Banks and banks of humming machinery

It’s a shame, really, how long some things take to reveal themselves. It’s been nearly a year that i’ve been residing in the seaside town of Brighton, feeling like the live music scene is not as impressive as its counter-culture aesthetic likes to make out (despite looking for it), and yet all that time there was such a fervent and thriving noise scene right on my doorstep. This time last week, for instance, saw another gig put on by promoters Psykick Dancehall, who also happen to be some parts of Brightonian free-range scatter “crude actionists” On Fire.



On Fire – Oh What A Shitting

(Apparently, though, they’re going to change that name, not only because when you Google it you just get a list of things on fire, but also because there is a band from the Netherlands with the same name. They also appear to have the catchphrase “get involved!” which, each time it was uttered, would remind me of this…

Grandmaster Gareth – Party Pooper)

Anyway, back to the gig, which was in a rehearsal space obviously not designed for dozens of perspiring young persons on a summer’s evening – the bands requested an ice bath, quite reasonably yet unrealistically – but it’s really quite perfect for the aural abstractions presented that night, with its maze of corridors and acute attention to acoustics. First on were Made Out Of Wool who came across, it must be said, as a band enjoying themselves more than the audience, which is a shame really because they nailed the whole freeform drone experimentation thing pretty niftily. i was assured, though, that this may have been because about half of the ensemble weren’t regular members, which various nervous glances during the never-knowingly-structured set attested. Admirable though, and pretty in the ear-bleeding sense. In marked contrast though was Ack Ack Ack who, with their distort-drenched yelping ferocity made Lightning Bolt sound like Kenny G and had a natty gasmask microphone contraption to boot. Their drummer, a recent addition who also finds home in Charlottefield, manages to be astoundingly good and yet look like one of the most bored musicians ever at the same time. Go here for more.
The headliners though were Portland, Oregon’s rightly-respected experimental kings Yellow Swans, who after six weeks of touring the UK were not only (understandably) shattered but also polite, warm and tremendously humbled by the positive reactions that they’ve been receiving. They decided to do a completely improvised set, split right down the middle, but if they hadn’t told everyone then we’d probably be none the wiser as their complex, cavernous, bone marrow-meltingly loud sounds already lend themselves to a thrillingly instinctive spontaneity. There was one point during the set where a guitar solo so electrifying flew out above the abrasive beats and concrete atmospherics, where it felt you were feeling this music rather than hearing it; it probably a bit of a wet, hippy-ish thing to say, that the noises they make are ‘experienced’ rather than heard, but it does apply as much to the way in which they engulf you as well as batter your body’s vibrating patterns something rotten. Anyway, try for yourself:



Yellow Swans – I Woke Up

(Un-expertly placed here from The Wire’s mighty mp3 library.)

And yes, we realise that the superlative 20 Jazz Funk Greats has already done a post about this gig this month, but that was before it happened. You should go and look at them anyway.