Tufnell Park Dome, London 2 September 2001 A history lesson… Everything you think you know is wrong. The last ten years never happened. Mrs. Thatcher’s still in power, The Dome‘s still standing (Tufnell Park that is… not the Big Tent), and Conflict are still gigging. We are ruled by a bunch of corporate whores who’d sell out their own party for some cash from Ronald McDonald. Hang on […]
live reviews
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Label: Ralph (America)/EuroRalph (Europe) Format: DVD, CD (soundtrack only) There have been plenty of strange and powerful musicians and groups out there for many a long year. Captain Beefheart, Coil, Wesley Willis, Ken Nordine and so forth, each extending the realms of taste and disrupting the boundaries of what exactly constitues music and art . Then there are The Residents. Through thirty years of wilful obscurity and cutting-edge […]
Barfly At The Monarch, Camden, London 9th August 2001 OK, so it’s a promotional gig for (the once-proud, now suckers of corporate cock) Xfm. OK, so the other bands are yer average guitar malarkey. Fair enough. But if 2nd Gen’s on, then why the fuck is no-one dancing? Huh? Answer me that and win a prize. (Of fuck all, incidentally, in case you were wondering.) 2nd Gen is […]
The Kosmische Club Upstairs At The Garage, London 28 July 2001 For the Kosmische Club’s fifth birthday, the party hats, balloons and banners have been brought out to celebrate half a decade of putting on one of the best clubs in London, if not the country and possibly the world. A touch of hyperbole, perhaps, but the nice thing about this club, despite the almost unbearable heat in […]
93 Feet East, London 9 July 2001 “Bosses, They’re all cunts, pricks wankers and shits – does anyone here like their boss?” Well, those were similar words to the ones I muttered when Simon Breed nearly trampled me in his stampede to the bar pre-showtime. He was allegedly referring to his boss, or bosses in general. The same song also proclaimed him to sound like Bruce Springsteen, make […]
The Junction, Cambridge 9 July 2001 For whatever bizarre reason, this gig couldn’t be advertised. Having found out about it, having already missed Tricky’s appearance at Robert Wyatt’s South Bank Meltdown, and noting that his only other UK appearances this tour were at the V2001 festival and Penrith (remember Withnail spitting this town’s name out in a phone box? – yes, that Penrith), I had to check it […]
Arts Café, Toynbee Hall, London 3 July 2001 One of the things about getting older is the urge to mellow out, to chill into a fully-realised state. Warn Defever has been skimming the surfaces and wading into the depths of music for over a decade now, and his frequently disparate collision of sounds and genres onto each His Name Is Alive record has been whittled down into a […]
The Mean Fiddler, London 2 July 2001 Somehow Lolita Storm should have got a better reaction on this bill – their shouty teen rants and splattery digital hardcore beats and pieces are part of the busy collision of electronics and rock the Young Gods were instrumental in creating after all. But perhaps the early start time is why there’s about twenty people gently bobbing in front of the […]
Beyond Baroque, Venice, California 29 June 2001 (15 in attendance) Consolidated Lint Guitar, Pro One and toy spun over the head of the person furthest right. Pitch shifts and the bowing starts. Chattering, like automotive idling, wells up and fills the room. Much bowing, and it’s as if the doors in a thousand old homes shutter and slide, hinging and whinging, open and shut. Now, the spinning metal […]
Kosmische Upstairs @ The Garage, London 23 June 2001 I‘d never heard of Khan (aka Can Oral) before hearing about this gig a few weeks back, but his odd background (Finnish mother, Turkish father, grew up in Germany) and his array of current collaborators (Kid Congo Powers, Diamanda Galas, Julee Cruise, Hanin Elias and Jon Spencer, among others) certainly grabbed my attention. Hitching back from Avebury on the […]
The Spitz, London 7 June 2001 The Spitz tends to look different every time I go there. Tonight it is a late arrival just in time to see Appliance play their version of Krautrock-inspired Electronica. Projections on small screens around the room show Rand McNally maps of the Great Lakes areas of the US, Chicago Art Institute-like photos of fall/winter nature scenes, and stage backdrop of goldfish tank. […]
Kosmische @ The Garage, London 31 May 2001 Beware all snow leopards; indeed all mammals were at risk of having their asses rocked Thursday at the Kosmische Club‘s presentation of Acid Mothers Temple. Once Southall Riot was done with their opening imitation of all that was Krautrock in a Nineties sort of style, all three chord-led and droney – and most of which I missed – Acid Mothers […]
The Social, Nottingham 30 May 2001 The first act were Floach, an electronics duo from ScoobyDooLand. With a table full of electronic contraptions that would have made Throbbing Gristle drool (and a hairstyle that would have frightened Dave Hill from Slade), they cooked up a glorious electronic rumpus. If Pierre Henry had been commissioned to compose the incidental music for a Carry On film, it would have probably […]
Electrowerkz, London 4 May 2001 Noise and gunge and digital Punk Rock descend on paintball hall Electrowerkz, and even if the night is also a launch for the No More Rock N Roll compilation, it really does have some stomping moments to put a writhe on the dead face of Sid Vicious and perhaps Kurt Cobain too. Why? Because the kids jump up and down, make temporary mosh […]
The Spitz, London 26 April 2001 The I/O event at The Spitz was a little bit of a nerd-fest (meant in the best possible way), as several generations of audio technophiles opened up their various laptop computers and let rip with the best in glitchry they could muster for the occasion. To a shifting realtime backdrop of manipulated visuals, the fizzes, pops and rumbles of digital experimentation shuffled […]
The Fridge, London 12 April 2001 Autechre play in the dark to an audience bursting the seams of The Fridge. The auditorium is packed, the crowd heaving without much dancing going on, and the beats are fractured into shapes that would make rhythmic movement something of an exacting chore. People seem slightly nonplussed, but no-one’s scratching their chin; or at least not in full view. The sounds which […]
The Bloomsbury Theatre, London 6-7th April 2001 Perhaps if Billie Holiday had received nuptial visits from the spirit of La Cage Aux Folles and produced an offspring, that might explain how the universe has been blessed with Antony Hegarty. Perfoming live for two nights in London in support of Current 93 and the David Tibet Show, Antony And The Johnsons provided us with a glimpse into the nature […]
The Smell, Los Angeles, California 29 March 2001 The stages faces a room which cages a particular piece of modern art and the reflection is this: levelor blinds painted with barcode marks bracketed by (0) and (1) and a neon word consci divides ousness. White of the eye stares back towards the white of another eye. Yet, is consciousness the answer? Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question. Still […]