The Borderline, London 13 January 2012
“Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.”
Like the spaceship in Ray Bradbury’s book about to blast its cargo to Mars, Space Ritual have a constant feel of the summer, their music warming even the coldest of winters evenings. The sense of free festivals and long warm days hangs in the air and a mystical pan like reverie pervades.
“I was going to record and sample my farts for a track,” Nik Turner casually informs the throng in front of him; a cheer of Bacchanalian joy fills the room and the space ritual begins. Drums pound from the nether regions of the universe while the sax plays a symphony from Orion’s belt and synthesizers
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Ok, I admit it…..I missed Hugh Lloyd Langton’s set because I was in the pub watching Hawkwind covers band Hoaxwind and enjoying them way too much. They played a superb set of Hawkwind classics (including “Needle Gun” which I had not heard in years and sounded amazingly good), and were fantastic great fun and sounded quite amazing. If you have not seen them yet I strongly suggest you do and they always seem to be playing at a pub near to a Hawkwind gig.
I’ve probably seen Acid Mothers Temple play at Corsica Studios more times than any other venue in London and they always seem at home and relaxed on stage here. This I’ve sometimes felt is quite odd, as Corsica feels like one of those venues that is struggling to find its own identity. It caters for the Hip crowd but also puts on a blistering psychedelic commotion like the Acid Mothers. As always at Corsica when AMT are on the audience tonight is split right down the middle with its tie-dyed space travellers in blessed-out freak mode rubbing shoulders with the stroking beard hipster crowd. Tonight though, we were all about to witness two hours of space rock mayhem that makes Kawabata Makoto and the band so special.
New York punk, we all know the story, right? It starts in the late Sixties when The Velvet Underground redefine popular music by deciding not to take the A Train, instead heading up to Lexington 125 in search of some serious narcotics and a life on the wild side; it continues in 1973 when the New York Dolls finish posing on the cold sidewalk outside the Gem Spa and start to mix androgynous clothing and trashy, thrashy guitar riffs, thus helping to lay down a major part of the blueprint for what will follow over the course of the coming five years; and it finally reaches critical mass at Hilly Kristal’s gaff at 315 Bowery when the
“Sorry we’re a little late in starting, we were meant to start at nine. I looked at my watch and it said ten to nine, then suddenly it said quarter past. That’s what happens when you stand at the bar talking shit.”
I had never been to the O2 before, but had heard lots of horror stories about it. Apparently it had poor sound, bad visuals, over priced drinks, and terrible for people with vertigo. Luckily enough I was not headed for the main arena – that joy was to be for Cliff Richard’s blue rinse brigade – I was going to the smaller British Music Experience. As I wandered around the giant dome in search of the venue I was suddenly reminded of the domed city in Logan’s Run and half expected to see Sandmen running around. Somehow this futuristic setting seemed quite apt to see one of The Buggles’ very rare live performances as their music always had a sense of Sci-Fi about it.
In his Bonnie “Prince” Billy guise (is it a band, is it Olham indulging delusions of regality?) he fronts the stage with a certain dashing presence, an occasionally avuncular figure whose suit is sharp but with a casual elegance, and whose gestures are more than a little eccentric and hint at a more rock’n’roll past whose
Returning to the London stage after testing the waters at Hellfest, Roadburn and the redoubtable Supersonic festivals (the latter of course taking place on their home ground in Birmingham), GC Green and Justin Broadrick make an admirable choice to not overdo their stage dressing at The Forum tonight. One modestly-large amp stack each, and a screen for projections, plus some smoke. Actually, a lot of smoke; not in the SunnO))) fashion, where the audience cannot see more than a metre in front of their faces, but enough to make for a constant swirl of thick atmospherics under the colour-switching lights.
Starting off as they mean to proceed for the rest of the night, “Like Rats” blasts out its vitriol and
A soaking rain in London tonight makes it thinkable to skip out on a trip to the South Bank Centre and opt for home movies instead. In New Orleans it can rain much harder and you’d never think of staying home when there’s good music to be heard, so I try to take on that spirit and trudge on. There are so many differences between achieving this in London versus New Orleans, mainly being that New Orleans rain would be warm and sexy and in New Orleans going out is easy. As easy as a quick walk through some pretty little streets with people you know giving you a nod and a smile. In London it’s cold, it takes an hour long smelly bus
What can be said about The Cesarians that hasn’t already been described, outlined, put into the public sphere? That Charlie Finke is one of the great cavorting besuited frontmen of the century? That Justine Armatage arranges tunes to set the heart pounding and the pulses racing while being cool and intellectual too? That the ever-evolving band can multitask like no-one’s business, swapping instruments from French horn to violin to glockenspiel as the moment demands? That they are, quite simply, one of – perhaps the – premier whatever it is that make The Cesarians unique among performers, artistes, bands (etc) – treading the boards in London and beyond today?
The answers come in black and white grains, in full-band swells,
Bruce Gilbert and Pan Sonic‘s Mika Vainio were next on the bill. Introducing themselves in a short burst of hi-end pierce that got the crowd cheering. They continued with a Malaysian flavoured ambience, a gigantic staked beauty, fluttering like a quartz split mouth of the night, later molested in high pitched scars. Then the beats kicked in, like sacks of liquidised potatoes slapping all hardcore, whirring on the rebound, turning the
It’s Sunday, it’s sunny, so a 6.30pm start time for a gig seems terribly early, especially when you have the choice between a sweaty venue or a cool pub beer garden, oh well….. Also putting on four support acts before a main band on a Sunday when public transport is hardly at its greatest (even Lori S from Acid King pointed this out on stage). But enough of my ‘ole man complainin’, I’m here to see the Kings of Acid themselves for the first time so I’m quite excited.
From the very first beer-waving introduction to the crowd eagerly awaiting the return to what would seem to be their favourite London home from home, Weedeater arrive in cheery mood, lapping up the adulation and ripping straight into a fearsome “God Luck and Good Speed,” as powerful a statement of intent as any sludge-doom-stoner-rock band is ever likely to open a show with. Bassist Dixie hams up the eye-rolling, Jack-swilling and head-slapping goofiness, but as ever, his presence onstage is a combination of the leeringly weird and the snarling hardcore punk attitude squeezed through a mincer of Southern rock cavortings and high-kicking, four-stringed catharsis. The sound is suitably dense, and Shep keeps his guitar nonchalantly turned to 11 while shredding without seeming to move from the spot