The Scala, London
25th March 1999
First of all, the venue; once upon a time, The Scala was both the worst and best of London’s independent cinemas – terrible seats, ropey sound and a generally scuzzy atmosphere, saved by the murals, the cat and a programming selection which included all-night shod of the lowest possible taste, saved by the occasional hard-to-see gem. Then came the Clockwork Orange debacle, and all was quiet. Until that is the scaffolding appeared a year or so back, and it was obvious that something was on the move – would it be another Christian salvage centre of the New Millennial Jerusalem? Nope, The Scala is reborn as a club venue in the seediest part of town (Zero Tolerance policies excepted, and not much cop as it happens if tonight’s exterior street scene is anything to go by), and they even promise to show the odd film.
For the Scratch Club to land here is a bit of a coup; how more cool can you get in a location than one of the best, most legendary of all the underground sites around? Well, there’s just one problem – the Ikea-U-Like walls and floors; the trendy (in the Eighties) metal fence balconies; the extortionately-priced bar. Still, there are compensations, in that the lovely floor tiling remains, and there is still the feeling of being lost in an Art Deco palace populated by the ghosts of archetypes past. All this and a bass-heavy sound system too, and you just can’t go wrong.
Making their debut up on the pine-effect stage are Faultline, who test out the low-end capabilities of the speaker stack with a dub and breakbeat set punctuated by the occasional violinist and cellist who accompany the technician lurking behind a set of headphones, and even featuring the guest appearance of a muted trumpeter. Conjuring up the spirit of the unfortunately still-unsigned Panoptiman as well as jazzy frills of the most Nineties sampler-kind, this is music which swells, booms and feeds into a pleasant enough fug of enjoyably skewed warmth. Not so chilled on the 2nd Gen front: main man Wajeed kicks up a storm on the mixing desk and vocals, while a chest-beating, goateed man comes to the forefront to whip up the small but enthusiastic coterie of renegade post-metalheads moshing in a most peculiar way. Blurring any limits between HipHop, metal, scraping noise and sheer fuck-you aggression, 2nd Gen know how to entertain the right kind of crowd, and it’s just a shame they don’t have time for more of their mike-wielding, scabrous, hup-two-three show which rocks like Godflesh should have done.
Stock, Hausen and Walkman are perhaps not the best act to follow this kind of sonic chaos; they’ve been getting distinctly mellow recently, and despite the cleverness inherent in their laptop-based salmagundi of kitsch acoustic detritus, they seem to flail somewhat in the company they’re keeping tonight. Not so Speedranch and Jansky Noise; even though by the time they’re on stage, the majority of the punters have left for work or sleep in the morning, their four-deck screeching puts a brave face on the fact that the audience has shrunk to a slim thirty or so enduring souls. Maybe there’s a reason: the noise they produce is phenomenal; the sight of records and faders in perfect disharmony, spluttering out a mix of squalling, cross-faded aural mush is quite a spectacle in itself – the sound which accompanies it is something else entirely. By halfway through the set, the numbers are dropping in the crowd, despite the odd lurch into recognisable beats. Even the set itself is disappearing in front of them, and the casually lounging volume aficionados rise and depart. Execration? – too fucking right – this is what no-one in a sensible state of mind would want to hear, live and direct on a thunderous rig, but it certainly beats the shit out of yer ears.
-Freq1C-
