Damo Suzuki Network (live at the Kosmische Club)

Kosmische @ The Garage, London
12 September 1998

A legend or two popped into The Garage, held an audience captive for a couple of hours, and it was just as might be expected – half a trip back in time, and half a slice of something timeless. Damo Suzuki nearly three decades on still has the stage presence of the Can days (at least that evident in Peter Pryzgoda‘s Freeconcert film for those who are too young to actually have been there), while Michael Karoli looks better if anything, all razored cheeks and shades – a great imorovement on the regulation Seventies rock-mop he used to sport. But forget the haircuts, remember that this was not a Can reunion (wait for November for that unmissable occasion), but Damo and friends touching down from the wilderness.

With half of Guru Guru as the backing band, it’s not surprising that the set was mostly motorik, a little bit Prog and entirely Kosmische. Sax lines weren’t even annoying, but tolerable, maybe nice, but when the groove was achieved, time and space became somewhat irrelevant: Seventies, Nineties? Schmeventies – this gig rocked on many different levels, one of them being nostalgia for those who were there the first time round, perhaps yearning for those who wished they had been in person, but have been through the records. When Damo sang “Mushroom,” Halleluwah” or (surprisingly) “Full Moon On The Highway,” hardly a voice in the crowd was audible (or at least couldn’t impinge on the moment – what is it about The Garage that makes people natter all night?). But the true moment of glorious delight came with “Mother Sky,” though whether it was twenty minutes long is entirely debatable – what mattered was the time-stretched realisation that this was a gig which easily surpassed most others in intensity during that song of songs.

-Antron S. Meister-