London Fields Lido, London 19 July 2008 Nurse With Wound at London Fields Lido. It just sounds so right. And it was, too: pleasingly strange, charmingly eccentric. It was the culmination of a series of underwater sound events, staged at various venues around the UK under the banner of Wet Sounds. Their website will tell you what you need to know there. Essentially, the set-up is this: music […]
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The Underworld, London 15 July 2008 The first time I came across Part Chimp, a few years back, they were tipped as The Loudest Band in London, but now that the reanimated corpse of My Bloody Valentine has reclaimed that title with its rotting, maggoty fingers, Part Chimp have mellowed a little. They’ve also shed a bass player recently, and no doubt that has something to do with […]
ULU, London 23 April 2008 Ah, what better way is there to celebrate St George’s Day than to avoid all the jingoistic flag-waving nonsense and go and see a band who come from the other side of the world? Probably none. None whatsofuckingever. First up we get Growing, who I heard described by someone in the queue as “a friendlier Black Dice”. That’s not far off the mark, […]
ULU, London 19 April 2008 Merzbow was brutal. That could be the whole review. We went in knowing he would be brutal and he delivered. We came back out deaf, balance impaired, and probably several shades paler. Merzbow, aka Akita Masami, is one of the pre-eminent industrial noise artists and has had a prolific career since the late seventies. As with some of his other recent releases, the concert […]
The Underworld, London 10 and 12 February 2008 The day after a chunk of Camden Market burnt down, Southern Lord‘s finest black metal act touch down in The Underworld. Thankfully the conflagration was at the other end of the High Street, so the gig continued as scheduled with the only hint that something had occurred being the line of police officers across the road by the tube station. […]
The Institute for Contemporary Arts, London 30 January 2008 Here is my ATP festival experience. I always seem to miss the bands that I wind up liking the most. So, having missed Fuck Buttons at The Nightmare Before Christmas I wasn’t going to miss them again when they came to Ithe CA, and they more than lived up to my expectations. First on was fellow ATP label mate […]
The Scala, London 20 November 2007 This has been a long time coming. Last time I tried to see Jesu (supporting Jarboe, in this very venue) it got scaled down to a Justin Broadrick solo perfomance as Final, which consisted of him hunched over his laptop making incredible noises. Now, while this may have sounded awesome, on every other level there was little to distinguish between the experience […]
The Water Rats, London 27th October 2007 Even though it’s about as far from the stuff he plays these days as a non-executive directorship is from a proper job, the spectre of Swans‘ Cop weighs heavily on proceedings tonight- particularly its mantric repetition of the phrase “THE HEAT… HURTS! THE HEAT… HURTS!” Mr Gira, avuncular and smiling, has decreed that the lights be turned on full. On the […]
Meltdown 2007 Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 18th June 2007 The smoke and glitter which characterises Chrome Hoof‘s performance at Meltdown 2007 is something of a wonder to behold. Unleashing a brain-boggling riot of progtastic disco – complete with intoned disclaimer for any responsibilty for the effect of the show on the audience at the start, this thirteen-piece bunch of silver-clad space invaders proceed to set out to do […]
St. Giles in the Field, London 1st June 2007 I hit the church shortly after opening time, still muddleheaded from work, the sun only just beginning to slip it’s way behind central London’s monstrous office monoliths, and St. Giles’ church is already packed, a situation not helped by the decision to close off the balconies. I succeed in grabbing a pew toward the back though, and bear happy […]
The Scala, London 29th May 2007 Part Chimp not only open with a big, metallic stoner rumble, they compound matters by using almost the exact riff from “Electric Funeral” to confirm that they are coming from a location somewhere between Black Sabbath and The Melvins. So then its heads down for an excercise in riffology, volume and mass squared by amplification, with the product being ringing ears and […]
Bush Hall, London 27th May 2007 It’s raining. Not just raining, but absolutely pissing it down. The streets are running with water, and my eyes are so full of rain it takes me fully half an hour longer to find the venue than it should otherwise have done, meaning that by the time I get in, Mr Harvey‘s set is already underway. And by crikey, he looks like […]
Dingwall’s, London 15th May 2007 It’s been a while since The Young Gods have appeared in London, but they’re back at last, in support of their new album Supeready/Fragmenté. Dingwall’s turns out to be a good choice of venue, allowing for a capacity crowd but without getting stiflingly overstuffed with people. Support band Shy Child are a duo of a drummer and synth player, the latter playing standing up […]
Bush Hall, London 11th May 2007 Bush Hall is a strangely grand venue for A Hawk And A Hacksaw to appear, all faded burlesque glamour in the plaster cherubim and beneath the voluptuous chandeliers. Given Jeremy Barnes‘ reinvention and re-imagining of a multitude of folk styles, the image conjured by his music is perhaps more one of rustic dances and Eastern European taverns, but since ultimately his music […]
Corsica Studios, London 2nd May 2007 Looking like refugees from several different bands who all met up in a jail cell after a drunken night gone horribly wrong, it’s north London’s finest pirate bar band Owlls, and they really should be playing in Tortuga in the 17th Century rather than Elephant & Castle. But no matter; by the time they’re a couple of songs in you feel like […]
Ether 07 Queen Elizabeth Hall London 3rd March 2007 Christoph Heeman opens proceedings as special guest at the debut London performance of Nurse With Wound as part of the Ether 07 festival. His solo presence onstage, lit by sweeping blue light projections, is not the most engaging of performances visually, but the drones and surges of electronic tones he coaxes from a small assortment of devices soon swell […]
The Ralfe Band; The Destroyers; Guillemot; The Paetbog Faeries; Salsa Celtica; Sild; Cheltenham, UK 2nd-4th June 2006 Lying in the green heart of the Cotswold valleys is the small town of Cheltenham, where the remains of the emerald giant Wychwood Forest stands. This had been a site for forest gatherings and folk ceremonies until the 1850s when the land was sold to the Navy, so there is special […]
London 29 May 2006 Drones, reedy and thin, waft out in layers of rolling minimal bliss. They increase dutifully in number and density until the Empire is suffused with them, Alexander Tucker switching pedals and setting up loops of harmonic intensity, nodding like a monk at prayer into his devotional music. The huge bass tone which emanates from his acoustic guitar is a wonder to behold, though from […]