UUUU / Errant Monks / Microdeform (live at The Exchange)

Bristol
23 January 2018

Loved Microdeform‘s haunted weathers. A lovely bubbling piano lighting the shadowy architectures, a trembling edifice beaming in the cross-pollination of plunging crevices and sonic apparition. Morphic memories lingering in them stretching keylines – a slow roast that evolved, blossomed on a deep pulsing shiver. The sort of vibes that get right in there at the heart of things before dissipating back to the void it once filled.

The perfect pick up from Microdeform, Manchester’s Errant Monks were a soup of reverbing fractals, scary scars of vox, lovely slivers of wrongness that suddenly kicked all rave-tastic as the strobe light ruined my eyes. Retractive rasps of spiky interjection primal screaming the electronics, snapping the beats’ heels, a trancey vortex cushioned in curly reverb.

The double mic play a feedback winner, shining in that baggy swaying construct as voices became odorous vapours, yelping like feral grandparents. They sort of lost their mojo towards the end, but luckily kicked back in to a dagger of glowing psychedelia before finally eking a soft diode descent.

UUUU had a deranged disco about them once they got past their post-punky introduction. Thighpaulsandra at the keys, having a great time, thrusting a bit of rave into the equation. Buttering it up with a lot of noisy abandon, his fellow guitarist Matthew Simms swing-binning in a plethora of tasty abstraction. Great to see each cog whirring away in happy unison, beaming smiles flowing back and forth throughout.

Valentina Magaletti‘s drumming was needle-sharp, those floor toms emmited serious fun as Edvard Graham Lewis picked at them with his bass, the odd lyrical spill lilting the leviathan. He strutted the stage like he owned it. The air a silly-string of filthy fairies and spiteful words. Matthew continued to tinker a host of unique shapes out of his setup, Dictaphone hovering the frets, pulling smeary petroleum across fractured landscapes.

“Martin, make it sound like a cockroach fucking a pencil”, commanded Mr Lewis, sending all assembled hiccupping the cacophonous — a gnarly economic energy that wowed expectation. Those singing bowls drummed on the strings for “The Latent Black Path”, chiselling into a ping-pong of jiggery intrigue and waspy skullfuckery. The ripeness of “Il Ventre Del Nulla” gift-wrapped in a barbed bouquet of randomisation, something that oozed addictively in your head, pawed in volatile vitals, nonchalant of the fact this was their first ever live outing.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-