Hi everybody. Sorry for the lack of recent updates, but rest assured I’ll be making up for it this week. I’ve got a full write-up of the Vincent Gallo curated All Tomorrows Parties ready to roll, which, in order to avoid a massive info-dump, I’ve split into days. Here’s Friday, and be sure to tune in later this week for Saturday and Sunday.


ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES, FRIDAY;

An unexpectedly early set by Lydia Lunch proves a pretty jarring way to begin the weekend’s live music proceedings. I think she would have been more in her element haranguing a crowd a crowd of drunken post-midnight stragglers, and her band’s debris-strewn LA noir jazz seems weirdly out of place in a room full of fresh-faced, semi-sober kids anticipating a weekend of seaside fun. Nevertheless though, Lydia’s on raging good form, fusing her ‘Queen of Siam’ femme fatale persona with the punch of her vicious spoken word performances, effortlessly staring down would-be hecklers and commanding our attention as the material from her new album moves her trademark butcher knife dismemberments of sex and gender politics forward into realms of global turmoil and societal control, particularly on highlight ‘God was the First Cop’. Like all great underground orators, her words make brutal, righteous sense and come across like a rabid rush to the head. Make no mistake losers, she is still Lydia Lunch and she still owns you.

Already legends in their own lunchtime, Japanese grrl-skronk duo Afri Rampo turn in another triumph. Their playing is so utterly instinctive and joyous, and conveys such a pure, childlike understanding of how to make a rocking racket, totally unencumbered by ego, self-consciousness, musical ‘logic’ or any of the other curses heaped upon us by generations of white male muso geek rock star bullshit, that I’m lost for words. And they knock the drumkit apart, bash hell out of the guitar with drumsticks and sing weird, wordless screaming songs into each others vocal mics! In a perfect world, all pop groups would be like this.

From the five minutes I caught of Merzbow, it seems somebody had seen fit to restrict his customary ear-bleeding volume rather severely, reducing his bone-gnawing robot deathdrone down to the ineffectual soup of farts it truly is. Ha! Whoever made that decision has my highest regards.

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITES;
The DJs playing through Friday night in the downstairs room are absolutely fucking great, inspiring me to cut some rug for three or four straight hours. Just thought you might like to know.