Tag Archives: gig review

JASSS – It’s a Hole: TRACK OF THE MONTH

Posted on by
Reply

BERLIN BREAKBEATS, LONDON PROG, PHILADELPHIA SHOEGAZE – AND PULLED APART BY HORSES HIT BUXTON

Who’d have thought it? Pulled Apart By Horses, on stage, in Buxton.

Honestly, it’s a shock – but a welcome one. Being a Buxton newcomer (moved here just under a year ago), it was my understanding that noise-and-sweat-style rock gigs by name bands wouldn’t really be a fixture. So, Sheffield and Manchester have been beacons for riff-heavy fixes by the likes of the Melvins and Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.

Then Pulled Apart By Horses posters started popping up around town. What???

And here we are at Buxton Trackside, gearing up for a Pulled Apart gig more than 10 years after seeing them rip it up in Oxford.

Having not followed the band since Tough Love, the line-up changes and recent albums escape me but, really, it’s the live Horses experience that’s the draw and one thing that time hasn’t dimmed is singer Tom Hudson’s willingness to get off the stage and into the crowd. This happens in the very first track and doesn’t stop all night. It sets the tone and ups the energy right off the bat.

The awesome V.E.N.O.M. gets cranked out early, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? catches everyone out and High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive pretty much shuts the set down before a final thrash through I Wanna Be Your Dog makes for a predictably raucous send-off. Job done. Very little has changed from all those years ago – whether that’s good or bad is up to you – but it feels great to be among some noise on a Buxton Friday and huge props to Buxton Trackside for making such an ace gig space. Let’s hope it becomes the venue for live action round here.

Right, what else has caught the ears this past month? New records by the godlike Robert Plant and in-shape Nine Inch Nails are the big specials but there’s always room for small curios. Here’s a just-heard new sound or three fished out from murkier waters.

THEY ARE GUTTING A BODY OF WATER – the chase

Lumbering guitar mass pounding, not a zillion miles away from Mogwai at their earliest unpolished, starts the chase. Then the clean breakdown and spoken storyteller narration. Then the return of the guitars, steamrollering everything. This – the oversized guitar fuzz and feedback – leapt right out of the radio the other night and set expectations of a band dealing in noise-heavy post-rock.

But their other tracks have undermined those expectations a little. Is there enough here to keep us hooked? Not sure yet. Curious, though. Next album LOTTO out soon and the chase is on it.

JASSS – It’s a Hole (feat James K and Alias Error)

Deep bass drives this dense, ultra shadowy soundscape by Berlin-based multimedia artist JASSS. Though not loud or showy, It’s a Hole is rich with information that slow-drowns you in disorienting intoxication … faint dread meets the hypnotic ebb of a dark Boards of Canada warping. Tense comforts.

THE ORCHESTRA (FOR NOW) – Hattrick

London prog, the band call it. Jazz-flamed rock with violin, cello and noise-prog ambition is a less pithy tag. Probably less usable, too. But you know how Maruja’s Look Down On Us climbs into a crescendo of communal euphoria that threatens to transcend? Hattrick kicks that kind of dust. Rage and beauty and loud and quiet and wild orchestral swings – and a drummer to drop jaws everywhere.

’til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

Karma to Burn – live@Bullingdon Arms, Oxford, July 2013

Posted on by
Reply

No-frills power-trio Karma to Burn bring guitar-bass-drums fury to the Bullingdon. Or do they?

As we know, Karma to Burn are all about the expected. End-to-end riffs, no vocals, no experimentation, no frills. They do not deviate, they do not change: certainty is their currency and you pretty much know what’s coming up – an hour or so of shit-kicking, dust-and-gasoline guitar hooks ground out by three grizzled road-dogs bonded by a volatile history of bad drugs, bad attitudes and band break-ups. Seeing the reunited Will Mecum-Rob Oswald-Rich Mullins line-up nail the Audioscope headline slot a couple of years ago was a proper treat, and now they’re back to give us more.

But before West Virginia headlines, Oxford must support. That honour falls to local heroes Desert Storm who charge the Bully with infectious, Clutch-inspired rhythm ‘n groove and supreme confidence. Immense.

Karma to Burn take to the stage almost without anyone noticing. And as the first notes crunch forth tonight, something’s not quite right.

Who’s the drummer?

And where is the bassist?

First question first. By not following Karma’s personnel moves last year, I missed the fact that drummer Rob Oswald left not just the band but music itself, sick of the lies and compromises at the business end of the music business. He got out.

As for the bass space … it remains a void. Rich Mullins never shows. Nothing is mentioned.

So for a band who trade in certainties and absolutes, this is an unsettling start. Does Will Mecum (guitar) plus a drummer (Evan Devine) count as a Karma to Burn experience?

Sonically, yes. As soon as those amps push Mecum’s Karma-sized riffs out, the doubts diminish and grins emerge. This music isn’t sophisticated, it’s as stripped down as you can get – there aren’t even any solos – and yet, live and loud in a small venue, it unleashes a very primal urge to just ROCK OUT. The Bullingdon back room does exactly that, whirling into a mosh as the wordless tracks blast past. Job done. And with job done, Mecum and Devine swiftly depart.

Whether this two-piece format is Karma to Burn’s future is something we don’t know yet. Losing Oswald’s unkempt wildman intensity is one thing but if Mullins’s genial cool is AWOL too … that’s a hefty personality deficit for a band who are pretty minimal to begin with. Tonight they pull it off – I think. Let’s see what happens.

Julian Cope. Spectacular guitar-heavy rock’n’roll excess

Posted on by
Reply

Kevin WoodThis review was first published on BBC Oxford on 16 February 2006, two days after Julian Cope’s concert in Oxford.

 

 

 

It’s February the 14th and there’s a lot of love bouncing around upstairs in the Zodiac…

…but that’s not just because it’s Valentines Day, no no no. It’s because the Arch Drude, Julian Cope, is onstage.

His last Zodiac appearance was a solo affair where, armed with a lurid green semi acoustic guitar, effects pedals and a hefty beard, he plundered his vast back catalogue to mesmerising effect. Now, 18 months later and with last year’s Citizen Cain’d/Dark Orgasm double whammy in the can, he is ready to ROCK. We know this for a fact because Doggen – guitarist extraordinaire and tonight masked by Joker-style face paint – is up there with a six-stringed axe to grind, while Mister E is ready to pound his kit.

The opening shots of White B**** Comes Good and She’s Got a Ring on her Finger tell us exactly what to expect – a night of Copean garage/psyche rifferama. Double Vegetation, Highway to the Sun, World War Pigs, Hanging Out and Hung Up on the Line and Sunspots are all given extra beef by Doggen’s unrestrained guitar cookery, as are a pair of tunes from Teardrops archives. There’s even an airing for Brain Donor’s unrefined thuggery… Get Off My Pretty Face indeed. Everyone’s happy.

Threading it all together is Cope’s between-song banter, as unhinged and high value as ever. Never one to use two words when twenty will do, the self-styled rock ‘n’ roll shaman riffs on the trivial and the bizarre, from his fingerless studded gloves to a disastrous séance with Al Jourgensen’s wife via lost maps to the underworld. And who else would bother to swap his bass for another one that’s exactly the same, just because he loved the absurdity of it?

After dropping the pace with Autogeddon’s epic s.t.a.r.c.a.r., Doggen and Mister E depart to leave the frontman wielding his mellotron and electric guitar to max effect on a clutch of Fried/Peggy Suicide/Jehovahkill/20 Mothers faves. Then the band regroup for the last stretch, finally finishing off with Hell is Wicked and Reynard the Fox. It’s here, right at the end, where the mood of the gig changes from feelgood rockout to slightly macabre spectacle as Cope gets deeper into raging poet mode before cutting his chest with the mic stand. Though not out of character – he revived it in last year’s tour – it’s still unnerving. Necessary? Like Iggy Pop’s famously sliding kecks, probably not. Then again, with his current ‘cliché is reality’ trip, who knows what’s going on…

Lashings of rock, lashings of charisma, 100% Cope – another great gig. See you next time.