he moves his attention to the skins. It's elliptical, complex. He shifts from the ever evolving patterns with deceptive simplicity. It's like listening to a double helix. He plays fast with no discernable effort. I marvel at one persons mastery of their instrument.

Before Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides return for their second. This time the drummer is hitting his kit with concerted force. He has overcome his early shyness. The flautist responds by playing with a bit more puff. I'm bone tired now and I flicker between wakefullness and sleep.

 

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