I'm Being Good | Bad Orb | Liberez - Power Lunches, London 24 September 2011

Arrive. Buy beer. Wait. Grinding out the time. Flying solo. Nothing to do. Sit. Drink beer. Wait.

A man comes round. He says the first band are on. Downstairs. Rehearsal room doubling as a gig venue. Liberez at the front. A four piece. Violin, guitar, vocals, drums. There use samples too.

Thuddy rhythms, repetitive riff patterns, eerie bowing, and mumbled, haunted vocals. One tracks reminds me of early Pram. The rest are like I don’t know who. They’re unexpected. They’re good.

Back upstairs. Buy beer. Hit the merch table. Wait. Time grinds. Back downstairs. Bad Orb is a lone woman. Table of wires and gizmos. You know the drill. Droney bland soundscapes. Indecipherable murmur whisper. Adds nothing. Piano and accordion come into the mix. Yeah, definitely better. The rooms hot. The set ends. Upstairs. Cool off. Buy one last beer.

I’m Being Good. Saw their fourth ever gig in 1992. Maybe 1993. Oil Seed Rape also played. Think it was the Beachcomber. The pubs long gone. But I’m Being Good still play gigs. I still go to them.

Noisy, mathy, knotty, rock. Simultaneously primitive and complex. The sound they’ve had for awhile. Fan will love it. Antagonists will loathe it. Newcomers could go either way.

They finish. Upstairs. Out into the night.

Preferred drink: Budvar

Monolithic | Kogumaza - Cafe Oto, London, 10 November 2010

This is my third consecutive night at a gig. I feel tired. I look tired. I am tempted to skip the gig. But dedication makes me go.

Dirge rockers Kogumaza are support. I saw them play last month and they seemed worth keeping an eye on. The three piece play a sedate paced down tuned riffage. It sounds like a one-note Sonic Youth wig-out played in slow motion.

There is something really exciting about seeing a band who are totally unexpected. It’s like having electricity plugged straight into your soul. I know nothing about Monolithic. But within the first few moments of their set I know they’re special. My senses sharpen. I want to take in all the details.

The drums and guitar duo play a well honed math metal. They induce an almost ecstatic or euphoric reaction in me. The volume, the simplicity, the harshness of their sound, it’s almost transcendental.

Halfway through their set they mellow things out. They play a desolate tumble weed blues, with bowed guitar and brush scraped cymbals. Then it’s into down-tuned blues and back to the destructive riffage that’s been honed by hours muscularly axing down trees or smashing rocks in a disused quarry.

They finish their set. I make for their merch stand. I need to fill the new yawning chasm in my collection.

Preferred drink: Kernel's London Porter

Zeni Geva | Ruins Alone | Nought - Corsica Studios, London, 26 October 2010

Free ear plugs are being given away at the bar. That’s always a good ‘bad’ sign.

We don’t need them for Nought. They’re a Guapo side project specialising in unashamed prog rock. Complex, mathy, jazz and rock rhythms are entwined together into a Gordion knot. But it never becomes an intellectual exercise. Their music is run through with tunes and melodies.

Ruins Alone is Yoshida Tatsuya. Drums and a sampler. He plays an eclectic mix of schizophrenic, genre hopping. Jazz, prog, punk, rock are all chewed up and and spat out in tiny, constantly changing chunks. In that way it reminds me of Naked City.

Yoshida doesn’t have long to rest before he’s back behind the kit for Zeni Geva. The previously free ear plugs are now being sold, as someone behind the bar has written 50p on a bit of paper and stuck it to a glass. From the outset Zeni Geva are in sadistically mean noise rock form. They are punishingly heavy. Others bands do that same brutal, serrated, guitar riffage, but Zeni Geva do it with the malevolence of nobody else.

Preferred drink: Water

Part Chimp | That Fucking Tank | Monnocle | Hired Geek All Dayer - The Victoria, London, 4 September 2010

I oversleep and wrongly assume that nothing much will happen at the Hired Geek all-dayer before 4pm. That’s why I miss the first two acts and find that Marilyn Rambo are already playing.

The French guitar drums duo have set up in the middle of the pub. The handful of audience members crowd round. The floor is sticky, and the air hot and stuffy. I think I can smell the band sweating.

Marilyn Rambo’s meaty, muscular, math-rock slowly builds an audience. It’s not revolutionary but the guitarist shifts tones and riffs that stop your mind spiralling off. Mid-set the guitarist string breaks and the drummer freestyles while he waits for repairs to be completed. They end with their best song with a riff like a klaxon. As the band clear their gear away a barman sprays air freshener across the room.

I’m sure I’ve seen Please play before. I’ve only vague recollections though and if my memory is right I wasn’t too impressed. Maybe my recall and opinion are both unreliable because Please are mightily enjoyable. Jaunty, punk-y, riffery, like the chaotic, frenetic, musical accompaniment to a circus. Rhythms come in short, choppy, bursts, like clowns throwing themselves into another choreographed pratfall. After half an hour they pack up their tents and move to another town.

Kogumaza are as Japanese as a Matsui tv. They are instead a slow motion Black Sabbath trying to play acid rock. Longeurs, of dirge-y, down tuned, psych, snake, sinewy, unhurried paths into that bit of your brain where important thoughts escape to.

Change of pace. One Unique Signal don’t bother with the clutch and just crank things straight into fifth. We get one, long, unending, fuzzed-out, guitar solo. Vocals are minimal, probably because it gets in they way playing another distorted, effects drenched guitar lead. Imagine sitting with your old tape deck and filling a TDK 90 with all the white-outs and wig-outs of your favourite distorto-rock bands. Maybe you don’t need to imagine this. Maybe you used to do this.
What should you expect from three French men wearing dresses? The answer, I have learnt, is post-hardcore. Monnocle blaze through their set like watching a flame burn along a gunpowder trail. Only one that doesn’t end in a explosion. That would be far too easy. Far harder to make that trail go round and round circles and leave you wondering when.

On the merch table That Fucking Tank have boldly labelled one of their Cds with the question, “do you remember when Shellac were good?” I’m not sure they’re that good, but they don’t embarrass themselves with the claim. Tight, arid, jagged, riffs, utilising repetition, before jack knifing into a new groove.

Whilst the previous bands have been escalating hostilities it’s now time to bring out the heavy artillery. Part Chimp move onto the stage. In their hands rock becomes rubble. Like a tank crashing through brick wall they swiftly overwhelm their opponents with a frontal assault of massive overkill. Their amps deliver their payload of heavy, buried in the red, richter scale redefining, guitar. If I was General Kong, plummeting towards my target side astride a nuclear bomb, then Bringbackthesound would be my sound track to my happy death and global oblivion.

Prefered drink: Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Zs | Temperatures - Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1 August 2010

The Whitechapel Gallery is a tiny space. Tucked away up an easy to miss alley. Gigs here have a secretive feel.

Temperatures are a duo. Bass guitar and drums. The drummer also has a massive block of electronics which looks like it last used by NASA in the 1960s. The two-piece have a hyper dense sound. Dense bass fiddling battles with percussive drum rumble. I struggle to work out what the electronics are adding. Definitely something. The bass work is murky, thick, intense. Meanwhile the drums clatter away like a box of pots and pans thrown downstairs. In a good way.

The lights are turned off for Zs set. Random patterns and colours are projected onto the band. The effect is like an epileptic lava lamp. Zs set begins with a guitar duet. Complex, math-y, playing. They stop. Then saxophone adds dry note runs and squiggles. The drummer, playing without cymbals, taps gently. The guitars come back in playing an angular riff. They all lock-in. Repeating the malfunctioning riff while the plays muted squeals. They break out of the groove for some flashy playing, but they always return.

They play a shorter second song. Beginning with a syncopated handclap. Over which the guitarists add a quiet metallic twanging. Then they erupt sax jizzle, hard drumming and guitar riffs.

It’s jazz, rock, and prog. It’s also none of these things. I am at least sure that it’s good.