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Damnation Festival @ Leeds, UK – 5th November 2011

Posted in Gigs, Travel with tags , , , , , , on November 19, 2011 by Noise Road

Winter in the UK is grim.

After a full Glaswegian day immersed in a thick fog, the sun set at 16:23… and it is only the start of November.

The days are shorter in northern Scandinavia, but there is a beauty in their winter.  Bright sunny days with crisp, dry air break the brutal cold in smaller, less dense towns.  You are never too far from bays covered in thick snow or frozen forests.

In contrast, the UK winter is grey and damp.  The air is never dry.  As the kids in Govan throw rocks at the bus on your dark commute to and from work, forests and lakes seem a long way away.

Last winter I found myself in Southampton, UK, with a bank balance of zero and a sh!t job.  You’ll never get out of this town.  You’ll never get out.

The snow and cold remained a novelty for this kid from a desert continent, but the short days bummed me out.  You stomped to work in the dark and you stomped home in the dark.

Southampton is much smaller than Birmingham, Glasgow and even Leeds, but it is as grey as any of those towns.  WWII left many UK towns flattened.  In the post-war scramble to house the displaced population, a grey, bland skyline arose.  In winter that grey skyline of the industrial port town blends into the grey of the daylight hours.  The sun is rarely sighted and a wet chill hangs in the air.

The grimness of a Southampton winter is what it took to understand Godflesh.  For years I just did not get Godflesh or Jesu or any of Justin Broadrick’s projects.  In 2009, I even caught Jesu at the Primavera festival in Barcelona…  But Broadrick is not the music of Barcelona.  Broadrick is not the music of sangria on a 30-degree-celsius day with the beautiful people on a Mediterranean beach.  Justin Broadrick is the music of cold, wet, grey winters in the dense, urban industrial centre of Birmingham.  It is the sound of Southampton in winter when you have a sh!t job and no way out.

I caught the trouble-plagued Godflesh reunion set at Hellfest last year, and then the awesome performance of Streetcleaner at Roadburn this year.  The set at Damnation Festival in Leeds was incident-free but its almost like Broadrick is uncomfortable when there is not a wonky wheel.  It seems that he has to recreate the tension of the song on stage.  Towels were required under the excessive lighting.  Awkwardness and tension are what make Godflesh.  Benny holds down that machine beat on stage-left, while Broadrick wrenches out pain from his guitar and from the throat.

When you are too poor to leave your industrial town, there seems no way out.  No relief from the soul wrench of the mechanical city….  but the truth is…  Southampton is half an hour from the New Forest.  Glasgow is half an hour from Loch Lomond, and a little further on is the incomparable Scottish highlands.  Leeds is on the footstep of the Yorkshire Dales.  It is eternally dark and damp in the UK winter, but you need to remember that beauty is never that far away.

I’m not sure if beauty is the right word to describe Ireland’s Altar of Plagues.  They are far more organic than Godflesh, even if they also deal in dark energies.

The Irish are amongst the friendliest people on earth.  Within minutes of arriving in Ireland on both my trips there I had new friends.  As a sole traveller you can feel isolated from conversations of any depth.  This is never the case in Ireland.  Walk into any Irish pub and you’ll never be short of conversation.

However there is a sadness to the Irish people below their immediate friendliness.  The Irish history is one of trading invading masters.  The population of Ireland today is still less than before the 1840s famine, where death and emigration destroyed the country.  Fresh economic woes have hit the country in the last couple of years.

I do not think that every Irish band is weighed down by the moroseness of their history.  I do not know if the less claustrophobic, but equal dampness of Ireland is significant in their sound. However I think that it is a factor.

In any case nature and moroseness is a strong theme musically and lyrically in Altar of Plagues.  The previous album, White Tomb, speaks of man’s civilisation falling into nature’s grasp.

We built our towers in the sand

And now they collapse around us…

…for your children have no place to grow their bones

 - Through the Collapse: Watchers Restrained

The latest, Mammal, talks of death as an artificial creation of man:

Birds know nothing of this

it is our vanity

we create death

we create this entity

 - Neptune is Dead

Altar of Plagues played the smallest stage of the festival.  Nursing a pint of carlsberg, at the back of that stage for Talons’ preceding set, I could barely distinguish the two violins from the rest of the band.  I needed to head straight down to the floor for Altar of Plagues.  The odd shaped room, with punters packed in to get a decent sound, added to the sweaty atmosphere.

With many bands that aim to create a mood, technical difficulties can take the crowd out of the atmosphere.  As guitarist, James Kelly, tried to isolate his equipment issues, the rest of the band looped through a quiet section of a song for several minutes.  However it did not taint the set.  Altar of Plagues are not creating another world.  They are dudes in jeans and Deathspell Omega t-shirts.  Their performance in based in the real world.  Technical difficulties occur in the real world.

Altar of Plagues energy is dark and weighty in depth.  But its dark energy is a sadness rather than the usual black metal evil.  There can be no doubt that the band are putting all their energies in, as members yell at the mic from metres away.

Something of this weight without pretension is a rare find.  Go see Altar of Plagues.

Earlier in the day, I found myself lost amongst the hospital buildings and the various Leeds University faculties.  Inside the student union, Shining started their set.  Every time I have previously caught Shining they have been billed as Shining (Nor).  So I made the rookie mistake of looking for the nihilistic black n roll of Sweden’s Shining, only to walk into the spazzy metal of the Norwegian band of the same name.

As I waited for the slowest, worst poured beer of my life (seriously how does a man reach his twenties without being able to pour a beer?), the buzz of Madness and the Damage Done filled the Jagermeister stage.

I was back the Jagermeister stage for Dragged into Sunlight.  Dragged into Sunlight’s sound was thick of sludgy riffs and the evil aesthetic of black metal.  However the presentation of the set distracted me.  The band spent the entirety of the set, save the last half minute, with their backs to the crowd.  I do not know what the intention is, but it comes off as if the band are in a rehearsal space.  The band obviously do care about image with candles as props and the stage bathed in red.  Each to their own I guess, but I think Dragged into Sunlight’s worthy music might be served better by turning around a little earlier.

After a 5-hour train down from Glasgow and a beery day of bands, Ulver’s wall of keyboards and computers did not grab me.  It was time to get in a couple of hours kip before the train back up through the Yorkshire Dales.

At £29 for bands of the quality of Godflesh and Altar Plagues, Damnation Festival is surely a cure for the winter greyness.  The stone walls separating the autumnal hills of the Yorkshire Dales remind me that I have to escape the urban grimness on weekends.  As I emerged from the mysterious fog that seems to hover on the English side of the border, the winter ahead looked a little less grey.

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Tombs @ Belfast – 6 August 2011

Posted in Gigs, Travel with tags , , on August 21, 2011 by Noise Road

Or

Chaos Reigns!  Scenes from a Weekend in Belfast

At an £18 flight each way, a £13 hostel bed, and a 25-minute hop across the Irish Sea, Belfast was merely a Guinness distribution point and the cheapest and closest town to catch Tombs.

Eyehategod showed us Sheffield. Napalm Death brought us to Wolverhampton.  Now Tombs lands us in Belfast.  Bands are taking Noise Road to destinations off the usual UK hit list.

However, Belfast should be on your UK hit list.

Belfast made me think hard.  Belfast made me rock hard…  and Belfast made me drink a little too hard.  Apologies to Tombs’ Mike Hill and Carson James if I was a few Guinness too heavy by the end of our post-gig chat.  I am grateful for the insight and inspiration that they passed on.  Hopefully I wasn’t all slurry in return.

I have never had extended conversations with so many new people in 36 hours.  Tombs‘ Mike Hill and Carson James spared me large hits of their time before and after their great performance.  I met new friends from Germany, Slovakia and Ireland in the hostel…  and throughout my stay the locals talked to me as if we were old friends.  Even more so if they had a pint in their hand.

I met my first new friend within minutes of landing in Belfast.  A few hours kip had not dulled the ringing in my ears.  The Dillinger Escape Plan had brought their unique brand of awesome to Glasgow the previous night.  Just a few hours later, Noise Road was now shouting at some poor Irish lad just to hear ourselves over the ringing.

It was before 8am and the two of us has just missed the shuttle bus into town.  He suggested splitting a cab, and a 40-minute conversation followed.  This is the friendliness of the Irish that I have encountered in a weekend in Dublin and in hostels throughout the world.

So, it was somewhat jarring to turn through pages of sectarian incidents in the local paper.  With little open before 9am on a Saturday, I sat down to a coffee and a fry up from a university quarter cafe.  I grabbed a discarded paper and read about a 15-year-old boy shot outside a Catholic school.  He was not even Catholic.  There were two separate incidents of members of the public arrested for attempting to instigate a riot.  These are not the stories that you read in the smaller cities of other parts of the world.  I know these people to be incomparably friendly, yet there is this legacy of violence here.  Armoured vehicles patrolled where regular cop cars should be.

I was naive to expect a trouble-free Belfast after over three decades of sectarian violence between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists.  On later reflection, it is remarkable how little violence there is now.  It is remarkable that Belfast functions at all.  On the Catholic side of the wall there are murals depicting fellow causes for independence – the Palestinians in the Middle East and the Basque in Southern Europe.  Can you imagine a Palestinian and Israeli government sharing power in the manner of the Protestant/Catholic power-sharing government in Northern Ireland?

I explored Belfast by foot and bus.  However, the taxi is the most important mode of transport on a short visit to Belfast.  You must take the black taxi tour.

The hostel manager organised four strangers from the corners of the earth into the back of the London-style cab.  For the next couple of hours our driver, Paddy, described what the locals euphemistically call “the troubles”.  The cab drove us to both sides of the dividing wall into the catholic and protestant strongholds.  Paddy detailed the history, the reasons and the Nationalist and Loyalist points of view.

It makes you think.  This massive wall is still here.

The walls in the communities are still painted with provocative murals.  The catholic side focuses on nationhood, revolution in Ireland and revolution throughout the world.  Towards the Sinn Fein headquarters stand memorials to their heroes who died in prisons on hunger strikes.

Whilst the depictions of historical victories over Catholics did not raise much reaction, some of the other Loyalist murals are very confronting.  As recent as 2000, one mural celebrates the life of a slain Loyalist who was responsible for deaths of many Nationalists.  Others show paramilitaries defending their estate and even shooting over the wall.

These murals on either side can not possibly help to maintain the peace.

Noise Road celebrated the Basque identity and Voivod’s uniqueness in this post.  However, standing at a mural of the Basque nation cause in Belfast, I now felt a little uneasy.

The internet age is the age of world homogenisation.  No empire or multinational corporation has been able to achieve what the internet has.  Geographical identity and uniqueness in culture are disappearing.  All countries are hardwired together.

A nation retaining its language and identity through the Roman Empire and all subsequent occupiers is a remarkable thing…  but here in Belfast on the side of homes, murals celebrate the murder of those different in order to maintain identity.

A homogeneous world culture is not good.  However tribalism is not good either.  Bombings, tortures, kidnappings and over 3,000 murders in a small town are the direct result of tribalism.

But…  Belfast is a success story.  The two tribes now share power.

My head hurt after contemplating Belfast’s history.  So a Guinness was in order.  A Guinness and then Tombs.

Tombs

We are above a pub in the city centre, Guinness in hand and good noises ahead.  Here, a small but interesting cast of characters drank, talked, headbanged and then drank some more.

Dwell in Sun suitably shook the room with slow-as-feck, reverb-heavy doom, before Tombs boarded the Auntie Annies Attic stage.

The opening wall of Black Hole of Summer stated the intensity for the evening.  The groove of the riff interchanged with an angry heartbeat.

The set took exclusively from Tombs’ current long-player, Path of Totality.  It’s strengths were the strengths of the evening.

The night was full of extremely tight tempo and feel changes.  My headbanging morphed into a full body groove, before a black metal burst arrives and my neck muscles are insufficiently developed to keep pace.

Whilst Tombs hit the room with heavy blasts and a post-punk feel, the attitude of band was straight from DIY hardcore.  Bassist James showed genuine interest in we punters while he manned the merch booth before the show.  Both James and guitarist/vocalist Hill mingled with the punters during the Secret’s headline set.

Tombs were not perturbed by the small Belfast crowd.  The previous night they played to a full room in London.  They drove all night, then ferried across the Irish sea, to play a much smaller room.  Tombs delivered intensity and energy to the handful of die-hards above Auntie Annie’s bar.  This ethic is conveyed in the music.

Tombs play bleak music.  Whether it be an angry-and-heavy bleakness or a slower Joy-Division-tinged bleakness.  What comes through is sincerity. Sincerity is not always a strength in heavy music.  Metal is often escapism (literally wearing masks) or catharsis.  Sometimes feel can be lost in cold technicality.  Tombs’ sincerity is transmitted live.

A key element to expressing more than just anger is Mike Hill’s voice. Gossamer and in particular Merrimack showed Hill’s vocal range on the previous album, Winter Hours.  However the new material displays a range of different vocal approaches that suit the more prevalent bleak goth-y/post-punk passages.  Hill carries baritone melodies like Joy Division in parts of Vermillion.  It connects with the audience.

Tombs draw their influences from the music of the world.  I am sure they lost youthful hours trawling record stores for imports of Norwegian Black Metal, UK Punk and underground hardcore from tiny US towns.  From this broad range of influences, and years of dedication to the craft, Tombs generate a unique sound that stirs a reaction in a bar on the other side of the world.  We can look beyond tribalism, and sample from the world community, without becoming homogenised.

Man, my head hurts again.  Time for another Guinness.

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A Sun That Never Sets – Scenes From a Long Weekend in Germany

Posted in Gigs, Travel with tags , , , on July 29, 2011 by Noise Road

Noise Road reviewed the Neurosis gig in Hamburg here.

The Reeperbahn is the home of Hamburg’s bars, clubs and music venues.  It is also the city’s red light district.  The locals like to party where other locals do business.  On Saturday night, there is a line of professionals from the subway to the red light entrance.  The following morning, a young family walked the same street looking for a place to eat.

My hostel stood directly behind a strip club.  I checked into the hostel and set out for supplies from the local grocery store.  I returned with an armful of bread and schwein and yoghurt.  As I passed the strip club, the barker invited me inside.  Really?  I’m going to walk into a seedy strip club with my ham sandwich and yoghurt?

A transvestite club appeared to be across the road from the hostel.  I decided it was wise to not get close enough for confirmation.

On the Sunday night, I walked to the Neurosis show at the end of a length of closed strip clubs.  I guess having strange genitals thrust in your face isn’t part of most people’s Sunday night wind down.

Koln

The Glasgow Fair gifted this Glaswegian resident a long weekend in Germany.  Neurosis did not schedule a Scottish date, but a Sunday night gig in Hamburg lined up with the long weekend.

Once upon a time direct flights linked Glasgow to Hamburg.  No more.  The cheapest way to Hamburg was a flight down to Koln and a train back up to Hamburg.

After crashing overnight in Koln, I walked the town in search of contact lens solution and toothpaste.  My contacts were glued to my eyeballs and my teeth were slowly rotting.  Slowly we rot.

A massive cathedral dominates Koln.  The rest of town seems like a miniature model in the shadow of the cathedral.

Linking Koln to Bonn stands a bridge full, from end to end, with inscribed padlocks.  Apparently people show their commitment to each other by locking a shared padlock to this bridge.  While it seems cheesy, the sheer scale is impressive.

Someone has posted the phrase “what a society where the symbol of love is a padlock” over the padlocks.  Yeah, its kinda funny – but why anonymously and cowardly sh!t all over a nice thing?

A walk along the river, a coffee and a wurst and we were on a train to Hamburg.

Hamburg

Germany shuts down on Sundays.  An amateur triathlon passed by the closed shops.  Impressively all ages and levels of fitness attempted the gruelling event…  and then immediately after crossing the finishing line most of the participants drank beer.  Not water.  Not sports drink.  Beer.  The Germans are our kind of people.

The quiet Sunday also afforded the opportunity to discover a WWII U-Boat.  I am a submarine geek.  I have earnt a crust for 7 out of the last 10 years designing for submarines and rescue submersibles.  I’ve gone to sea in an Australian submarine.  I’ve boarded active rescue submersibles in the UK and Sweden.  I’ve boarded retired submarines in the US, France and now Germany.  Kerouac would detest me and these machines of hate.

Amen Ra, Ufomamautt and Neurosis

A crowd of big beards and black t-shirts greeted me outside of the Gruenspan venue, at the end of the infamous Grosse Freiheit.  The venue is an interesting mix of exposed brick, roman columns and solid sound.  In fact as we waited outisde we clearly heard every note of the Neurosis sound check.  I heard Given to the Rising twice for the evening.

Amen Ra

I found Amen Ra’s stage presence confusing.  The vocalist turned his back to the audience for the entire set.  You don’t need to be all rock star with the crowd.  You don’t even have to look at them.   However a vocalist with his back to crowd gives the impression that you are going out of your way to ignore the paying punters.

Despite confusing stage presence, Amen Ra are a good fit for Neurosis.  Post-metal, post-hardcore…  Amen Ra are post something.  The set consisted of mid-pace chugging with Converge-y rhythmic barks over the top.  The repetitive chugg is hypnotic.  The odd tempo change or a few bars of melodic vocal brings you back to this body in a club at the end of a road of strip clubs.

Ufomamautt

Neither of the openers were advertised on the bills that I saw for the show.  So it was a very pleasant surprise to see the much hyped Ufomamautt.  I had heard nothing but good things from my fellow campers at Roadburn.

Ufomamautt are from the Al Cisneros school of wishing that Sabbath riffs went on for 20 minutes.

The repetition builds a vibe of colossal fuzzy riffs.    Add to that a level of dissonance through both guitar and electronics and you have yourself an entertaining set.

But its time to go to church.  Its time for Neurosis.

Neurosis

After tens of thousands of years of practice, rituals are ingrained into us.  We need to feel part of something bigger.  There has to be more than the buffalo chase.  There has to be more than the cog in the corporate machine.

Seventeen years of catholic rituals left me without a spiritual experience.  There are no gods.  There is no God.

However I believe there is worth in being taken out  of your small world.

Sometimes running along the Clyde at 11pm with the same slowed down Sabbath riff looped in my headphones for the hundredth-and-thirty-second time, I drop out of the world for a minute.   I return in a sweaty mess, but stresses of the day are lessened.  The mind is emptier.

Some black metal bands talk of their shows as rituals.  Wolves in the Throne Room look to use repetition of blastbeats and tremolo picking to induce a trance-like vibe.  I enjoy the last Wolves of the Throne Room record, but I am yet to trance out at either of their shows that I’ve caught.

However, I have enjoyed the ritual side of gigs before.  The vibrations and sheer volume of bass at a Sunn 0))) show cause time to stop or to skip.  Half an hour in turns to an hour in, then you are snapped out of it by a bearded dude spilling beer on you.  Sorry, man.  No worries, mate.

Neurosis in Hamburg is the most rewarding ritual that I have attended.  Read Noise Road’s review here.


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Neurosis @ Hamburg, Germany – 17 July 2011

Posted in Gigs, Travel with tags , , on July 26, 2011 by Noise Road

My camera in one hand and a phone to take notes in the other, I prepared to detail the Neurosis show…  but as soon as Scott Kelly launched into the first word of the night “Rise!!!!!” of Locust Star, I shoved my phone and my camera back into my pockets.  To study the details too close, is to cheat yourself of the Neurosis experience.  It is more than the sum of its parts.

This ain’t religion and it ain’t spiritual.  But it is a more worthwhile ritual than I found in 17 years of catholic masses.

Each show, Neurosis relive the energies that created the music.  Their eyes burn with intensity.  They ain’t messing around here, playing that same tired riff again.

After the third song of the set, Scott Kelly was frustrated to be taken out of the experience by a bum cable on his guitar.  They didn’t raise the lights to find the problem.  That would break the mood.  They actually lowered the lights while fellow guitarist, Steve Von Till, inspected Kelly’s maze of pedals. Kelly just paced stage-right like a wounded lion.

Later, Von Till’s mic came loose as he bashed his head into it.  Rather than break from the song, he threw the whole stand away and continued to sing into his amp, until a frantic roadie replaced the mic.

Neurosis are a single entity.  In particular, guitarists/vocalists Von Till and Kelly seem made for each other – whether countering or in unison, their guitars and voices always compliment.

Added to the vocal mix are keyboardist Noah Landis’ backing vocals and bass player Dave Edwardson’s demonic displays.  Edwardson sounds like those records religious nuts warned your parents about back in the eighties.  His vocals are Von Till or Kelly at half speed, or even played backwards.  Kill your parents.  Kill yourself.  Just kill someone.

Landis is one of the more effective keyboardist in rock.  Neurosis is full of electronic soundscapes melding into the riffs, but Landis also contributes to the set with melodies and auxiliary percussion strikes.  Edwardson lurks with his bass in the dark until his evilness is required on the mic, whilst drummer Roeder pounds away tribal rhythms from a minimalist kit.

However, the band members’ individual parts are not the focus.  The members seek to create an atmosphere or an energy.

Tracks from Through Silver in Blood bookmarked the night – from Scott Kelly’s roar of “Rise!” to Von Till/Kelly on duelling floor toms matching Roeder’s tribal beat of the title track.

Neurosis sampled widely from a catalogue dating back almost a quarter of a century.  However, like the individual members are not the focus, neither are the songs.  It all has to add to the atmosphere in the room…  Still when those keyboard soundscapes eased into the sparse notes of Belief, there wasn’t a happier man in the room.  Belief is high in my rotation at work as I “try to stand clear of the scent of dogs“

Water is Not Enough, At the End of the Road and the title track from the latest album, Given to the Rising, show that Neurosis’ power is undiminished.  Those songs weigh heavy with experience and insight.  A 21-year-old could never bring the weight to a set that Neurosis do.  Only the worthy elders of our tribe are fit to conduct the ritual.

“We still promise the teeth” insists the closer of the evening.

Neurosis still promise the teeth.

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ZU @ Glasgow Jazz Festival – 01 July 2011

Posted in Gigs, Travel with tags , , , , , on July 10, 2011 by Noise Road

Jazz.

When I read Jack Kerouac’s vivid prose of be-bop frenzies in crowded beatnik bars, I want to know about jazz.

However, I’ve found it a hard genre to break into with any depth.  My jazz knowledge is limited to a handful of 70′s fusion bands, like Mahavishnu Orchestra, and a couple of records from the big names – Miles Davis/Charlie Parker/John Coltrane.

Invisible Oranges recent series on the links between metal and jazz is helping.  Aesop Dekker’s excellent recommendations on anything from jazz to black metal is also easing my toes into the deep end.  

Still, part of me can’t help but associate jazz with dudes like that in the clip below.  Jaaaazz.

If you just watched that clip, apologies for subjecting you to Puff Daddy.  That man is abhorrent.

I caught several shows as part of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, but I would not class many of those acts as jazz.  Noise to funk to soul – I caught pretty much everything apart from jazz.

The Friday evening of the jazz festival turned especially weird.  What I thought would be an early night, ended drinking with a Mexican tourist at a fruit market, while an actor from a sci-fi comedy series spun funk records.

I walked across town back to the flat.  As I got out from the centre city lights the blue haze on the horizon showed that daylight was not far away.  It was still before 3am.  The last of the day light only left as we were walking out of the ZU show at 11pm.  Glasgow is really far north, dude.

The evening began as the train dropped me at Easterhouse.  At the top of the station stairs, a Mexican dude asked me if I knew the direction to the ZU gig.  There was no discernible centre of Easterhouse, so we searched for the venue together.  Easterhouse appears to be one of the more colourful suburbs, full of Glasgow’s infamous characters.  You live here long enough and you get to the enjoy the crazies you met on an almost daily basis.  Its like living in a hard-boiled detective novel.

The Platform venue is a theatre attached to the town’s community centre.  It was a far cry from the dive bars of ZU’s previous UK tours.   A 5-minute call from the lobby bar informed us that the show was about to start.  We passed a library on the way to the theatre door.

After the gig, I followed my new Mexican friend to another jazz festival event back in Glasgow’s centre.  The festival beautifully transformed the former fruit market into a cabaret atmosphere.  We entered to a funk band moving the dance floor.  The following act was even less jazz.  Craig Charles, the actor who played Lister in the BBC sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf, performed  a soul/funk DJ set.  Weird.

Carcass appearing on Red Dwarf with “DJ” Craig Charles:

Craig Charles introducing old school Napalm:

Wounded Knee

Earlier, Scottish one-man act, Wounded Knee, opened the evening with a set of looped vocals.  This wasn’t some acapella choir – there were no lyrics or songs in the 20-minute piece.

I have seen a few of these type of shows – everything from Tuvan throat singers at Womadelaide to Mike Patton solo shows.  This was similar to Patton but nowhere near as abrasive.  If you sit through Patton’s Adult Themes for Voice on a regular basis, you’re a hardier man than I.  I once witnessed devoted Patton fans with their hands in their ears at his solo show.  That dude was a provocateur.

Wounded Knee was a far more gentle performance.  It took a while for me to get into it, as he initially dealt in sparse rhythmic noises looped over each other… but when he started developing layers of melodies, it became quite interesting.

ZU

Nothing but vocals in the first act, and then no vocals at all in ZU’s set.  In fact the band didn’t even say “hello” or “thanks”.  It was a pretty poor attendance of around 50 people for a show that was barely advertised.  Still, a vocal thanks would have been appreciated.  Although perhaps disappointed by the crowd, their energy on stage did not show it.

ZU boarded to a rumbling hum from the amps. The hum did not relent for the set.  Jarring electronics, fuzzy basses lines, endless drum fills and wailing saxophone relentlessly challenged the audience.  Just three dudes saturated the air with noise.

Occasionally the noise abated to the base layer hum.  Here the rhythm was carried by the saxophonist just tapping his valves without blowing.

The bass glued the performance together with low-end, sludgy rock.   Bass lead riffs locked into the drums.  Occassionally the sax locked in as well, but it was never long before the sax started wailing in mix of genuine notes and noisy screeches.  Soon the drums wandered off into erratic rolls.  Only the bass could eventually lure the other two wailers back to the basic riff of the track.

ZU delivered a challenging set.  I don’t think a saxophone and the odd drum break make you jazz.  However, whilst I failed to learn anything about jazz during the festival, maybe some jazzhead’s eyes were opened to the world of noise.  And hopefully he/she enjoyed the set as much as I did.


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