Royal Festival Hall South Bank Centre, London 25th October 2000 Faust were originally asked to improvise a live score to F.W. Murnau‘s classic expressionist retelling of the Dracula story for an outdoor vampire film festival in Germany a few years back. For some reason the promotors asked them to perform to the silent film twice on the same bill; the generators failed, rain loomed, disaster threatened. Still, they […]
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The Third Millennium Festival Union Chapel, London 14th October 2000 Generally I would say that if you want to see a gig in London, there are not many more beautiful places than Union Chapel. I would also add to try for summer. This cavernous gothic spired chapel all of stone and wood and beautiful doorways into maze-like passages provides an atmosphere of spooky tranquility and usually gorgeous acoustic […]
The Royal Festival Hall South Bank Centre, London 27th September 2000 Performing for their 25th anniversary, Pere Ubu delivered such a marvelous performance as to bring me around to wondering why I don’t listen to this band everyday. And why are they not lauded as the one of the best of the last quarter century? Why is Pere Ubu not a household word? Just as well really, as […]
South Bank Centre, London 19 September 2000 For their third live performance in a year after the seventeen of build-up, Coil arrive onstage dressed in unlaced grey strait-jackets, backed by a neon sign proclaiming the title of the night’s performance, Persistance Is All. The multiple possible meanings of this slogan soon becomes apparent, as the playback of Jhon Balance‘s spoken title beat which opens “Something” fills the “Royal” […]
Red Rose Club, London 16th September 2000 A night of drones on Seven Sisters Road, strangely light on traffic in the aftermath of petrol protests, but still teeming with North London’s variegated Saturday night fun seekers and the requisite fully made-up Goths on the 253 bus. The Red Rose is no stranger to the extremes of music, and the venue’s home as a noted comedy club is somehow […]
London 7 September 2000 Ween are one of those bands who embody the indie dream, the American Dream even. Starting out as lo-fi geeks with too much time, dope and a four track recorder on their hands, they turned their undoubted talents to warped and wonderful ends over the last ten years, from cult act to near-classic rock inheritors of the dubious mantles of both Butthole Surfers and […]
The Spitz, London 24th July 2000 First off, any further mention of the fact that Dry & Heavy are a Japanese Reggae band can largely be dispensed with; so they are Japanese, not Jamaican. Well, there are Reggae and Dub groups from all over now – the Czech Republic, the Basque Country, Texas even. Other than to say of course that this particular set have got the format […]
June 2000 People Like Us is Vicki Bennett, a resident of Brighton on the South coast of England and creator of extraordinarily witty cut-up film and music projects which take the cultural critique of Plunderphonics into new dimensions of layered reference and dissociated signifiers. As with like minded spirits such as Manchester’s Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Californian pioneers Negativland and cod-orchestral Sythetizers The Tape-Beatles, People Like Us recordings […]
David Pajo; Robin Guthrie; Pole; Labradford Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 24th June 2000 This year’s Festival of Drifting sees each participant playing all in one night as a national tour, as opposed to the previous two years when performances were spread out over the course of 4-6 days at various venues. Labradford‘s idea is to bring together an artist-led festival featuring performers from the softer […]
Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 13th June 2000 The South Bank Centre seemed to be all on with their rules of protocol as I watched David Thomas from a tiny vertical glass in the big imposing closed door or the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I was a little late and the steward decided not to send me and the long line of other late-comers in to take […]
The Astoria, London 4th June 2000 Even just standing waiting for Neubauten to arrive on stage for this Twentieth Anniversary tour (!) is something of an enjoyable experience, thanks to the wilfully obtuse nature of some of the instrumentation and sundry kit arrayed on the platform. So ignoring the usual guitars, basses and keyboards (even if it is renamed an EN[soniq] through judicious appliaction of gaffer tape), there’s […]
South Bank Centre, London 27-29th May 2000 Now semi-permanently established at the South Bank for the past few years, the LMC Experimental Music Festival has become one of the fixtures of the London Improv and New Music scene, struggling through into something approaching mainstream cultural acceptance – though that’s a relative position of course. This isn’t to say that its become particularly watered down, blanded out or easily […]
After The Deluge 29th May 2000 Jean-Hervé Péron is best known as the former de facto front man for Faust, a group he sometimes seemed to embody the group’s chaotic lunacy for in his onstage antics with chainsaws and naked painting sessions. Following his traumatic personal split with the band after their early Nineties re-emergence, Péron spends his time raising horses and children on his small farm near […]
May 2000 As impassioned and animated offstage as behind his massive drumkit, Charles Hayward radiates a genuine intensity. He first came to wide attention as drummer with the highly influential This Heat as the embers of Post-Punk simmered off into wilder experimental tangents. He has released a dozen solo and colaborative albums, and puts on rare solo live shows which pull the raw muscular percussion at the heart […]
Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 7th May 2000 It’s City Slang‘s birthday – ten years old and going stronger than ever at the interface of good old-fashioned Post-Indie Rock, Country dispatches from the edge and exuberent German Electronica. Tonights show is the first London event, featuring the latter stylings in the shape of Dirk Dresselhaus‘s bubbly bleep outfit SchneiderTM and the ever-evolving melodies of To Rococo […]
Sonic Boom Live Queen Elizabeth Hall South Bank Centre, London 4th May 2000 Presented in conjunction with the excellent Sonic Boom exhibition of sound installations at the Hayward Gallery, the line up for this event features three groups and artists who have also been selected for inclusion in the gallery. Project Dark are the first onstage, lurking behind a bank of samplers and sundry equipment, with the audience […]
April 2000 I arrived at this gig a little late and in much overdone panic. First of all we were in South London, and more importantly, I had forgotten to pick up a blank tape to record this interview on. As soon as I located Arrington de Dionyso, which took about twenty seconds in the dimly lit and tiny venue, he sweetly agreed to loan me a cassette […]
Brixton Academy, London 22nd April 2000 I had a T-shirt ready for Death In Vegas. It had the cross-sectioned brain from the cover of The Contino Sessions on the front, with a Levi’s logo stamped across it. Underneath was the quote from Bill Hicks about every word from the mouths of artists who advertise being like a turd falling into his drink. In the end, for better or […]