Boredoms. Now touring under the name Voordoms, this is a three drum kit assault of breakneak paced percussion that aims for the dancefloor and throws Eye's euphoric electronics over the top. Ecstatic and music that references dance, kodo, krautrock, punk, psychedelia in a transcendent fakiristic frenzy.
Mugstar. Heavy bludgeoning repetition influenced by Can and Neu! Pulverising riffs, subtle progressions, sweaty muscular unadorned riffing.
A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Giddy virtuoso folk reels played on violin and accordion, with the accordion reaching jaw dropping levels of one-man-band virtuosity as he does all the percussion at the same time.
Shitmat. Ridiculous puerile breakcore, like a piss-poor wedding reception DJ vigorously slapped about with idiotic blast beats and pure noise elements. When I saw him he cussed out the audience, played the original versions of Kiss from a Rose, The Timewarp and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, nearly trashed the monitors, slammed his own laptop repeatedly into the desk, pulled down his cacks and had a wank onstage, shoved the mic up his arse and nearly got beaten up by the soundman and bouncers before getting switched off prematurely. All that in only fifteen minutes.
Lightning Bolt. What is understood does not need to be discussed.
Acid Mothers Temple. Like listening to every Seventies psychedelic rock band at once, with Kawabata Makoto being one of the greatest guitarists playing today. Ridiculously overblown hippy madness.
Josh Pearson. Ex Lift to Experience frontman has a crisis of confidence, then comes back two years later and goes on the road with just an acoustic guitar and some distortion. Deeply personal religious-tinged music, a more manoeuvrable and song based LtE.
Noxagt. Ugly brutal riffing, as though everything pretty had been crushed out by some gigantic muddy wheel. Ponderous drums like elephant footsteps. Pulverising low end. Mugstar thrash them at their own game, but still excellent.
Yolk. Blisteringly infectious and hilarious lunacy from Dunkerque. Imagine Mr Bungle or early nineties Boredoms played by session musicians who never grasped that the objective of most session players is to actually, you know, make money or something. That's totally underselling them, though. It's catchy, poppy prog rock played with ferocity, intelligence and sense of fun, an all-styles in a blender ping-ponging through their touched-by-the-hand-of-God record collection.
Aids Wolf. An evil maelstrom of deformed non-songs that seem to have climbed fully formed from the icky sexual fantasies of each of the otherwise lovely and personable band members. Like listening to PJ Harvey gone very, very wrong.
The Rebel. A cracked glimpse into the Country Teasers' Ben Wallers' pointless and banal observations on life in Little Britain, uncomfortable like speaking to your alcoholic Daily Mail reading uncle and reeled out in a rambling folk blues with Sophie's inspired and individualistic drum clattering. We'll be playing a show with them at The Good Ship in Kilburn 27 March. Please come, they're awesome.
Afrirampo. Psychedelic rock and roll, perpetually falling to pieces and reconstructing itself, improvised sillyness and devout spirituals, yelping and shrieking, red velvet and face paint. I am in love with their drummer, and for ten minutes on my twenty-eighth birthday had the pleasure of both joining them on drums and having my bald head played by Pika as a drum.
Team Brick. Bristol's best export, signed to Barrow's label and possibly guesting on the new Portishead record. My dear sweet Brick is a fellow Studio Gainax obsessed Evangeli-freak and a one-man band of improvised hymns, accidental throat singing, disco inferno, clarinet jazz, accordion and acoustic guitar free folk, personal exorcism, off-the-cuff loops and blistering pure noise.
Parts and Labor. Thunderous low end, high speed drum pile ups and ear-splitting electronics frame pop songs that fizz and crackle with pure noise and borrow many euphoric tricks from dance music while never sounding like a simplistic experiment in genre splicing.
Chris Corsano. Baby-faced skinny drum Messiah, reinventing the kit as a stringed instrument and proudly displaying his childlike enthusiasm as he clatters away in jazz freakout solos on a bunch of pot lids like he was still a kid and nicking his mum's kitchen utensils on which to make a racket. Homemade sax/pumbing hose attachments, cellotape, playing keyboard, drums and singing at the same time… you can catch the entirety of the Palimpsest Festival set that Craig, pin and I saw via this blog entry, complete with the three of us grinning like loons in the front row. Please do, it's spellbinding despite the YouTube format.
Marillion. Ace melodic prog rock and pop, somehow icily perfect in execution, totally overblown in their pomp, oddly intimate and warmly bonkers in an Englishman out in the midday sun kinda way. You'll get your money's worth, they play for hours.
Melt Banana. Best live band on the planet. Best band on the planet. If you disagree then you're a crushing disappointment to your parents and probably bitter and psychologically twisted from something that happened to you between the ages of six and eleven. Daddy didn't buy you that rare Wreck-Gar for Christmas? Let Melt Banana heal you. They are your missing piece. New album this year. It will quite predictably be the best thing any of us have ever heard.
Van Halen. As good on stage as Melt Banana. The ultimate party cock rock band.
Neptune. Homemade junkyard instruments and a sound like a Mad Max version of Sonic Youth. These guys are intense, off the wall, unexpectedly accessible and most importantly look really fucking cool. The band most likely to… be stopped at Customs. Seriously. Circuit bent alarm clocks with tons of wires hanging out, but they always get away with it when they're forced to open their guitar cases and everyone steps back in an awestruck gasp.
Boduf Songs. Doom metal made inaudible, guitars barely plucked and voices not heard above a whisper, knife edge tension and utterly bleak. Like Tenacious D via Blue Jam only turned down to minus one instead of eleven. Live they're almost totally unamplified, I saw them in a church in Brighton with a fifty-strong audience and no one made a sound throughout. Spellbinding.
Almandino QuitedeLuxe. Boy/girl Luchadore mask-wearing blues rock'n'roll two piece from Italy, like the White Stripes if the White Stripes listened to Tetuzi Akiyama and Ruins. Great fun, especially when they get into the heavy repetition.
The USAISAMONSTER. My standard description: like Fugazi covering the operatic mid-section from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in the style of Lightning Bolt. Yet another power two-piece, only these win on diversity of influences and scope of sound rather than being rather one-note like LB. A truly incredible drummer who somehow sings, plays keyboards, the bass notes of an organ and drums at the same time. Excellent prog/pitch shifted rock/folk mash up, songs about the plight of the Native Americans, thumb pianos!
Justice Yeldham. One of the best live shows I've seen. A one-man noise act who shrieks into laptop processed panes of glass before smashing it with his face and ending up bleeding and lacerated with shards sticking out his neck. Can't really argue with that on any level. |
