Hastings, for those not hip to the south-east coast of England, is a funny old place. In some senses it’s got that run-down seaside town vibe. On the other some banging folk and a small but keen crowd of local weirdos turning out on a Tuesday night for an evening of rackets above a pub called Crowłey’s Bar (that ł is important: umlauts are so last century). Hastings is, of course, Amber Rudd‘s ward. And she’s a massive fucking bellend.
Anyway.
First up with have Inside, who may also be styled (INSIDE). He has a banging haircut and decent boots. My inner teen goth squees a little. He plays a Korg keyboard with some gnarly effects. Sometimes veering well into something of a coldwave / harsh noise thing, often pulling out some super obtuse melodies, but always keeping his pieces only as long as they need be.
Which is a relief, waaaay too much noise goes on the fuck too long, so having actual structures and considerations to his pieces makes them shine all the more. I saw some people with fingers in their ears and it was certainly an odd mix of melodic and severe. Hoping to see him opening for whatever industrial music is popular these days. Next Practice, or PRACTICE, the latest nom de plume of one Jason Williams. He’s a fairly long-standing stalwart of British rackets, and in some just world he’d be considered a legend of noise more broadly than the south-east. He’s also an awkward bugger. He’s also, after some twenty+ years of me watching noise, about the only person who will consistently produce some sounds that make it feel like maggots are being attacked by polystyrene wasps inside my glass jawbone.This evening we get what looks like a vacuum cleaner with a (broken) reed, a self-playing cymbal over a block of concrete wrapped in gaffer being played by an old tape machine, and some seriously heavy guitar freakout. And a monitor nearly taking out our esteemed photographer. It sounds at times like first-wave black metal failing to escape from ove- sized asbestos spores, or if the term “freaking out” sounded like what it pretends to describe most of the time. He currently plays in Sexton Ming‘s Porridge Van, who are brilliant.
Penultimately we have Moonface (or m_o_o_n_f_a_c_e_), who does not have a moon for a face. It’s something of an exorcism of the kind of music that’s played in shopping centres — looped fragments of earworms distended and looped back into a banging fuckstep-ish type shape. It’s fairly liberal with the passage from sample to destruction, sometimes going straight in for the poppers o’clock strides, sometimes sitting around in that anxious space of looping disjointedly in it own time. Banging.Finally is Ryosuke Kiyasu, who as headliner is obviously much quieter than the other acts. He’s got a snare, a few sticks, a table in the middle of the room, and a cheap-looking mic on the table. There’s nothing to hide behind and there’s only one drum. It is absolutely preposterous what this man can do with such an ostensibly limited set up. And all delivered at exceptional speeds.
There’s plenty of military jazz-style snare extemporisation. There’s a lot of using his body as a mute. There’s a bunch of comical bits. It’s all-over tension and release, and delivered with a kind of showmanship that virtuosity tends to eschew. I was expecting good, because he’s Fushitsusha‘s drummer and Fushitsusha are the best rock band. What I got was like magic tricks from the roof of a high speed train.Big up Hastings for a blinding night.
-Words: Kev Nickells-
-Picture and videos: Agata Urbaniak-
