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 pits even, in front of the selection of electronic soloists (plus guests) who, despite the proliferation of laptops and boxes of tech’n’DATs , really give it some, and put on a show while they’re about it.
So after a few hours of previews of the new DHR video compilation (well worth checking out for the expected bunch of vids from Atari Teenage Riot via Hanin Elias and Alec Empire to areas more experimental and beyond by the way) and to the accompaniment of a projection of the inimitable Tetsuo, Zan Lyons appears onstage. To a suitably darkened room, Lyons puts on a cabaret for the Inferno, shuffling noisy dynamics at the interface where post-something drones and heaving wheezes of sound meet distorted, shredding HipHop beats. As the cobewebs reverberate, looped fragments of harmony become monsters of delay and pregnant pauses before the eagerly anticipated return to noise. “Play something less boring,” shouts an audience member, so Zan obliges, mashing up the layers of phased strings and ominous, creeping decay into a fucked-up and -over splurge of beats.
Curlicues of ominous abstraction convolve into a really dark trip into spasms of large, seemingly endless bass. HipHop without posture, concentrating on the sound of delirious revels in noise. His beats and side-splitting gushes of noise even provokes a dance-floor mosh of sorts. Now that’s what can really be called a happy hardcore of extremists….
2nd Gen takes things into even more agressive directions, pounding away behind his mixer and Sherman bass module, punching the air and into the crowd as his coiled blasts of digital death Metal slice and dice the air. He really knows how to wind up a crowd, jerking to tweak an instrument setting, gleefully blasting out the jams in a John Stuart Mill t-shirt. Punk noise HipHop grunge? Neo-funked rages straight out of the machine? Yeah, damn right, and more. Wajid Yaseen plucks distortion and ire from the digital aether, and he has Leechwoman’s Roger Carne on hand to bash out a spastiche drum and bass rhythm on a Calor Gas bottle too. Add in Gallon Drunk‘s very own James Johnston and the guitar rawk-raucous show becomes a punkish snarl, as the wah-pedal becomes something to squark and squall through the application of any convenient body part while Wajid rants devilry into the crackling mic.
Last up is Bomb20 (OK, so the Fighting Cocks played too, but despite a promisingly harsh Techno-Samba intro they’re even less interesting than a bad Chicks On Speed appearance would have been), once more taking that chemically-flavoured HipHop rhythm and churning in a blend of acid-speed noise, regurgitative Drum’n’Bass shenanigans accelerated from crunch to splurge in just under six seconds. Pedal to the metal, he flips up a spasmodic frenzy as he goes, burgeouning bass and the clatter of disrupted beats making the bastard descendant of Techno-Hardcore-Gabba collide full-tilt into Whitehouse scum-fucking noise. A continuation of breakbeat confusion by other means, a bundle of non-linear Plunderphonics ram headlong into a storm of hyperspeed glitch assault, to ear-shattering effect.
Once the air is steaming with Bomb20’s sheer artcore attack, he twists the loops agin until all that remains is the trail of exclamation marks and scorching noise!!! Struggling through the dense for of harsh ryhthm and scalding impurities is a particularly Nietzschean strain of triumphant, digital will – but with an Anti-Fascist twist, natch. Pummelled by bass and drained by the exuberence of David Skiba‘s beats ripped with passion from Bomb20’s laptop, all is carefully crafted chaos. And heaps of leap-about, riotous fun at that.
-Freq1C-
