Category Archives: GIG REVIEWS

DESERT STORM and DRORE: live review

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DESERT STORM with DRORE at The Bullingdon, Oxford, February 1, 2019 (oh, and Conjurer headlined)

Is it the Deuchars IPA? The Guinness? The proximity of Conjurer?

Is it balls. The reason why Desert Storm turn out yet another magnificent support set is because Desert Storm just fucking are. How do they do it? Every time they take the stage you end up having the best half hour, so in some ways there’s little point reviewing the gig – go read any previous one. But that’s not fair, because we’ve got a duty to be in the moment to share the good stuff in this world, and this is definitely the Good Stuff. And we’ll get to it in a minute, because first, there’s the small matter of brute filth to get through: Drore.

As the band themselves put it on bandcamp, Drore is Drore. No-one can argue with that. What you want is what you get, and what you want is their uber growling scuzz-toned aggro all over your face. Job. Done. With pulverisers like Happy Accident and Skinjob loaded in the arsenal, the only losers are those who don’t get here early enough.

After that, what do Desert Storm do? Same as always: make you do your body-rocking swing thing through the Divine Power of Grooving Metal Riffs. The fact that the band feed off their creations as much as we do just adds to the vibe, like this kind of rock is not just a way of life but the very essence of life. Journeys End, Too Far Gone and The Brawl are among the Sentinels album airings, though there’s no room for the massive Convulsion tonight. Instead, the last two tracks are pulled from two Sentinels predecessors: we get Queen Reefer’s stupendous swing and thrash headcharge, and a closing Enslaved in the Icy Tundra, a track so confident that it drops a brief Clutch-funk break before remembering how metal it is.

Not much else to say really, is there? Desert Storm deal a proper metallic hit – again – and you WILL be rocking like a bastard to Sentinels at home the next day. Again.

Other Desert Storm and Drore wordage:

Almost forgot: Conjurer headlined. Who? Nah, not for me. Not that OTT scream thing. Maybe check Nightshift in March for a write-up.

Desert Storm and Drore

Desert Storm and Drore: no regrets

KING CRIMSON 2018: live review

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IN THE COURT OF KING CRIMSON: AN OBSERVATION
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, All Hallows’ Eve, 2018

The jaw drop is a tired enough cliché, but I swear it happened tonight.

These words aren’t a review. They’re a reminder, a rough sketch … an attempt to give some form to a memory of seeing King Crimson for the first time. This was an all-timer of a show. And the nature of the sketch is to pare the experience down to a subjective essence, a couple of Moments, which is a wild disservice to the rest of the show but that’s how it has to be. I mean, this is King Crimson. Who am I to sit here and pretend to know what I’m talking about?

Because tonight, we got schooled. Big time.

First, some rapido scene setting: St David’s Hall Cardiff the venue, seated front right in the Fripp area. No cameras and no viddying during the performance say the signs and Fripp’s own genteel west-country announcement before the show: “Let’s be in the moment.” Two-part show with a mid-point interval. Three-drummer line-up across the front of the stage. Left to right we’ve got Pat Mastelotto, Jeremy Stacey and Gavin Harrison: the Front Line, the statement. Behind them, left to right, are Mel Collins, Tony Levin, Bill Rieflin, Jakko Jakszyk and Robert Fripp. Voluminous three-part drum solo starts the night and says We Are Here and So Are You. Even the total ace that is Live in Chicago 2017 doesn’t capture the volume of the percussive sorcery we’re privy to right now, even though it would definitely have been there. No recording can, it’s the live effect, simple as that. Surround-sound seeing-is-believing-is-amplifying. Tracks played? Can’t recall the sequence. Many familiar (Easy Money, Indiscipline, In the Court of the Crimson King, Epitaph, Cirkus and more), many not. Part I was excellent. But Part II made the first half feel like a warm-up, even though it was nothing like. Here are a couple of moment-ous whys.

A Moment pt I: DISCIPLINE

It’s an intricate, spidery track, as we know. But to see eight people, three of them drummers, pin-pointing Discipline’s intense rhythm workout in the flesh is almost beyond belief. The whole thing’s a piece of work, but the ending? Shit me. Fripp and Jakszyk match each other’s every note on a fraught adrenalin run AND THEN land that sudden-stop ending together, exactly, inhumanly precisely … sucks your breath out. Staggering.

A Moment pt II: 21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN

Schizoid might be their best-known track but familiarity never diminishes its power because it’s too damned fiery a composition with an All-Time Heavy riff – and live, it’s even more feral-orchestral. You’ve got eight people pulling on its limbs: tension. Schizoid is the last track of the night and it’s a gift. Like Starless before it (another Moment), you see the band loosening just enough to visibly enjoy the home run after two-plus hours of focused performance. Jakszyk rocks out to Gavin Harrison’s 21st Century drum solo, as does Tony Levin. Fripp may even have a little more upturn on his mouth corners. But if you think they’ve loosened their hold on what really matters – The Performance – and are about to coast home, wrong wrong no no no. Right now, 21st Century Schizoid Man feels like the most dramatic crescendo ever played. You sit there, rapt and leaning forward, when – or because? – a thought pops up:

‘Are they going to make it?’

Because the pace, dexterity and interplay is frightening … someone’s wheel is gonna wobble, surely. Isn’t it?

No. Not an option. Not on this stage. Schizoid, and especially this version of it, exposes King Crimson music for what it really is: a monster. The heaviest, most fearless rock of all time.

This collective shows what guitar-based band music really can be. Cacophonous and overstimulating, delicate and beautiful, free flowing and swinging, precise and intense, tribal and rhythmical, it’s rock with its full potential realised. In this moment, you do think that most other bands, even the ones you love the most, are under performers. Are they? Or does the octet of mild-mannered suits up there on the St David’s Hall stage really operate on a more rarefied level?

Go and see. For a show that’s no-props and music only, you get a spectacle. Phenomenon as revelation.

I hope never to forget it.

King Crimson, Cardiff, October 31, 2018

It’s OK to take pictures … Tony Levin has his camera out

RITUAL UNION 2018: review

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KIRAN LEONARD, GNOD, GHOSTPOET, WARMDUSCHER, BOY AZOOGA AND GAZ COOMBES among the bands at Oxford’s Ritual Union festival, October 20, 2018

Ritual Union returns for its second year and you probably know the drill by now – four stages of bands on Cowley Road and some in-stores at Truck Store. Bo Ningen destroyed the place last year. Is anyone gonna carry their fearsome torch this time around?

Everyone has their own path through a multi-stage multi-band bill like this, and our path starts at Gnod Central: use the Salford collective as an immovable anchor point and work back, up and around the rest of the schedules.

Ritual Union 2018

Right then, where to start? Being familiar with the tastily grooving Loner Boogie (but nothing else) from Boy Azooga, we might as well head to the Bullingdon for a 1.30-ish kick off with Cardiff’s homegrown. But while getting wristbanded for Ritual Union admission, the doors are leaking a very un-riffy waft. Into the venue itself and it’s full-volume Boy bland. Needs salt – lots of it, and quick. The place is packed to the back though, so they must have got something right somewhere, and that somewhere is evidenced on the next track. Introduced as a new one, it packs the rock salt and jams on a thick, just-dirty-enough riff and yes, ’tis good. And so they go, a likeable young bunch who no doubt finish off with a massive Boner Loogie, but I’ll never know because even that highly tempting proposition isn’t quite enough to sacrifice Ghosts in the Photographs to the Timetable Gods. Time for a polite Azooga exit and a swift dash up to The Library for the last 10 minutes of the Oxford band’s set.

Aaaaaaaaaaah. Downstairs, small room, thick air, thirty-odd people and a bass buzz vibrating your vitals. Feels like home, musically speaking. Ghosts in the Photographs do instrumental post rock, the kind of thing that’s not wildly different from other instrumental post rock but, because you’ve got a leaning for instrumental post rock, you get a kick out of hearing more instrumental post rock. Explosions in the Sky delicacy leavened by bass-force 5ive, if that’s not too shallow a summary. Judging by the spoken sample fading out at the end, I’m guessing the track was their 18-minute Dyslexorcist, but it is a guess. One to explore.

Any band who did a session for Marc Riley on BBC Radio 6 Music last week has to be worth a look, so the next stop is the larger-than-life Warmduscher. Post-punkish angles, sharp endings, shitloads of gothabilly reverb and odd tales that don’t sound remotely serious, relayed by a guy in a sports jacket, shades and a cowboy hat. You gotta love it: party Warm. And with Fat White Family bloodlines running through the band, there’s no doubt a fair amount of muck as well.

Compelling in a very different way is Kiran Leonard who clips some wired, wiry discord that scores pretty high on the awkward-ometer. Spiky jangle jerk and twitch. Leonard’s voice is an acquired taste of often fast yelps that hit and miss while he battles the guitar like he’s plugged into it himself. You have to watch. Great band too, especially the drummer. If Tim Buckley grew up with the New York alt rock underground and hired a Ryley Walker rhythm section, would this be something like? Much to check with Kiran Leonard, and whatever falls out of his albums, it won’t be dull.

Right then, the big one. After all this talk of angles, twitch and flinch, good as it is, you’re ready for a proper fix from the promised land of amplification, riffs, industrial intoxication and body-beating catharsis. You gneed Gnod.

Anything like the oversized Unkle Frank Says Turn It Down would be a welcome flooring, right? But we don’t get it, nor anything close to it. Anyone hoping for Chapel Perilous Gnod or Just Say No…Gnod is not gonna get their fix because tonight’s incarnation of the Salford noisemakers is Heavy Electronic Ambient Gnod – two guys, electronics, subterranean drones and pulses, and a fuzzed-out film backdrop. Art Installation Gnod. Riiiiight. What does it all mean? Let’s open up and wait for the transcendent hit, the doom-shaker resonance, the seismic epiphany

nothing. Boring as fuck. To stand and watch 30 minutes of Nothing Happens – not even a building hypnotic swell – is a mega switch-off, and that time is flushed forever. Hilariously, when they end the set they forget they’ve been scheduled for 45 minutes not 30 so they crank it back up for another 15. Sure, we could leave, but in for a penny in for a pound … of false optimism. Bit gutted, really. Those recent albums make a majestic racket and the prospect of Gnod noise done live was reason #1 for getting the gig ticket.

Anyway, it’s nothing a G&D coffee stop can’t fix and we’re onto just two more bands from the slicker end of the day. Ghostpoet pulls out a goody, his downbeat noir beefed nicely by the live band, and Ghostpoet himself being more animated than expected. Many Moods at Midnight opens the set and a keyboard-heavy Freakshow shuts it, but the penultimate heavy-hitting Immigrant Boogie is what it’s all about. Amped, man. Sol-id. Not ghostly.

Closing the day is Gaz Coombes, and the star quality is obvious. His voice is in top shape, as are the band and backing singers who flesh out his solo gems like Walk the Walk’s delicious falsetto funk and the addictive moto-pulser Deep Pockets. Guitarist Nick Fowler spreads enough grit to rough it up in the right places, and it’s a job well done by a class act. Hats off to the hatted one.

QOTSA + IGGY POP: live review

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QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE ALL-DAYER AT FINSBURY PARK, JUNE 30 2018. IGGY POP SECOND IN COMMAND

It’s a heatwave, it’s a scorching Saturday aft and there are complaints-worthy queues for the bars in Finsbury Park. Do you file in with a human snake for an hour to get yourself a sip o’ the shite stuff?

Or do you make sure you miss not one second of Iggy Pop?

You know the answer, and when Iggy skip-runs out, shirtless from the off, to I Wanna Be Your Dog, it’s confirmed. Screw lager, here is the Miracle of Pop. He’s lost speed, he limps badly and his muscle tone is much melted, but seeing him still giving it everything after a long life of feral performances and time-defying physicality is a life-affirming spectacle. And it is a pleasant shock to see him fired up like this in the lowering sun. The Post Pop Depression Live at the Albert Hall DVD – another captivating performance (is there any other?) – looked like it might have been a last-of-its-kind statement from Pop, the start of a move towards slightly more refined – or, at least, less physical – performances, but no. It’s like he can’t help himself. The momentarily mature Pop that peeped through PPD has been ditched for a return to the Stooges wild.

Gimme Danger is next up, and then: “If you saw somebody hitchiking … near Swindon … would you pick ’em up?” Cue The Passenger, then Lust for Life. He’s put the big-crowd guns out early, so what happens next? This is where it gets interesting, this is what it means to pull a great mass-appeal set out of your pants. Skull Ring. I’m Sick of You. TV Eye, Search and Destroy, Some Weird Sin, Mass Production …. who would have thought Mass Production on a day like this? It always sounds 10 times longer than it actually is, and crowd chatter does rise as it goes on, but you cannot ignore this crawling Idiot-grotesque factory dirge dragging the beauty out of a hot summer afterglow. But then, knowing he has to bring everyone back with the last track, he lets the Jean Genie out. Pop doesn’t mention Bowie, but surely everyone thinks Bowie, and while we do it’s Pop the Survivor who twists his body through a track that links them forever.

As far as tracklists for support slots go, it’s pretty hard to beat. As far as performances from still-got-it legends go … same. He looks strong – almost broken, but in the same gasp, nowhere near, with voice to match. We’ll never work it out, the guy’s still a phenomenon who you’ve got to watch as much as listen to. Pop time is show time. Again.

Queens of the Stone Age … are on ridiculous form. There’s no point teasing it out, they just are. Finsbury Park 2018 will surely be known as one of those gigs in a band’s lifetime where the cosmic forces got all their arses in line, and those who made it were lucky enough to witness something more than a bit special. It felt like they played for hours but finished in minutes. If I Had a Tail, Lost Art of Keeping a Secret and Feet Don’t Fail Me Now are early starters, and it’s clear the band are in a fearsome groove – pacy, heavy, clear and jammed with musicianship: a consummate rock gig and they never stop working it. Little Sister and Sick Sick Sick hit hard and lift high, but then again so does everything, the one exception being Make It Wit Chu’s seductive breather ahead of a SFTD one-two.

Songs for the Deaf shuts the main set down. The encore is a 10-minute Song for the Dead, shit ye not. THAT’S how to finish off Finsbury – a hard rock orgy for 45,000. Do it all over again? If only we could. QOTSA albums on permanent replay ever since. Untouchable.

Queens of the Stone Age do Finsbury

QOTSA do Finsbury

ROBERT PLANT: live review

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ROBERT PLANT AND THE SENSATIONAL SPACE SHIFTERS
Bath Festival Finale Weekend, Bath Spa, May 27 2018

This gig feels like a massive, swollen-ball bonus in the music lottery. After last year’s tour date prices shot out of reach just a few hours after going on sale, it seemed that Robert Plant would be hard to catch on the road, but a few 2018 festival dates means the Bath Festival Finale Weekend drops us in an oddly cozy outdoor setting with Bath Spa as a 360-degree backdrop. It’s welcoming and inviting, packed with roots and history.

A bit like the music we’re about to hear, right?

Link Wray’s 1958 strut Rumble is the walk-on track and our headliners kick things off with signature Zep II blueser, The Lemon Song. Didn’t see that one coming, but you know the Space Shifters’ score by now – whatever feels right IS right, and their gigs are never less than immersive. You jump in for the ride and see where it goes, knowing roughly – but not exactly – where you might end up. After The Lemon Song and Turn It Up, that ride takes in Carry Fire, Lullaby…and the Ceaseless Roar, Led Zeppelins I-II-III-IV and Dreamland with just one other stop – Nashville/Clarksdale for Please Read the Letter. Introduced with an Alison Krauss anecdote and an impish “written by two geniuses” quip, it’s big and full-some, but Gallows Pole is the first gig moment, a gallop that drops all downtempo parts and pelts it from the off, fired by Seth Lakeman’s fiddle. After that, Carry Fire’s entrancing trip is widescreen heavy, and again Lakeman is central.

A brace of less-riffsome Zep tracks – Going to California and Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You – give Skin a chance to pick ‘n’ psyche, Little Maggie brings worldly beats, and the main set wraps with Funny In My Mind (I Believe I’m Fixing to Die). On the Dreamland record, it’s dusty, urgent, trancey. Here, it’s a toughed-up rock ‘n’ roller pushed by shuffling Radar Love drum patterns, and it’s stuff like this that make the Space Shifters a proper live experience. You don’t get the same old shit. They play with a Right Now vibe, locked in music’s moment whether it’s rock and roll, Touareg blues, Bristolian beats, misty mountain folk, Nashville/Appalachia or Zep perennials, or any mix they see fit to run with.

And Plant? His voice is bang on, as it has been since the first days of Strange Sensation in 2002. Of all the people from rock and pop’s first wave of mega bands, he, surely, is the one doing things with the most class, and though he’ll be leaving his 60s in a couple of months, he doesn’t look like he’s gonna wobble. No way.

If the encore brings the one dead cert in a Space Shifters gig – Whole Lotta Love – then the other near-cert is that it won’t follow the previous tour’s version, and it doesn’t. Out goes the slow desert intro. In comes the underplayed crunch of Bring It On Home ahead of THAT riff. Segue or what? Lakeman owns the theramin/ritti slot and all is well until the climactic home run gets cut short when half the band stop early. “I think that’s it,” says Plant of the ragged end. “Looks like we’ve fucking finished.”

Does anyone care? Not out here, not a bit, and though it’s not the trippiest or out-there of Shape Shifter sets, nor is it too obvious a crowd-pleaser. As ever, Plant and the Sensational ones keep finding extra gears to cover more miles in music’s adventures.

The set list went something like this:

The Lemon Song
Turn It Up
Rainbow
The May Queen
Please Read the Letter
Going to California
Gallows Pole
Carry Fire
Little Maggie
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
Funny in my Mind (I Believe I’m Fixing to Die)
***
Bring it on Home/Whole Lotta Love

MARK LANEGAN LIVE + 2017 MOMENTS

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DECEMBER REWIND: MARK LANEGAN BAND PLAYS OXFORD, PLUS A 2017 REWIND

Gargoyle. When you see Mark Lanegan stand dead still on stage, face lived-in and unbreaking, you wonder if the name of the album is a knowing, unmoving nod to his stage self.

Then you cast the thought off. Lanegan does not come across as a guy who does send-up, not in public at least. Gargoyles survive centuries though, and Lanegan’s voice has the same survivor’s trait, but the man himself …. at times he looks like he might not get much beyond another day. He only moves from and to the mic when he has to get a drink, and does it slowly with a limp. Every time he moves, he grimaces. Definitely not the imposing moody bruiser you’ve imagined – no, he looks like a veteran fighter in semi-retirement, taking the stage with reluctance. To anyone who hasn’t seen him in person before – me – it’s a bit of a shock. Puts you at unease.

Is Lanegan’s voice diminished? No. Not a bit. It’s exactly what you know from the records – rich, lived-in, strong with weary edge, and he doesn’t falter or miss all night. Death’s Head Tattoo and Gravedigger give us an early rush before Shelley Brien takes co-vocals on Hit the City‘s highway cool. Nocturne pulls out those Euro-driven post-punk synth-pop stops, pulsing like Simple Minds’ Theme for Great Cities, and it’s these tracks, the ones that drive you through metropolitan nightscapes, that work the best. Riot in My House showcases Jeff Fielder’s liquid solos, and that guy is stellar, totally immersed in the songs – he’s into it, bodily into it, with creeper-hop moves and dapper hat that are more acid jazz moonlighter than rock supremo. Class act, as is the whole band. Methamphetamine Blues closes the set with clank ‘n’ growl, then the encore gets stripped to guitar and voice only. Brien joins for a closing Bombed.

It’s a great gig, but an odd-funny one too (and we’re not even going near support act Joe Cardamone’s Holy War filmwank). You could say that Lanegan’s voice doesn’t fit the higher energy rock that he now does, yet it totally works. You could also say that he doesn’t fit the trad rock set-up on stage – and you’d be right. And you would put cash on “Mark will be out in 15 minutes to sign any merchandise you have, he’d love to meet you” not being the last words of the set, but they are. A meet and greet with Mark Lanegan? Get the fork outta here.

But sure enough, he appears – walking slowly with a cane, joined by Shelley, and they take their seats at the merch stand. They sign stuff, they shake everyone’s hands, it’s a cool thing to see. Would they sign my ticket, please? Of course they would. Happy new year, guys.

LANEGAN TICKET

MOMENTS OF THE YEAR

We’re already drowning in end-of-year lists, but I’ll add a drop’s worth anyway. What’s the criteria? Music moments 2017 – pretty much new, a little of the old, simple as that. The big 2017 reviews shame us into seeing how far off the pulse we non-music-biz mortals really are, but they give us plenty of stuff to check as well: a last grab at being remotely current.

They also make us wonder what everyone sees in LCD Soundsystem. 

Again.

NOTHING IS DEFINITIVE. Let’s go.

KXM – Scatterbrain
Rapid-fire prog-pyro technics launch the second KXM album. So, who KXM again? Dug Pinnick (King’s X) + George Lynch (Lynch Mob/Dokken) + Ray Luzier (Korn). Many of Pinnick’s projects overlap his mother band’s sound, but KXM does push a bit further out because Lynch has a tone all his own, and Ray Luzier lays down some pristine metallic double-kick action, yet the bedrock of it all are those big stop-starter funk-heavy grooves. Check Panic Attack for an epic Lynchian solo over heavy-Beatles harmony. If you’re looking to fall back in love with guitar heroes and musos who serve the song, submit to KXM’s hard-rock mastery.

King’s X live in Bristol
Might as well get straight on to the other 2017 Pinnick high: King’s X live, in the UK. After a life-time’s fandom, seeing them for the first time was odds-on to be Gig of the Year, and it was. It still is. This is what it felt like. King’s X, we salute you.

Buzz and Dale
First it was Crystal Fairy who crunched our worlds with revitalised riffage, then Melvins took us on A Walk with Love and Death double header, with Death possibly the best Melvins album since Freak Puke and one that draws on Stag‘s vintage lurch without ever doing a retread. Dale Crover put a solo record out, too – haven’t heard it, one for next year, surely.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
Chanced upon these raucous fuckbags back in January and pounced on one-track EP The Wizard and the Seven Swines. One of the best listens of the year. Debut album Feed the Rats landed in 2017, and though more hinged, it’s still a righteous slab of sludgy noisy drawn-out psyche.

Robert Plant – Carry Fire
Any Robert Plant record is a big deal, no matter how it turns out. Carry Fire isn’t the global psychedelic melt that we might expect from the Sensational Space Shifters – more wistful Welsh valley than charging Mali burn – and its restrained mood is at odds with Plant’s life-affirming interviews, so what gives? Once The May Queen has skipped past, side A keeps it slow and you’re straining for a kick, but after that – Carving Up The World Again onwards – it hits the Plant mark. Bones of Saints echoes Mighty Rearranger, Carry Fire conjures bazaars and street heat while Keep it Hid tiptoes a Space Shifter electronica shimmy. Given time, the slower tracks grow, but best of all is Heaven Sent at the record’s end – heavy, slow-droning surf, one of Plant’s darkest. Majesterial stuff as always, just a bit more hidden. Slow-releasing heat.

Dead Cross – Dead Cross
Old Kids on the Block? Yeah, but the joy of hearing Patton THIS animated and Lombardo THAT ferocious in a 28-minute ultrablast is hard to top.

Ministry – Rio Grande Blood
Jizzy Pearl played Wasted in America at the Bullingdon in 2017. Of course, it launched a Love/Hate listening phase, and that somehow led to a Ministry revival as well – you know what it’s like. Must have been a bands-of-92 thing. Anyway, Ministry. Don’t know how long you stuck with them, but I stopped buying after Houses of the Mole, not for any great reason other than the stacks of other new bands and sounds to grab hold of. Suddenly you’ve got a four-album Ministry deficit and the guitarist has died. Shit. What happens when you then get stuck in to Rio Grande Blood? It blows your head. Senor Peligro is ferocious, aggressive, surely one of the hardest tracks they’ve ever done. Cue immediate Ministry gap fill, and if you can stomach a bit of gross-out reading while you do the same, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen is it (get it on Kindle). Frank, funny and disgusting, it’s an unbelievable tale (literally, in the Robert Plant anecdote – Led Zeppelin in 1983, really???) where you can’t help but be charmed by Alien J. Lotta self deprecation, whole lotta self abuse, some horrible fucking stories. Get past the first few pages and you won’t stop.

Prince – Around the World in a Day
The Prince education continues, and this album … well, Tamborine and America. How hard is the funk on those tracks? ’nuff said. Staggering.

Chris Cornell 

We all know the story. We all know it doesn’t sit right, either. Going beyond Soundgarden, Carry On and Songbook have kept Cornell’s flame flickering this year, and the more you listen, the deeper that talent – and loss – goes.

Myrkur – Mareridt
Already referenced here as a winter soundtrack, Mareridt covers many more bases than Myrkur’s debut album M. It is less metal – much less – but more diverse, more coherent and more euphoric in an icy, nightmare folk kinda way. Ghosts of black metal. #2 in Metal Hammer’s 2017 review.

Wire live in Oxford
Chairs missing. Doors opening. (non) review right here.

Paradise Lost – Medusa
20 years after last picking up a Paradise Lost album (One Second), Medusa became an impulse buy. Don’t know why. Must have been the subliminal dark arts of the reviews and interviews, and it’s still too new to know well, but it’s got a mature, heavy crunch. Slow-moving and resolute, Medusa is grounded – exactly what we need in fast, unstable times. Just goth enough, feels like a stayer. Let’s see.

Kamasi Washington – Harmony of Difference
Mary Anne Hobbs and Stuart Maconie are all over Kamasi Washington on 6 Music, as are many others, but if you’re open to The Jazz yet rarely snagged, Washington’s triple disc debut The Epic would be way too much. Maybe he knows this. Maybe this is why he put out Harmony of Difference, a 32-minute 6-tracker (at EP price, bargainheads) that uses counterpoint theory – not something I know about, but Harmony is a rich, fullsome listen that might even beat a path to The Epic… one day.

What else for 2017?

Drore! 

Mastodon!!! But Emperor of Sand tops the Metal Hammer poll, so go read a proper write up over there instead.

Other 2017 stuff not yet managed: king crimson live in chicago – QOTSA – big|brave – motorpsycho – hannah peel – godflesh – mogwai – nine inch nails – gy!be – the bug vs earth – and so on anon anon anon…

HAPPY NEW YEAR, see you in 2018!

WIRE: live – a non-review

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NOVEMBER REWIND: WIRE DO A NUMBER ON THE OXFORD BULLY. CHUCK MOSLEY FALLS.

You know when you get an album that grabs you so much on first listen that you’re reduced to a state of stationary captivation, rooted speaker-side by some sort of slow motion epiphany? Like you’ve been shown a new way, something big and beyond your shrinked mind?

Wire just laid all that on yours truly the day after their Oxford gig at the Bullingdon, a gig that’s not being reviewed here. Why no review?

Being someone who knows close to shit-all about the band, beyond a couple of albums and their widely-reported creds, any review would be dubious, under-informed cack. Real fake. So, instead of beating out a few words about what the gig is or was, better to look at what it did.

WIRE. Who first heard the name through Elastica’s Connection plagia-rism? Got my hand up for that one. Did nothing about it until a few years ago though, when Pink Flag popped up at the right time and revealed its spiky outer-punk brilliance. Special, a Proper Band, so I thought it’d be a good idea to pick up the albums in chronological order and hear the band unfold the way they actually did. This would be my Wire Listening Project. From what I’d read, they were apt to shift things pretty swiftly, and Chairs Missing confirmed it. Should be an interesting journey: 154, next stop.

Thing is, the project got derailed before 154 was ever reached, because Wire came to town and played such a shit-kicking set (to my novice ears) that leaving the gig without snaffling audio merch was just not an option.

On stage, Colin Newman cuts a quiet, almost delicate shape up front. His guitar is anything but. ThickerbiggerwarmerHEAVIER than expected, it’s voluminous – like Neil Young on Le Noise, but machined to a straighter edge. No idea what the tracks were, though a post-gig lyric search meant that two standouts turned out to be Over Theirs, which finished off the main set under feedback tides, and an encore-defining Stealth of a Stork. Massive, vital. Wire made an impact.

At the merch stand, Send Ultimate and Read & Burn 3 found a new home, and it was Send Ultimate’s double-discer that whipped the froth in the first paragraph. That first play revealed a tough-sounding album, not industrial but industrial hard, magnetic, of itself and no-one else, and it’s just the start of what’s gonna be a long burrow into Wire world. Such is the potency of a gig when you’re ripe for accelerated conversion and didn’t even know it.

GONE

AC/DC’s Malcolm Young slipped away this month, but it was Chuck Mosley whose loss was perhaps the bigger shock. No doubt you played something in tribute … here, having not played Introduce Yourself for years, Chinese Arithmetic leapt out brash and fully fresh. And from the Cement days, you gotta give Piledriver a go. Riffs: sharp but loose.

’til next time!

Wire CDs: Send Ultimate

Wire: just press send

RITUAL UNION: a 5-band review

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ULRIKA SPACEK, FLAMINGODS, JOSEFIN OHRN + THE LIBERATION, PINKSHINYULTRABLAST and BO NINGEN at Oxford’s new RITUAL UNION festival, October 21 2017

There’s a new festival in town and it’s called Ritual Union: three venues and four stages of bands – The Bullingdon, The Library and the O2 (upstairs and down), and some in-stores at Truck Store – make this a proper Cowley Road music community effort.

It all kicks off early aft this windy Saturday, and as ever with multiple-band jams like this, we want to like a lot and, with any luck, get blown sideways by somebody.

That somebody won’t be Ulrika Spacek, though. 20-something minutes in to a 30-minute set in the Bullingdon, I’m trying not to drift off standing up. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s late … no, it’s 6pm. Velvets-y new wave with a less than stellar vocal – not much to grab hold of, and that’s a real shame ‘coz after catching the very end of their support set for Minor Victories last year, I swear they’d made a loud, moto-rhythmic first impression. It’s why I had them down as a cert for today.

But wait … the final track, wassis? Thicker guitars, more sprawl, spacier voice and yes, a moto-groove. It’s good. It’s very good. It’s Everything: All of the Time, and is surely how they wrapped their Minor Victories set last year. My tip? Get to the gig 10 minutes from the end, you’ll love it.

Sticking with the Bully, next up are Flamingods, and these guys – Bahrain-formed culture clashers – radiate musicality before they even strike a note. You can just feel it. And when they do start, they lift the room BIG TIME with a soaring, infectious, free-flowing fusion that’s bursting with soul from whatever genre-culture they see fit. Like what, like who? The fact that they were tour buds with The Comet is Coming this year gives a kaleidoscopic clue, but my rock-ist worldview (depressingly narrow in front of this lot) means that Neu!, Boredoms, Mr Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3, Goat and even Hawkwind all fly to mind, at least for this punchy live set. Smile and dance the trance, Ritual Union-ists! Rich, colourful, euphoric stuff – GO SEE THIS BAND. Proper players mixing it up, a real celebration.

Next: Josefin Ohrn + the Liberation. Knowing nothing about them, this could go either way, so … the dark instrumental space halfway through the set is a welcome place to make a late entry. Heavy on the rhythm again, but more driving, shadowy and goth-flecked – channelling The Creatures (Siouxsie) a bit, mebbe? – theirs is a different kind of psych, if psych is what it is. A low-key summoning, perhaps. Another one to keep eyes on.

Pinkshinyultrablast.
No.

Sorry. And with that, we do a weird exits early from the Bullingdon and head upstairs at the O2 for Bo Ningen. YES…. their live rep precedes them and, to be honest, they are the reason for getting a buzz about this Ritual thing in the first place – a chance to see them melt minds right here, in Oxford. And they do.

Fried space rock, total reverb overload and damaged psyche with vocal yelps that jab your eyes, it’s what Comets on Fire could be like if they took a Man’s Ruin desert trip with Boris and jammed at full tilt. Wild but never, ever sloppy, Bo Ningen bow out with a noise maelstrom that’s utter fucking carnage. Astonishing.

Downstairs, festival headliners Peace are on the big stage with whatever it is that they do.

But who wants Peace when you can have war? BO NINGEN. Game over.

KING’S X: live review

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KING’S X @ BRISTOL BIERKELLER, 12/6/2017

JE-RRY, JE-RRY, JE-RRY, JE-RRY…

Before a note is even struck, a chant goes out to the drummer. Jerry Gaskill points to his heart and checks that’s what everyone meant, thanks the crowd for asking and gives the OK that yes, he’s healthy now – and with that, we are ON: Groove Machine and The World Around Me. The applause after those two tracks is so encore-rapturous that you’d swear it was the last track of the last gig of a stadium sellout tour, not the start of a small gig in a small room. There’s a tidal wave of UK love pushing forth and it’s Pinnick Tabor Gaskill getting swamped

because fuuuuuuuck!!!! It’s King’s X, in person, RIGHT THERE just a few feet away. Why the exaltation? Pure magic in a three-piece, as any fan with their own tale will tell you. In my record collection, Gretchen Goes to Nebraska sits between the Badlands debut and Testament’s Practice What You Preach… class of 1989. At some point that year, the 15/16-year-old me bought Badlands, King’s X and Testament – in that order – with Out of the Silent Planet very much not far behind, so Nebraska ’89 is where the path to the Bierkeller started: 28 years of King’s X and now, finally, a live X-perience. No wonder we’ve got the feelgood jitters, this is a borderline mythical event. Three hours earlier, doing a non-native’s scope for the gig’s location, The World Around Me snuck out from behind closed ‘keller doors.

Soundcheck. OMG. Dug Pinnick, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill are IN there.

But because I didn’t see them, I still didn’t know for sure if they were real.

Back to the gig, they look real enough, but it’s only when they don’t disappear in smoke after those first two songs that the convincing is complete. Pillow, Flies and Blue Skies, A Box, Black Flag, Lost in Germany, Cigarettes, Pray and a hard-rocking Looking for Love are among the King’s X/Dogman/Ear Candy-heavy setlist, with Vegetable‘s taut funk shapes stretching to a long-form Moonlight jam. Dug opts out of some choruses because he’s too old and can’t sing that high anymore (his words, not mine), handing vocal duties to the punters making up the Unofficial Bierkeller King’s X Choir, but he’s still got it. Just not going for the young Doug’s gospel gymnastics of the early days.

Two-thirds of the way through and a minor fret flashes by: we’ve had nothing from the first three albums. Should we be worried? Are they now the band’s Stairway?

No. Righteous Gretchen double-up Summerland and Over My Head swell the joint, while KXprog stopstarter We Were Born to be Loved is the only track from Faith, Hope, Love – didn’t see that one coming, would have bet on It’s Love – and it’s unexpectedness turns it into a real highlight with an even more prolonged false-ender than on the record.

The encore? Dogman – beyond words, obvs – and Goldilox, which is part Dug-crowd a cappella, part full-band. Sweet. And Ty Tabor gets a last-minute mention because that guy was fucking flawless throughout, a real master. The solos in Flies and Blue Skies and Cigarettes were all-time Gig Moments.

So, it is done – King’s X have been seen and I make no apologies for the bias in this review, it’s been a long time coming. Heavy soul with free-flowing uplift, just like the records, and needed now more than ever. Get there if you can, keep spreading the word.

Little bit more Pinnick here, after Radiohead

JIZZY PEARL / LOVE/HATE: live review

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JIZZY PEARL / LOVE/HATE @THE BULLINGDON, OXFORD, 01/04/2017

“It’s the last night of the tour, we’re celebrating 25 years of Wasted in America and yes, I have just stepped out of a fucking time machine…”

Jizzy Pearl, a trim and very-much-alive star from LA’s post-glam pre-grunge early 90s, owns a voice that, along with bassist Skid’s artwork and drugs-booze-blackout lyrics, marked Love/Hate out as one of the bands of the time, and those first two albums are scuffed gems to this day. Much like our very own Wildhearts, Love/Hate were too colourful, shambolic and decadent to compete with the rising Seattle star, and that meant they were doomed to be botched by bad timing (and in-band fuck ups, of course). 1992 was Nevermindasupernova. Love/Hate looked like they were having fun. And they were from LA. It could never really last, and it didn’t, but the records really do.

Love/Hate sleeve

LA ’92: Wasted

 

Now it’s April Fools’ Day 2017, the Budweiser cross of cans has graced the stage and we’re straight in to Wasted in America (the album) with Wasted in America (the track). Spit and Miss America follow, and it’s shaping up to be a straight runthrough of the record – ’tis an anniversary after all. Cream to Yucca Man to Happy Hour next?

Not quite. Somewhere during side 1, we get spun off the wasted trail with a couple of blackouts – Tumbleweed and Fuel to Run – before skidding back to the main deal for Cream and Yucca Man. Good move, mixing it like that. Makes the in-its-entirety album thing feel more alive, gig-like and less predictable, and it means that we get aces like Mary Jane, Why Do You Think They Call It Dope? and Let’s Rumble’s sleaze-o Spinning Wheel cut in to the Wasted plot. Serve up a little Blackout in the Red Room after WiA’s closing Evil Twin and we’ve been privy to the full album topped up by Love/Hate’s best others. Jizzy’s voice is, somehow, still a forceful top-ender at 59 years (59!!!) and he seems genuinely moved by tonight’s word-perfect crowd. Well, we love the record, simple as that.

For the encore, JP gives us a choice: either the first side of Rush’s 2112 OR Straightjacket…

(clue: Canada lose)

You never really know with these anniversary/whole album gigs whether they’re gonna work or not, but this one came from the right place – a real feelgood celebration of a rekkid of youth, the stuff that’s burned waaaaay down inside…you can’t undo that. It’s in there for life. And when a band decides to uncork that genie, they gotta do it with a record that’s got the tunes, and Wasted in America has no wobbles in that department. If the title track is all you can salvage from a hazy quarter-century recall, dig out the deeper cuts and you’ll see that the album rocks harder than its lead track. Need pointers? Yucca Man, the disorienting Happy Hour and Jizzy-showcase Tranquilizer are a three-way sure shot.

Blackout, Wasted and Rumble albums on replay since the gig. Love/Hate earworms non-stop buzzing

buzzin’ like a bumble bee, TRANQUI-LI-ZER