Offset Festival- Saturday 5 September 2009

Berlin Brides

After the great success of last year’s event, I am delighted to attend this year’s Offset Festival, two days in Hainault showcasing the best new (and old) bands around. It’s a complete antidote to normal festival fare in that experimentation and boundary-pushing are positively encouraged.

Over the course of the weekend I saw around forty acts, so I can’t mention them all here. Let’s just go for the highlights…

In a strange piece of synchronicity, the first act I see on my arrival is the first that I saw last year. An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump are on the main stage, and in fine fettle, taking it in turns to sing, bang the hell out of a simple drum kit and blast along on a bass guitar. Having previously only seen them in gloomy churches or darkened rooms, it is surprising how well they go over on a big stage in broad daylight. A good start.

A swift detour into a tent finds LR Rockets enjoying themselves, bounding over the barrier that separates them from the crowd. The singer nearly trips over a small child who is sat directly in front of him. He smiles and waves at her and she smiles and waves back. It’s all very good natured.

Outside, various lads from Cementemental are titting about with effects pedals, screaming into loudhailers and generally being boisterous. At an event like this, such scenes are treated with the benign feeling that you might experience passing a ‘Guess The Weight of the Cake’ stall at a village fete.

KASMs are on the main stage, looking a bit lost and desperate. This becomes a theme over the weekend – I think that only relatively few of the acts who are playing in the open air quite have the chops to really put themselves across.

Inside again we are treated to a superb performance from Berlin Brides, who actually hail from Athens, Greece. This predominantly female band specialise in an upbeat electronic punk-funk that has everyone dancing along in no time. These women are genuinely earthy and sexy, in a way that the prim gals from say, Ipso Facto, are not. The songs are often concerned with bedroom matters too, notably signature tune ‘Failure To Wank’ and the tale of the bi-sexual ‘Scooter Boy’. Tremendous, smutty fun.

http://vimeo.com/6460446 from Sitcom Serf on Vimeo.

On the main stage The Chapman Family are deconstructing their songs to such a degree that they are almost unrecognisable. There is much guitar mangling and tying themselves up with microphone leads. At one point front man Kingsley slings a bottle of beer into the crowd, who throw it back at him.

Inside once more, The Duloks are entertaining a packed tent and getting everybody to pretend to be octopuses. The Duloks barely really play at all, instead they just have everyone crying with laughter as singer Mira discusses the need to have proper roadies who are old and grizzled as opposed to the catalogue model waifs who are performing these chores at Offset. There is also a prolonged riff on the ethnic make up of the audience, culminating with the observation that “This tent is fully integrated – We’ve got a black and a cripple!”

Later, I stand in a largely deserted tent, watching the very odd Tulipomania, who make a sound that is not unlike the music that bands played before punk came along and blew all that ‘serious’ nonsense out of the water. In a weekend where many bands are out to shock or offend, it is interesting that a sure way to make folk walk away is to have a thirty-plus year old man play guitar solos at them.

Future Of The Left are on the main stage and seem to be going through the motions. Ok, you’re angry, we get it. What else do you do?

The Slits will be headlining later, but until then, Wet Dog make a very acceptable substitute, being women of a certain age playing a mildly enjoyable post- funk. Being an oldster myself I can remember when Wet Dog were still so raw that the drummer had to stop a set because her arms were sore – it’s good to see them still going and having fun.

A real highlight is the performance of Drum Eyes, the occasional band led by DJ Scotch Egg and pals from Trencher and The Boredoms. Today they have two drummers and play a long, loping drawn out dubby space rock. This kind of stuff only really works in the live setting and it is great this evening. Even better, Damo Suzuki wanders on and starts intoning, eyes screwed up, in a world of his own. Wonderful stuff.

At this point our group separates, with one member opting to stay for Suzuki’s own set, while the rest head off to catch a show from R O M A N C E. And yes, the capitals and spacing are apparently important. This group are allies of fellow Shoreditch denizens S.C.U.M. (capitals, spacing etc) and like them, are as keen on presentation as music. A certain suspension of disbelief is required as while they have the foxiest bassist of the weekend, and a guitarist who has cheek bones that could slice you open, they are fronted by a singer who is as camp in looks and appearance as Matt Lucas from Little Britain and who sings in a foghorn shout that falls some way short of Kirk Brandon of Theatre of Hate/Spear of Destiny. So they teeter on the edge of absurdity, but like tightrope walkers, they are safe provided that they don’t let their guard down. On these terms they are greatly enjoyable, and I haven’t seen such a fine Flock of Seagulls haircut in a long while.

On the main stage I am unexpectedly stirred by The Futureheads, a band that I had sort of written off some while ago. Tonight they look to be in their element and actually get some decent interaction with the crowd. They finish off with Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’ and everyone has a good time.

Inside once more for Factory Floor, I meet up with my friend who stayed for Damo Suzuki. His mind is so blown by the majesty of what he has just seen that it is impossible to get him to focus or get anything coherent from him. He liked it, a lot.

Factory Floor are now a three piece, the newest member being the mighty Nikki Colk, the ex-leader of Kaito, who are still my all time favourite band. So it is good to see her in action again. Factory Floor are absolutely brutal tonight, a deafening, repetitive machine noise accompanied by relentless strobe lighting effects. They start to a packed tent which gradually empties as folk run for cover. They are impressively bloody-minded in what they do, but the experience is much like banging your head against a wall, in that it feels better when they stop.

Senses reeling, we relax with a cup of coffee and The Slits, who are capering around on the main stage, pursued by various members of the crowd and security personnel. They are ropey, ragged, silly and fun.

I’m exhausted, and this is only the end of the first day…

Haunts, Sharks and Me My Head at Upstairs at the Garage -18 August 2009

Haunts

There’s a last minute change of plan as we realise that although we would quite like to see Neon Kicks at the Hope and Anchor, the two support bands look to be so irredeemably awful that the prospect is too grim to bear.

So instead we do a quick swerve down the road to the newly re-opened Upstairs at the Garage to check out what’s on there.

There is a cracking result right away, as the first band on are the always wonderful Me My Head, possibly still the best band in the country who are distressingly not mega huge. Seriously people, MMH should be entertaining the arm-waving masses at Glasto or Reading rather than tearing up this tiny venue.

If crowd-pleasing good tunes and engaging stage presence are not your bag, then look away now. They are a bit Blur, a bit Killers, a bit Kaiser Chiefs (stop looking down your nose) and a guaranteed good time. Check out their self-released album.

Next up are the black-clad ranks of retro punks Sharks, who channel the likes of Joe Strummer and are mean, moody and reasonably magnificent. They put in a strong, determined performance, undercut only slightly by the antics of their guitarist, who should perhaps just restrain himself from showing off to quite such a degree. Sharks are well worth your gig-dollar. They are young and hungry and totally self-aware. Watch them go.

Headliners are Haunts, a band that I have not previously happened across, and which is rather to my shame. Wiry, brutal rock with all the anger and structure of Future of the Left, but without all the pantomime crowd-baiting nonsense that accompanies that band.

Haunts are louder than bombs, tighter than an owl and happy to make your teeth rattle. The crowd is too cool for school, but they are LOVING this.

Grand stuff for around a fiver. All these bands are excellent in their different ways. Treat yourself.

Cafe Rocks at Cafe De Paris 7 August 2009

The Elody by Bryn Bache

So I find myself reclining on a red velvet bed in the dressing room of a Brazilian pop star. We are in the VIP area deep beneath the sumptuous Café de Paris in London’s bustling West End. Ok, there are about another 100 people squeezed in here as well, but it’s the thought that counts.

Let’s recap…

The Café de Paris is one of London’s great secret venues. Most of the time it operates as a swanky nightclub or as the setting for the Press launch of weighty tomes such as a footballer’s autobiography. It’s glitzy and tacky and as camp as a row of tents. And on Fridays there are free(ish) gigs showcasing up and coming new acts. And the great thing about these events is that they don’t just serve the needs of the indie community. On a usual Friday you will get such a wide variety of music that it becomes less of a gig and more like a recording of old school Top Of The Pops. Eddie Argos would love it down here.

We start off with Red Nova, who actually make my jaw drop in laughing disbelief. Imagine The Fall fronted by Liam Gallagher and you have them in a nut shell. It’s basic but serviceable rattling rock music fronted by a singer so utterly in awe of the younger of the Gallagher brothers that he not only drawls his vocals in the same manner, but even affects a beetling stooped walk around the stage with his hands behind his back. And yet, in the same way that for all Oasis’ faults, their sheer chutzpah and self belief propels them along like a juggernaut, the same effect happens here. There are soaring choruses, there are decent songs. The package works. I give them a clap and a whoop and feel the thrill of guilty pleasure.

The next act incorporates a double bass, two backing singers and an old jazzer slapping a music case. This is the soul stylings of Mo Molokwu. My musical tastes are such that I am rather unsighted as to whether the personable young singer is any good or not, but she sounds fine to me. Pleasant, easy going laid back grooves, with a last-song-of-the-night vibe. She finishes with an excellent track called “Guilty”. The small crowd sway and approve.

There is a minor altercation as to who will go on next. The promoter has asked for the running order to be changed, either because of ease of getting things moving along, or because not all the members of the designated act have actually got here in time. Unfortunately, the band that have now been moved forward are unprepared and have to be collected from various different locations.

This is Monocle Rose, and is the band that I have nominally come to see. And here I have to tread carefully. For starters, they have been enjoying the bar facilities for most of the evening, and are very, let’s say, refreshed. Like Red Nova before them, they consist of a band that is dominated by their singer. Rosa is a wild and wonderful, full on performer, who is completely manic and off her head in absolutely the best possible way. She screams, she flails, she knocks her water glass flying, she then accidentally sits in the resulting puddle and looks surprised. It’s a genuine old school punk performance and her voice reminds me a lot of Pauline Murray in her Penetration days. It’s not complicated, or particularly cool, but it’s a real jolt of stomping energy. Hugely enjoyable.

Next up we are in TOTP mode with a vengeance. The Elody are appallingly named, but they certainly grab your attention. These five girls are aiming to compete with Girls Aloud, The Saturdays and any other troupe of hot foxtresses that have ever strutted for the public on a reality talent show. Are they good? Well, they certainly look the part, dance superbly and have some pretty catchy tunes too. Not a bad start then. However, they are so obviously an artificial construct that it is hard to see them as a single act, and more of a group of performers who can be moulded by some Svengali. So watching them is rather like inspecting goods at a cattle fair, and they are judged in ways that you wouldn’t dream of even considering if dealing with a ‘proper’ band. In my best witheringly condescending Simon Cowell tones I’ll say that there is one band member who I would take for my own girl group in a heartbeat and a couple of others who would do anyone a turn as strong backing singers. I genuinely wish them all the luck in the world, because, talented as they are, I’d say it is almost impossible for them to succeed without television patronage and that is going to take an astonishingly lucky break. They are not the sort of act that’s going to knock around rock venues.

We end up with a set from Rakell Sa, a Brazilian singer who has been based in Jamaica of late and who is making her UK debut. As with The Elody, this is well crafted up tempo dance music, here infused with a heady Caribbean/ Latin groove. Her set does not last long, but her material is very strong – I suspect this is a ‘greatest hits’ package. Rakell is certainly impressive, if not entirely distinctive.

And she invites us down to her dressing room, in the aforementioned red velvetine bowels of the venue. What can you do? It would be churlish to refuse.

This night of fun and debauchery was brought to you by Café Rocks. It’s free before seven and a fiver before eight. Go and surprise yourself.

Soko / The Agitator/ Lulu And The Lampshades - Dingwalls, 23 July 2009

There is quirky, there is eccentric and there is completely full-on psychotic. Tonight we get a gradual progression through all three states and it isn’t a particularly comfortable journey.

Things start amiably enough with Lulu And The Lampshades, who tonight are two girls and a guy.There is an effigy of their fourth member, absent in Uganda, and lovingly fashioned out of a mop, a Hawaiian shirt and what appears to be a photograph of a sheep wearing sunglasses. Even more unusually, the missing member has picked the set list and phoned in her contributions via a series of recorded messages.

The band that are actually present pluck their way through a series of pleasant if undistinguished songs via the medium of drums, guitar and ukulele and their cheerful attitude goes a long way to cover up any deficiencies.

The next act is startling, although they completely polarise the audience. My companions hate this lot with a vengeance, but I am impressed. The Agitator is a young man whooping and hollering (Derek Meins) accompanied only by a drummer (Robert Dylan Thomas) laying down a few sparse beats. Meins channels Gospel and revivalist music to batter out a primitive and hugely emotive soul racket.

He also seems to be as deadly serious about his message, which is essentially the traditional entreaty to folk to get up off their arses, shake themselves out of complacency and actually DO something with their lives. He takes great umbrage with a member of the audience who is a bit sceptical at this.

Whatever the personal politics behind it all, it is a terrific technical performance. I have rarely seen such rage and emotion in a singer since the heyday of Cathal Coughlan declaiming for Microdisney and Fatima Mansions. The Agitator are well worth experiencing, if only because if he carries on like this Meins is going to blow a gasket.

Headliner Soko declared herself to be ‘dead’ at Christmas, so it was a surprise when this gig was suddenly announced a few weeks ago.

Soko is a French singer/songwriter who is pretty and cutesy on the surface but quite clearly a very troubled performer, who over the course of her set unravels to an unsettling degree.

What is at first amusing – constantly interrupting herself, abandoning songs, changing instruments, rambling anecdotes, saying “Fuck” a lot in a French accent, - gradually becomes a lot less so when it becomes clear that the incessant fiddling with the equipment and digressions are more than nervous tics and more akin to Attention Deficit Disorder.

When she actually plays, Soko and her hapless violinist Juliet (sadly underused and a bewildered spectator for most of the time) produce delicate, deeply personal songs, many of which have been written, at least according to their creator, within the past few days.

As the evening progresses, Soko becomes gradually darker in mood, rightfully complaining about people talking through her set, but also bursting into tears at one point. Watching her fight her demons in public is not entertainment, but uncomfortably close to a trip round Bedlam to gawp at the inmates. At this point I leave.

A very strange and upsetting end to an exceptionally weird evening.

The Birthday Massacre at Dingwalls, 16 July 2009

It can take just the smallest incident to spark a gig into life and make it memorable.

Picture, if you will, Toronto’s Birthday Massacre, performing in a hot and sweaty Dingwalls.

The band is here to promote their new live album ‘Show and Tell’. It is the last night of their European tour and things are going well. Tiny singer Chibi is dressed in school girl uniform and is enjoying herself bustling back and forth on a cramped stage. She is slightly disturbing – the uniform doesn’t really make her look sexy, it just makes her look very young.

The rest of the band are heavily made up in the white face “evil marionette” style that is much favoured in those parts of the rock world that dig Joel Gray in Cabaret. It’s a sort of visual shorthand for “We’re so decadent”, and can be easily washed off at the end of the evening, as opposed to trying to get the same effect through a predilection for underage whores and dirty syringes.

It’s a good solid professional show, but not really taking off. Songs such as ‘Red Stars’ and ‘Blue’ are fine, but everything is a little too neat.

And then one of the audience hands Chibi a pair of bunny ears. I’d seen the guy earlier, dressed in almost random fashion, two thirds military/ leather chic to one third dragged through a hedge backwards. And incongruously topped off with a set of pink bunny ears. He bequeaths his headgear to the singer from within the tightly packed throng at the front of the stage.

Chibi absolutely loves them. Stuffing them on her head she spends the next three songs waggling them or plumping them on the head of whichever band cohort she is standing near. And this mild anarchy causes the band to visibly relax and really let loose, to actually enjoy themselves and let the sheen of sleek professionalism drop a little.

The band jump and bounce through their final numbers. One of these is the Tommy James and the Shondells track “I Think We’re Alone Now”, as popularised by 80’s popstress Tiffany. All merry hell erupts, with the crowd of Goths, punks, crusties and other disparate tribes bawling along to a song from their youth. For a few moments it’s not about looking cool or outrageous, but just being happily daft together.

Chibi and co are back for their encore almost before they have left the stage in the first place. They thank us all and smash into their signature anthem “Happy Birthday”. By the time they crash to a close, the atmosphere is so hot that steam rises from the front.

We head to the back, open the venue doors and find ourselves in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Lightning flashes, thunder rolls and water floods past. It is epic and biblical and perfectly in keeping with what we have just seen. Elaborate hair constructions are plastered to faces, black eyeliner makeup runs, T shirts become transparent. It’s like the end of the world. It’s a funny end to a funnily enjoyable evening.

Shonen Knife / Smallgang / Baguette Bardot at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes 29 June 2009

I’ve never seen Shonen Knife. I appreciate that is akin to someone who goes to the movies saying that they have never seen Star Wars or the Sound of Music. Shonen Knife is part of our history, and it is just to be assumed that I would have come across them at some time or another. But until tonight, I hadn’t.

The band is in London for a few days, playing a string of dates in tiny venues. Unsurprisingly, these swiftly sold out and a last-minute extra show is being performed here in the unique surroundings of the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. For the uninitiated, this is a 50’s retro-style ten pin bowling alley in the basement of the Tavistock Hotel. Tonight no-one seems brave enough to bowl, preferring to sit outside in the summer heat.

We have been promised surprises, and they don’t come any more wonderful and surreal than the first act, the quite impressively bizarre Baguette Bardot. The name is an exact description of what happens next – a strikingly tall and beautiful Japanese girl with a blonde Sixties hairdo dances and sings to vintage J-Pop numbers. Oh, and her arms end in baguettes rather than hands. It’s a spectacle that is both erotic and deeply strange and one that I will not forget in a hurry.

The crowd that she gathers in front of her go nuts, and some of the Japanese girls sing along to what are obviously standards. After her performance BB stays in character for quite some time, having her photo taken and enjoying a drink, despite her bready appendages.





The next act couldn’t be more different or more unwelcome. Crumbling Ghost play loud, lumpen sludge rock and kill the party mood stone dead. During their set there are so many people outside that we are rammed like sardines in the tiny garden.

Next up come smallgang, a band in which every member wears glasses, clearly through necessity rather than affectation. I rather like them, although this is not a view shared by all my colleagues. They alternate singers and what start out as deceptively deadpan songs often mutate into noisy but controlled thrashing. “I’m in the cockpit” (?) is a particularly fine tune.

The crowd surge forward for the headliners. Shonen Knife are two sisters, Naoko and Ritsuko and one newly recruited girl drummer (Etsuko) who have been playing joyful pop-punk for more years than it would be polite to mention. Let’s put it this way, their most famous fan was Kurt Cobain.

Shonen Knife are perfect illustrations of the subjective nature of music. Objectively, it could be pointed out that they can only play in a rudimentary fashion, that their songs are ludicrously simple and that they are not doing anything new. Objectivity can fuck right off, because Shonen Knife are brilliant this evening.

The basic Shonen Knife song is a rumbling ram-a-lama bass heavy garage stomp with nursery rhyme lyrics. The crowd jumps about and join the girls in flashing devil’s horns at each other. The girls acknowledge their debt to those other famous purveyors of deceptively stupid two minute rock songs with a track called “Ramones Forever”. It would do da brudders proud.

Possibly the highlight of a riotous set is the ludicrous ‘Barnacle’, which the audience is invited to holler along with, and which we do, with great gusto. It’s a song that goes, almost in its entirety - “Barnacle! (Hey!), Barnacle! (Hey!), This is a song about a barnacle! (Hey!)”. Compared to the dizzy silliness of Shonen Knife, the Ting Tings are as complicated as Stockhausen.

This is the perfect soundtrack to summer and as I leave I kick myself for not having seen them before this point. A fabulous evening. Rock chicks rule!

Dead Weather and Smoke Fairies at HMV Forum 24 June 2009

Some Dead Weather, yesterday. (Photo Jane Wiggins)

Jack White is a musician who has joined the pantheon of rock gods in a remarkably short period of time. The White Stripes were little known outside of the Detroit music scene until as recently as 2002, when their White Blood Cells album propelled them into the wider public consciousness. In the intervening years Jack has parlayed his phenomenal guitar playing and slightly weird Johnny-Depp-in-a-Tim Burton film appearance into a seat at the top table, feted by the likes of Bob Dylan as an equal, with plenty of others in the industry keen to touch the hem of his garment.

He’s always been a collaborator, playing a variety of instruments in a number of different outfits, just happy to be playing. However, when you are rock royalty, even the slightest of side projects can become amplified into something large and ungainly.

Tonight we are here to see the latest collection of musicians with whom White is amusing himself. Calling themselves The Dead Weather, the selling point here is that White has mostly reverted to playing drums, as he often used to in the pre-White Stripes days, and enlisted Allison Mosshart of The Kills to be the vocal and visual focus. Also along for the ride are Dean Fertita who usually plays with Queens Of The Stone Age and bassist Jack Lawrence who looks like an accountant in a hippie wig and is an old White pal from The Raconteurs.

Before the main event, the warm up. Jack White comes onstage to personally introduce Smoke Fairies, who have risen in the rankings since I last saw them when they were supporting Battlekat and The Fighting Cocks at Nambucca a few years ago. Since then, the core duo of Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire has been augmented by a stick-thin fiddle player and a drummer.

The girls’ glorious Appalachian folk harmonies are the same as ever they were and now we are living in a post-Fleet Foxes world, the band are getting the attention that they deserve. However, although the crowd are initially hushed, the lack of any real stand-out songs causes concentration to wander and the end of the Smoke Fairies’ set is largely drowned out by the hubbub of anticipation for the headliners.

Performing in front of an enormous coat of arms, The Dead Weather are preposterous. This is bombastic, bullying blues rock of elephantine proportions. Your tolerance for this kind of thing is probably determined by your reaction to what I regard as a touchstone record – ‘All Right Now” by Free. If you like that, then The Dead Weather will be right up your street, if you don’t, then you are in for a long evening.

Allison Mosshart is all hair and twitches, shaking and nodding her head at approval of every note, every guitar lick or drum break. She growls and wails. Every gesture is magnified for people at the back of the hall, every stamp of the feet a proclamation that THIS IS REAL ROCK, GODDAMMIT. It’s every cliché in the book.

It’s a brutish set, loud and dumb. The band are enjoying themselves enormously and the crowd do too, even if by dint of being battered into submission. It’s an impressive, unapologetically thick-ear spectacle.

Relief is at hand on the occasions when Jack White does more than thump the drums. Still seated, he sings “You Just Can’t Win”, which I think may be a Van Morrison song. His falsetto vocal is a welcome contrast from Mosshart’s ‘whoah’s’ and ‘yeahs’.

The high point of the evening comes at the end of the main set, when White finally straps on his guitar and shows us what we have been missing. His duet with Mosshart on “Will There Be Enough Water?” is electrifying, the two of them fighting to share the same microphone.

The Dead Weather are not clever, but they sure are big and brash and will do well on this summer’s festival circuit. Jack White’s golden touch remains for now, even though this band feels like an indulgence rather than a long term project.

But hell, even Bob Dylan played with the Travelling Wilburys.