I’m standing amidst a vast army of giants, most of who are dressed in black, many of whom have more metal in their faces than Old Man Steptoe had in his scrap yard.
Barfly on Tuesday, Wembley Arena on Thursday. We sure get around.
The evening gets underway with the furious two drum kit assault of ex-pat Norwegians Combichrist. Completing a triptych of muscle bound torsos is a keyboard player who has sculpted his hair and beard until he precisely resembles a medieval devil. The three hammer and writhe and wrestle with their equipment.
In front of them struts Combichrist’s singer and founder member Andy LaPlegua, marching around the stage to the martial beat in his role of master of ceremonies. He attempts to interact with the crowd – “Every one say ‘Fuck That Shit!’” he orders. The crowd are rather unresponsive. They don’t seem to mind That Shit.
The band thunder along in happy fashion. It’s like being run over by a truck, but a truck with some quite good tunes.
Combichrist are of course merely the hors d’oeuvre for the sumptuously overblown main course that is to follow. Rammstein are back in town and once again prove that when it comes to delivering ridiculously over the top spectacle, that they have no equal.
The stage is dominated by four huge and incredibly mobile light rigs that hover over the band. The whole vibe tonight is that of a foundry designed by H.R. Geiger.
Rammstein take the same simple pleasure in fire that small children do with mud. They can’t resist playing with it. So tonight at various points we get singer Till Lindemann setting a stagehand on fire with a flamethrower, pouring a canister of molten cinders over keyboard player (and excellent comic foil) Christian Lorenz and more random gouts and whooshes of fire than a hot night in Hades. I’m stood half a mile away and can feel the heat on my face.
We also get to enjoy strings of detonating babies with green laser eyes, many explosions, the coating of much of the audience in foam and a foray out over the crowd in a dinghy. Ah – but what about the music?
Rammstein are as camp as a row of tents, but play perfectly straight. They sing almost exclusively in guttural German, and no language is better suited to this driving, pounding, majestic music. The crowd roar and make devil signs throughout.
New album “Liebe ist für alle da” is heavily plugged, the best song from it tonight being the opener ‘Rammlied’ which gives everyone a chance to yell and roll their ‘R’s’ a lot. Old favourites such as ‘Benzene’ also get an airing and it is during this number that a stuntman is carelessly immolated.
Rammstein roar on and on. It is all magnificent, but also slightly wearing. There is little light and shade, it is just bigger, faster, louder. The law of diminishing returns sets in. When Lindemann appears for the encore as an angel gouting sheets of fire from a ten foot wingspan, this is actually slightly disappointing. Rammstein have become victims of their own excess.
What Rammstein deliver is red hot entertainment. Tickets tonight are £50 and upwards, yet you can see where every penny went. To recreate what they do any cheaper would mean pouring gasoline over yourself while smoking a cigarette next to a pneumatic drill. I’m happy to leave it to the professionals.
Dark and noisy. Doorway blocked. Push past huddled throng. Large empty space inside.
Guitarist and singer spinning, screaming smashing and squalling in spit and beer soaked frenzy. This is Wounds.
Audience scared but in a good way. Band sham dangerous, mock mayhem and assault. Pussycat friendly behind the snarls. All band take turns to scream, eyes shut, neck veins throb. More beer sprayed than drunk.
Epic thrash through Stooges’ ‘Search and Destroy’. Band say they now happy. Happy means leaping from stage on top of friends in crowd. Hardcore Heaven.
Wounds show why kids want to be in rock bands. This is excitement. This is fury. This is fun. New single ‘Dead Dead Fucking Dead’. Coming soon. Get it.
Sharks follow. Kiddy Clash / pre-school punkers. Mirror-practiced guitarist/singer with Idol sneer and legs akimbo. It’s 1978 as performed by those unborn until the 1990’s.
Fresh faced guitarist in Prisoner blazer in eyes-closed solo reverie. Flailing arm is less Pete Townshend windmill, more strange class-room “Sir, can I be excused?” gesture.
This band is cool. This band is tight. This band is alright.
Japanese Voyeurs are misnamed. They are not Japanese. And we are looking at them. And loving it.
Singer Romily clutches mike to her pink-hair obscured face. Voice is high and strangled. Think kitty cat. Think Katie-Jane Garside. Think Julie Christmas. Think four kinds of fabulous.
Seattle sturm und drang. Grunged to the max. Heads nodding, hair flying. This is not new, but it is well done. Keyboards wash against three guitar thrash. Songs not quite there yet, but attitude and sound spot on.
Dust off my Camden lurch. Stop and holler. Buy record. It 'Sicking And Creaming'. Thumbs up from this judge.
What better way to stave off the winter chill than an evening down the Purple Turtle checking out underground electro bands? That was a rhetorical question, obviously.
We start proceedings with dapper duo The Cult With No Name. This pairing consist of Jon Boux, who plays an electronic keyboard wonderfully well and the tall, be-suited Erik Stein, who looks uncannily like the actor Lee Tergesen, who played the hapless Beecher in violent US prison drama OZ.
Stein croons wistfully, Boux tinkles. They don’t really excite, but they are decent enough company.
I have long been a connoisseur of UK electronic bands and am delighted to finally get to see Cassette Electrik. It’s like getting the missing stamp in my album.
And as stamps go, it’s a penny black. Cassette Electrik are in phenomenally good form this evening. Singer Lucy soars over a keyboard attack of crunching tics and bleeps. The audience jerk and twitch like they are connected to an alternating current. The small clunking sound that is heard at one point is my jaw hitting the floor.
Keyboard player Oli hangs off his instrument, delighting himself with the skronks and blasts of sound that he is able to conjure up. This music is a pure mash up of early techno a la LFO and modern club sounds.
The band are showcasing tracks from their forthcoming album, which on this evidence is going to be one of my 2010 faves. Single '28 Days’ is a good start.
Next up are a band with a chequered history and a certain amount of inadvertent notoriety. In 2006 The Modern were thrown out of the pop charts for chart rigging and the then line up fell apart shortly afterwards. While it transpires that the misdemeanour was more to do with a bulk order of singles to distribute overseas rather than an active attempt to manipulate the stats, the trauma of the events led to the remaining members of the band to soldier on under the name Matinee Club. But it wasn’t quite the same and it is good that they have now put all this behind them and have resumed activities.
Their fans have remained loyal, and I see plenty of the old faces who used to frequent the crazy parties/gigs that got the band noticed in the first place. It is thus something of a ready made triumph when the four piece start proceedings with their greatest bona fide hit “Jane Falls Down”.
Singer Emma Cooke is still a stunningly attractive performer, all blonde curls and voluptuous curves. She wriggles like an eel and single-handedly scotches the misconception that electronic music has to be cold and aloof.
Keyboard players Chi and Nathan are ensconced behind their trademark podules and take turns singing and acting as willing partners as Emma rubs herself around them. The set is a revelation as they are playing songs that I’m not familiar with, ending with an epic tune called “7 Oceans”.
Also from the Old School come Mechanical Cabaret, the vehicle of singer Roi Robertson, who seem to have been going for years with their brand of simple tunes and genial, mock-ironic emoting.
At first Roi seems a bit out of sorts, and the duo seems rather subdued. It’s not quite happening for them and the crowd stand around losing interest. However, about halfway through their set, the band pull a version of Adam Ant’s “Desperate But Not Serious” out of the bag and everything is transformed.
Now Roi is happy as a clam and enjoying himself. He starts to clamber off the stage to better interact with the audience, putting his arms around shoulders and crooning into their faces. This is always a popular move and serves as a reminder of just what a fine showman he is. It may have been a performance of two halves, but it ends in glory.
It’s been a marvellous evening – new bands discovered, old friends revisited. Great stuff.
We start the New Year just as we left the last one, in the cramped surroundings of the Bull and Gate.
Tonight is one of those promiscuous evenings out when I know nothing about any of the bands involved so am taking a certain degree of pot luck. Things get off to an inauspicious start with the news that that the one act that had intrigued me on paper ‘Me & The Beast’have cried off.
No matter. First up we have the awkwardly monickered Underground Bounders and The Vanity. This cheerful three piece tick along in relaxed fashion, with droll, often almost spoken delivery from vocalist Tors. She is Siouxsie Sioux–like in the true sense, gently amused, nothing particularly forced, the south London voice only raised on occasion. The accompaniment from Ray and Josh is catchy and simple in a Hot Chip-y kind of way and it’s all very enjoyable. They are not earth shattering, but they are likeable, and that will do. If they have a failing tonight it is purely that they are under-amplified, which may not be their fault.
Dead Social Club are also in a happy mood. Or rather singer Paul is, shuffling round the stage, paying court to the other members of his band. The reason for their rather last day of term attitude is that changes are afoot – the guitarist is off on an extended sabbatical and the bassist is leaving the band for good.
They play a genial keyboard heavy pop rock that references any number of popular bands from White Lies to (inevitably) The Killers. However, just because they are generic it doesn’t mean that they are not worth seeing, should their line-up issues resolve themselves. There are some decent songs here and these are well put over.
Headliners Bop Social(we’re very ‘social’ tonight) are much more drilled and consciously ‘arty’ than the previous two acts. Singer Tom stands ramrod straight and marshals his band through a tight set of up tempo pop rock. As with the previous band, originality is not necessarily their most obvious feature, but equally, they provide strong entertainment while you are in their presence and an opportunity to shake your booty.
This all sounds very half-hearted on my part. It isn’t meant to be. In the same way that I can’t really see any of tonight’s acts progressing much higher up the ladder than they are at the moment, equally I greatly value these bands and venues such as this that allow them to play. I’ve been seeing acts play in tiny spaces for longer than I care to admit and one thing that I do know is that standards have always risen and will continue to rise.
It may always be the case that a headlining band will have something special or different about them (or simply more hangers on), but the standard of acts that fill the undercard are generally better than they have ever been. Some are serious enterprises, some are just mates having a laugh, but the sheer variety and enthusiasm of such bands will always keep me coming back for more. I’m happier with a diamond in the rough than any number of Industry-approved ‘packages’.
So, tonight, Underground Bounders and The Vanity, Dead Social Club and Bop Social, I salute you. (And if I am happily wrong, and you get to Wembley – can I blag a ticket?)
When you are given lemons, make lemonade. When the weather gives you a tiny bit of snow and the ongoing abomination that is the train route ‘operated’ (I use the term ironically) by the incompetent, venal fucktardary that is First Capital Connect and you can’t get to gigs, then sit back and ponder those UK bands that deserve a bit of love.
The Stilletoes. Magnificently angry femme-fronted punks from Wales. Their album ‘ADHDreams’ was one of my favourites of 2009. Sung mostly in Welsh, it fair sizzles with rage and frustration at the injustice of the world and being in a femme-fronted punk band from Wales. Singer Efa’s voice is so raspy that she sounds like she gargles with sand and broken glass and would spit either of these materials in your eye if you looked at her funny.
Ghostcat: Another band that I have not yet seen, but ooooh! - I wanna! At present they are mostly making appearances late at club nights, where they unleash tracks as groovetastic as “This Is A Bust”, which was my single of last year. This stomper, with its insanely catchy of chorus exhorting us to “Get your muthafuckin’ hands up!” is so catchy that it makes the Ting Tings sound like Stockhausen. One sniff of the mainstream and these babies are going to be all over everywhere.
The Tigerpicks: This Manchester band has been honing itself for about eighteen months now and could go huge. The double vocal attack of Emma Longbarrow and Frankie Ross is a throwback to the days when singers could really sing – I saw them a couple of years ago and was minded of Cilla Black when she was a sexy, scrawny, semi-feral whippet from the cloakroom of the Cavern Club. Only there were two of them. Mighty electro tunes from Martyn Anderson makes for floor-shaking goodness.
Tom Allalone & The 78’s: These retro rockers from Gravesend are a well-kept secret that should be shared with the world at large. Jaw-droppingly frenetic in the live setting, they released a terrific album of Sixties sounding garage rock, most of which deal with alcohol and riotous behaviour in the Essex area. It was called ‘Major Sins Part One’. It would be a major sin to miss them.
And finally, a bit of a cheat, because they are not from the UK, but hail from California, come Normandie. I came across them on Myspace last year and I’ve barely stopped listening to them since. This California based mob sound exactly like Curve did on their first e.p.- i.e. an enormous Gothic wall of drums and guitars and metal that runs over you like a juggernaut. Listen to ‘Thrill of Victory’ and tremble, puny humans. If they ever come over to this side of the pond they will freakin’ OWN us. Well, me, at any rate.
Specifically, they had me at “Hello. Hello. Hello. Molice. Moo-leece, Moooo-leeeeece!”
Singer/guitarist Rinko stands legs akimbo and then proceeds with a set of rattling garage rock and pop accompanied by the most lascivious display of pelvic thrusting and gyration since Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show. Moliceshould only be filmed from the waist up, because there’s too much Devil down below.
Molice are one of a trio of Japanese bands doing a whistle stop tour of the UK between Christmas and New Year. The tour is promoted by The Big Jugs Experience, who have been putting on bands in Osaka since 2006 and now bring us their vision of rocktastic experimental goodness.
The first act of the night were Royalinserts, who are part UK and part Osakan, and feature some of the promoters. They play a ferocious and stripped down no-nonsense straight ahead brand of guitar punk. This three piece stand firm in the centre of the stage and blast it out. It is loud, it is uncomplicated, it is good.
Royalinserts are followed by Elohymn who hail from no further east than Chorley. They are as intricate and complex as the previous act was simplistic. They take ages to set up, the stage strewn with all manner of wires, effects pedals and laptops, all arranged around a substantial drum kit which is arranged so that the drummer is sat with his back to the audience, giving us a chance to marvel at his prowess. There is so much equipment that the rest of the band have very limited space to move. It’s like playing a gig in the middle of a NASA control room.
Elohymn are instrumental, but favour upbeat percussive rhythms and swathes of rock guitar rather than ambient noodling. By their very nature they cannot help but be a bit static, but they do their best to lay on an entertaining show. When they start I am sceptical, but they have won me over by the end.
Once Elohymn have been cleared away, the aforementioned Molice come on and tear the place apart. Rinko flares her nostrils, Ikuhiro slaps his bass and we all bounce about to the almost Latin-tinged track ‘Headphone’. This is pop heaven.
The headliners tonight are the extraordinary Moja. They are a two piece comprising a little guy (Haruhiku) with an enormous bass guitar and a female drummer (Masumi) who has the nickname ‘Drum Destroyer’ because of her prowess.
And they are wonderful. Haruhiku sings and dances around with his instrument, doing his best to keep out of the way of the flailing Masumi, who is a blurring, whirling, crashing, bashing maelstrom of a performer, a jaw dropping virtuoso. At the climax of each song she leaps up, hovers above her kit and crashes down upon it with a triumphant “Yi!” We’re some distance from Meg White, it’s fair to say.
By the end of their tumultuous set, both musicians are stood atop the drum kit, bashing away at the metal beneath them. A storming end to the evening, and to 2009.
As ever it has been a busy year. Many gigs attended, many strange sights seen. Most of it has been documented on this site, but incredibly, some of it hasn’t, such as a breathtaking show by The Decemberists at the Forum.
The band played their ‘Hazards of Love’ album in full, with guest vocalists, a version of ‘The Rakes’ Song battered out on five drumkits, and even the door men guarding the entrance turning round and clapping. The band also managed a trick often employed by Nathaniel Fregoso of The Blood Arm, where they get the whole audience to sit down – some mean feat in a venue this size and with pools of Christ Knows What on the floor.
Other goodies this year have been the Applicants playing a blinding set at the late-lamented Metro off Tottenham Court Road. This was one of my favourite venues – small, noisy, sometimes packed to the gunnels but often almost entirely empty apart from a no-nonsense sound lady and a resigned and weary looking barman.
The year started with epic shows from related Manchester bands. Buzzcocks played both their debut albums and made me all happy and silly, then Magazine reformed and were slow and majestic and proud and magnificent.
I had a lovely night in the wilds of West London with a brace of UK-based Japanese bands. It was my first exposure to the awesome Bo Ningen, whose name I didn't even catch at the time. Their set involved full frontal nudity and guitars being passed amongst the crowd. This was just a taste of what was to come later in the year. That night also saw me introduced to the wonderful No Cars, as delightful and funny an act as you are going to see anywhere.
One of the strangest nights of the year was an attempt to see Death Cigarettes at the Haverstock Arms, only to find the band fuming outside because the venue’s idea of a suitable performance area was a small shelf just inside the door, underneath an enormous telly showing a football match. Band and fans then tramped around Camden trying to find a location that would let them play. This ultimately proved futile so I diverted to an excellent show by the Kabeedies at Proud.
I loved Death Cigarettes and saw them more than any other act this year. They have of course now changed their name to the more media-friendly Cold In Berlin. So fingers crossed for that. Best Cigs moments included a couple of riotous shows at Motherin Shoreditch and a well received performance at the Offset Festival.
Death Cigarettes also indirectly introduced me to two new favourite bands – Breakneck Static, who virtually obliterated Tommy Flynn’s in Camden and The Farrs, who I have now seen twice and award the accolade of Call of The Wyld Band Of The Year for their blend of top tunes and aggravated audience and venue molestation. When The Farrs play, no-one is immune from an invitation to dance, be it members of other acts or bar staff goggling at their antics. And lovely people too.
This year saw excellent sets from more established artists. David Byrne used his collaboration with Brian Eno as a basis for a triumphant celebration of the best of Talking Heads, complete with dancers and a very bashful Eno himself.
Also back and barking (literally) was P J Harvey, whose new album with John Parish gets better with each play.
I’m not one for music festivals, but I always make exceptions for the Camden Crawl and Offset.
Perhaps not a vintage Crawl, not least because the event has become so commercial that it is little more than an adjunct to a single big show at the Roundhouse for well-established acts. However, it did introduce me to The Constitution, a Camden pub that I now frequent regularly.
The Crawl was also where I first got to see The XX, a band whose stratospheric success I find somewhat baffling. I’ve got the album, I’ve seen them twice – I’ve TRIED. And I still can’t deal with them for more than five minutes without checking my watch and wanting to be somewhere more interesting.
Offset was back for a second year and was wonderful. Ignoring the performances on the main stage, the real action was in the smaller tents. There were great performances by local bands, but the real finds were those from abroad, particularly Berlin Brides from Greece and Panico from Chile. If money and time and airlines allowed, I’d go and see those two again in a shot.
However, the best performance of Offset and one of the most extraordinary that I have ever seen was that of Bo Ningen, the four Japanese overlords of guitar based psychedelic mayhem. They were heavy like Black Sabbath and as full of violent slapstick as a Mack Sennett comedy. The packed crowd were awestruck, fearful and convulsed with laughter all at the same time. The band were treated like gods for the rest of the weekend, and rightly so.
Bo Ningen Destroy Offset
The Japanese march to a different drum to most acts and props this year also go to Baguette Bardot, the dancing dolly-bird with bread sticks for arms who supported a delightful Shonen Knife at a heaving and humid Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. Shonen Knife also provided my favourite T shirt of the year- all I’ve got to do now is lose more weight so that I can properly get into it. Afrirampo also rule, as I’m sure you know.
The most unusual gig of the year was seeing LA weirdos We Are The Worldprovide the accompaniment to a fashion show held in the Victoria Miro art gallery. After a trip around an exhibition of strange knitted sculptures, we were lavishly fed and watered and then bombarded by the twin percussion attack of WATW, who paraded around in a succession of impossibly bizarre and shape-altering costumes. Followed by more hospitality by the side of the canal.
Random moments of greatness: – Amanda Palmer swinging from the balcony of the Union Chapel, strumming a ukulele; -lying on plush red beds in a boudoir beneath the Café De Paris with Rakell Sa; - Bearsuit dressed as chickens at Offset; -Innerpartysystem at the Constitution, spraying beer everywhere so that it dripped from the ceiling throughout their set. - Mark E Smith skittering around the stage in his wheelchair like a Dalek; -hiding from the rain and thunder with a pile of bedraggled Goths, their hair and make-up in disarray after a show by The Birthday Massacre; -Doing a pas de deux with The Farrs at Camden Rock; -The Horrors fizzling out like a spent firework at Offset as I sit down with a coffee.
Things I could do without:
- Soko at Dingwalls. A performance that was indistinguishable from a mental breakdown. Not good to watch, it was less a question of whether to clap as whether to call the emergency services. - Pens at Cargo. If you’re going to play, then play. If you are not, then not. Don’t just stand there and simper. - Telepathe at ULU. Maybe try turning your equipment on?
Finally, this year also saw me finally catching up with a band who I have admired for years and who played their first UK and European dates. Phantogram were everything I could have hoped forand more. Let’s hope for more from them and all other Call Of The Wyld favourites in 2010.
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