London
16 July 2022
Journey’s End is one of those rare “are we really in London” type of venues. A leafy relaxed, creatively crafted affair at odds with the industrialised ugliness of its surrounds, the gig itself taking place in what looked like a reclaimed school hall.
UnicaZürn are first up, taking the lead from their new CDR (available on the night, and instantly acquired of course) the bands core members of Stephen Thrower and David Knight bolstered by new people Sam Warren (who has played with Guapo and Holy Family) on bass and David J Smith on percussion and digital drum pad. They ease us in slowly in a ping-pong of broken signals interwoven further by encircling percussives.
An esoteric ache that lasciviously swirls, tastes of “Into Burning Labyrinth” from 2019’s Sensudestricto seeping on though reconfigured now into a full-on rhythmic roast. The energy is amazing — a turquoised tautness full of smeary key-tones and elasticated recoil. A snaking intensity sucking the band’s silhouettes into the orang’n’pink sherbet lighting giving me a solid Savage Republic grin as Mr Knight’s glissed frets and e-bow fade out in favour of a digital roar. This feels hungry — epic even — satellites in fiery semaphores bracketed by that steel drum’s broken paragraphing. When it all slips away, a massive mid-performance applause breaks out, but they aren’t done yet and for the next instalment they shift it up into a whole different level with a live rendition of “AZ / \ ZA” that is full of explosive waspiness and spiralling sizzle – probably the best I’ve seen them so far. A serious tour de force that has Stephen on his knees perched over the keys, manta-slamming through David’s dronic hum.A gilgamesh of gargolying colour burning insistently with Marlon Brando eyes eaten up in prism-like rotations and chorusing phantom. A heat-haze echoed into the blunt metallics of a terminator’s skull (courtesy of that reality bending drumming from David J Smith). The oozy sweetness of clarinet shimmering the canvas with a muted magnificence as the sound dramatically darts, fractures into looped bites scooped up in a rebirth of fresh key-lines slowly feathering into an embering background.
From the insane amount of clapping that followed, I’m guessing their CDRs were going to be flying off the merch table. Something I might be giving a review of in the not to distant future. A cloud-covered mountainscape (that Ben Ponton later reveals to be an old soviet mine in the arctic) backdrops :zoviet*france:‘s set. A bleached and brittle affair in sharp contrast to fleshy saturation of UnicaZürn, but I quickly acclimatise.This was a quiet concentrated focus full of moth-like flutters and backward chords echoing the bleak tundra projected. The icy clank of melting glaciers expanded in looped zither and chest-vibrating feedback overlaid then slowly distorted, the perfumed citrus notes of the craft beer next to me melding nicely to their heavily processed illusions.
Ben blows across two small plastic bottles, looping them into this swaying tide, then adding owl-like extras to the flow. Lots of other toys briefly firefly, their whirling motors and ratcheted rub disembodied, chopped up or pitch-perked into grainy laps, flow into the locust heat of a Brighton beach or mirror-slip in a Jean Cocteau of backward glances, the odd dirge-like keyboard from Mark Warren stretching into a crowing gasp or clanking cowbell. A dirgey tune mutants, is spaciously sustained as an underground tannoy tenuously shifts, quickly consumed by sharking feedback and harmonica see-saws. I wanted to be soaked in a wall of noisy scree, but the volume scars are brief, instead descending into gritty frictions, or dissipate with a ghosty hum.That slide whistle’s shrill bark maybe a bit too much of a shock to the overall tranquillity on show, but its modular recurrings beamed aplenty, signalling a slow slipping focus and rewarding applause.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
